When I, as an adult (allegedly) almost in my thirties, set foot over the threshold of one of my childhood homes for the first time since moving out 16 years before, the first thing that struck me was how much at home I still felt. It was almost as if I'd just popped out to the shops across the road about ten minutes earlier and then come straight back again.
Perhaps this was in part due to how much of the 'familiar' yet remained. The same paper on the living-room ceiling that we'd had put up; the same lowered hall ceiling that my father had fitted; the same bathroom tiles that we'd been responsible for; the same kitchen tiles (now painted) above the sink. Some things had changed of course. For a start, the sink was now stainless steel, and, in the living-room, the old-fashioned tiled fireplace and mantlepiece, like something out of The BROONS, had been replaced (or covered) by a relatively more modern-looking one - but the overwhelming 'sense' of the place as I had known it still hung heavy in the air. Truly, it really was as if I'd gone back in time and the intervening years seemed almost like a dream.
Even the back garden was untouched - the same wood and wire fence, the same gate, the same rockery at the foot of the lawn - all just as it had always been. To once again touch (and hear the sound of) the latch on the gate as I'd regularly done as a child on my way to school in the mornings was almost a spiritual experience for me. The sensation of reconnecting with one's past in such a tangible way that it seems like the present is not an easy one to convey, but that's the only way I can describe it. I had stepped back into the past, with the events of what had come after almost wiped from my memory as if they had simply never happened.
That feeling couldn't be sustained of course. For the simple reason that, in the space of a month or so, the field across from the back of the house was dug up in preparation for amenity houses for the elderly being built. Two years later, the old garden fence and gate had been 'sent off' and brash, young 'substitutes' had taken their place. Another two years after that, the church across from the front of the house had been demolished and replaced by a new one. At around the same time, the house's original windows and front door were removed and PVC ones installed. Over the last 20 years, other changes have transpired; new street lamps, new pavement surfaces, new school built, and various other alterations - all of them resented by me. Alas, time and tide waits for no man, as the old saying goes.
However, for a period of almost two decades, the old house and neighbourhood had stayed pretty much the same, allowing me the indulgence of believing, for however (relatively) brief a period, that time had stood still. I'm glad I reconnected with that aspect of my past in its last dying moments, before it was too late and everything changed forever. I suppose such experiences can never be anything other than bittersweet, in that they tease you with the glory of what once was - but, alas, cannot always be.
Other than in the mystic band of memory.
12 comments:
That was very much the experience I had last week, standing in Portobello Bay for the first time since 1977.
It's especially bittersweet in that, in thirty-five years time, I may not be physically able to walk down that rugged track, much less negotiate an electrified fence.
I'm not sure I'd be able to negotiate an electrified fence in the here and now, Dougie. Some days, it's hard enough to negotiate my way to the bathroom.
Lovely memories and insightful thoughts Kid. I love the phrase 'the mystic band of memory'. Things can never be what they where once years and years have passed by. I find it difficult to even visit my city of birth, Preston, these days. Its full of ghosts from the Sixties and Seventies for me like the kid in Sixth Sense!
Ah, if only the TARDIS were real, eh? Glad you enjoyed the post.
Good post, thanks for pointing me in it's direction (and I don't mean the one in the back garden)! I take it this isn't the house you've moved back into? If not, did you just knock on their door, write to them, or wait for them to go away on holiday? :)
There's a couple of comments in there that hit the nail on the head for me: the changes, "all of them resented by me"...I feel exactly the same when I go back for a walk around. "Those council flats should be a row of terraced houses and that wine bar was my beloved newsagents!"
And also the spiritual experience: I HAVE to go walk past my old house (not all of them, just the one about a 20 minute walk away) and my Nan's old place round the corner every Christmas Eve, after dark. It's become as much a part of my current Christmas rituals as the tree and all the rest of it. I like to see the wreathes on the doors and the lights in the windows in surroundings where I associate Christmas with being exciting and important. It's a nostalgic time for most people, but most limit it to watching Scrooge every year or getting pissed. I honour those traditions too, but my festive walkabout reconnects me to my younger self for a few minutes - and "God bless Tiny Tim, the little crippled bastard!" (A newer tradition, but something I shout at the telly every year!)
Oooooh, you're going to get me into trouble for that last line, HS. No, it's not the house I moved back into, but the one before the first time I lived in my current house. Revisiting it, as I say in the post, I really was struck by the fact that it still felt like home to me - it just seemed all too recent to me since I'd lived there, yet it was more than half my life away.
The woman who lived in the house was the same woman with whom we'd swapped houses back in 1972 (and her family), so I just chapped her door one night and explained that there were plans to build amenity flats across the road and that I'd like to get some photos of the view from my old room before they were built. Obviously not that night, but if she was amenable, could I arrange to come along at a time that was convenient and take some photos? Luckily, she remembered me, so that's how it came about.
Three years later, she'd swapped the house for a flat (just around the corner from her old/my current home), so I chapped the door of my old house again and arranged with the then-current tenant to make a video of the house, as I'd recently acquired video technology. I bribed him with £20, and made a short film of the place. It's all edited together, but I still haven't completed the soundtrack in the 28 years since I shot it. One day in the not-too-distant future, I hope.
That last line is something that someone said as he raised a toast at a pre-Christmas get-together some years back. I have no idea if he made it up on the spot or nicked it from elsewhere, but it absolutely cracked me up at the time, because it's sheer un-PC-ness perfectly punctured the mawkishness that surrounds the tiny sympathy-seeking one. I love A Christmas Carol, but it does invite piss-takery because we're now deluged with so many different versions every year. We can appreciate it's message without solemnly bowing our heads every time a different moppet does THAT line at the end...
On the off-chance that someone does complain when they've stopped laughing, explain that I'm a bit simple and therefore know not what I say - that's how some of my colleagues stay employed year after year!
Moppet - or Muppet even. I must say that I enjoyed Muppets' Christmas Carol with Michael Caine. Not a lot of people know that.
I hope he called the house he bought from the proceeds "Dun Scroogin" (ref. his fantastic retort to criticism of Jaws 3)
Which was actually Jaws 4, though it was the 3rd sequel. (I'm trying to earn my Pedant's degree.) Yeah, "You should see the house it bought my mother" or something like that. Good response I thought.
Yep, you're right - I sit corrected...and you're right to correct this stuff when you spot it...
If only everyone felt that way, HS. Some people take the hump.
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