Growing up in a very English part of Flintshire, there's been a tension between the English and the Welsh as long as I can remember. Even in primary school, many of the kids would openly protest the "useless" Welsh lessons and harass any kid who identified as Welsh - looking back I have no idea why the teachers tolerated any of this. In fact, I still have an uncle who lives in Wrexham despite being from Ellesmere Port who does exactly that - what better thing to do than move to a country than by advocating a ban on its national language.

Anyway, it was definitely cool to be English, and it made me ashamed to be from Wales - in fact, I think everyone was and this is one way it manifested. That was until my teacher, a Welsh speaker called Mr Jones who I will never forget, inspired me to go to the Welsh high school. I learnt the language, and for the first time I got in touch with what it means to be Welsh, and have been proud of being Welsh ever since. Really, without him I'm scared to think of what sort of person I might be now.

When I left high school and returned to the English comprehensive education system and reunited with some of my former primary school classmates, I saw the reality that nothing had changed. The same level of anti-Welshness was rampant. I remember one person telling me "Wales doesn't have a culture". At the time, he just struck me as one idiot, but since then I've heard this phrase from time to time by English people (mostly on the internet) demanding that I list Welsh cultural values so that they may judge whether we do indeed have a culture. That is the only fair arbitration of this issue. The anti-Welshness of Flintshire and Cheshire luckily seems to be mostly confined and there's almost nowhere else I've been that I've been met with any sort of hostility for being Welsh - just interrogation.

I'm studying in Leeds now, and when people ask where I'm from and I tell them I'm from Wales, the first response every time is "but you don't sound Welsh" which leads to further questions about my parents heritage, where I was born and so on. Because I can't provide a pedigree family tree of Welshness to these people, it seems much easier to them to erase my identity and get me to "admit" that I'm just English. My family have lived on both sides of the border for many generations. My mum grew up in England, her father in England, his father in Wales, his father's father in Wales. It's nonsensical to say they're just English or just Welsh. Yet it seems to be that I'm English by default, and in order to not be English I need to prove it to them by wowing them with an accent or some other highly visible characteristic which would adequately fit their stereotypes of a Welsh person.

It's not that I don't see myself as English, but I also see myself as Welsh. And what's frustrating when people want me to say that I'm "just English" is that I don't feel like it makes me a full Englishman, I still feel like only half an Englishman. Yeah I can go around calling myself English, but I don't feel a sense of home or belonging here and I miss Wales a lot. It's the same feeling I get if I say I'm just Welsh - that's a lie, I don't feel 100% Welsh nor "as Welsh" as other Welsh people I've met throughout my life.

I'm a plaid supporter and indy-wales supporter, and what's so hilarious to me is that the same people who seek to invalidate my Welshness also call me anti-English for my political views. I wonder how they'd react to my 100% English identifying mother who shares my politics. I couldn't even buy daffodils on St David's this year because one of my housemates would spin it as anti-English lol.