My first inkling of what the Commonwealth might really mean came only when I escaped the oddly British-tinged Asia I had known and went to live in the Philippines.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
What supposedly bound that Commonwealth together was a mysterious shared identity - Britishness.
'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.
When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.
During my childhood in Cyprus, the British talked about the Cypriots as if the Cypriots were outsiders in their own country. And even though I was born in Cyprus, my parents were American, and so I was an outsider in the land of my birth.
It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
Although my father is English, I was brought up in Australia.
My family comes from New Zealand, but I'm a London girl. I was born and raised in London, but I've got the blood of a New Zealander, so I always kind of felt like I didn't belong - in a good way.
I was brought up in Britain, and I'm very proud of my Britishness and my culture.
I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.
I spent my first 10 years in the Commonwealth. I come from cricket, crumpets, cucumber sandwiches, the Queen.