In May 1976, at the age of 10, my younger brother James and I climbed into the family car with our dearest belongings and said farewell to our childhood home. As we drove across town to our new house we had a sense of excitement, but our parents were subdued. Over the 12 years prior to that day, my parents' dream home on the seafront in Sussex had transformed into an unsustainable financial burden. They had to sell and so we crossed to the other side of town.
Looking back now, the new house we moved to was nowhere near as good as the old one, but at that age I judged it by how close my friends were and, of course, the quality of the local newsagents. By both counts, it was positive. I also now had my own room and soon set about unpacking my comics. My father had bundled them up with string, and so my fledging collection of Beanos, TV Comics, Marvel UKs and more, quickly found space within reaching distance of my bed. With a new radio next to me, this was my set-up for years ahead, and soon I was adding early issues of 2000 A.D. and Doctor Who to the weekly shop.
For me, these comics were not just reading material, they were more like souvenirs of past days. If I picked up Avengers #1 then I was back in the Post Office around lunchtime on Friday 22nd September 1973. The Look-In issue with the Bowie cover was a memorable walk to the shops a few months earlier. Titans #1 in late October 1975 was the comic I was gifted on a beach walk to tell me I was going into hospital for an operation the following day. The retained Pippin and Playlands reminded me of very early years when the Saturday morning paperboy's clatter of the letterbox sent us racing down the stairs. James was the Pippin reader as he liked the glossy paper, I had the Playland with its matt finish as it had more of a grown-up newspaper feel.
My parents said the relocation was only a temporary situation, but after three years, the regularly-mentioned move back to the seafront 'next year' never came about. The downgrade had stuck and my parents' own ambitions being thwarted took on a more personal meaning. Nothing seemed quite so good now. I'd gone to a different secondary school from my friends and the comics themselves seemed a poor pastiche of past glories, especially my favourite Marvel line.
The new home stayed in the family for decades, far longer than the first one, and in between university and jobs, I began to yearn for the old place. We never really let go of it in our family dinner conversations and it stood there as testament to the family's own high tidemark of achievement. Going to that part of town always saw a tweak in the journey - just to see how number 7 was.
In time I moved out, met and married Tracey, and then later we had our own family, though still living in the same town. We created new memories and not only did my family grow, but so did my collection, up into the stratosphere. The Pippin and Playlands were now relegated behind collectable original UK art and Silver Age Marvels, but that first house was still the 'golden age'.
Inevitably, my two children picked up on my indirect drives around town, and it became a bit of an in-joke between the four of us.
Sadly, just prior to the Covid lockdown, James passed away at short notice. Due to a health condition his life was always going to be shorter than any of us wanted, but we never reckoned on 51. I spent the last days sleeping over at the hospice. It was a close time together, but he never complained and then he departed to join my already long-gone parents. The one thing that struck me though, was he said his happiest days had been at number 7, which saddened me even further as surely he'd found more to enjoy in life after his first 8 years. I couldn't disagree though, as I'd always known it.
Having no wife or children, James was very generous in what he left to me. He wanted me to go and live back near the seafront and I inherited enough for Tracey and I to ponder that move. Then one day my daughter came rushing downstairs, waving her IPad and shouting "Dad, isn't this the house you used to live in?" Those little diverted drives had made their impression. She was right, it was the very same house.
A viewing was arranged and, though brief, it confirmed what I'd always known - number 7's DNA was utterly etched in my mind. I navigated the rooms at ease, even looking for and finding the chip on the banister I'd made and been scolded for, back in 1974. I made a point of opening and standing in the larder, next to where the potato and onion stacker had been. I leant on the small bedroom inner windowsill the way I used to. I stood in the old nursery and breathed in the air. The room sizes felt right, despite the fact that I'd grown. However, it was a shock not to find the back garden as we'd left it. I'd anticipated the trees would be more mature, but they were gone. Everything was different - even alien. It just wasn't the back garden I remembered. Then I spotted the familiar immovable stone bench right at the end, an anchor all this time. The change around it now seemed more plausible and palatable. I sat down on it for the first time in decades.
I stepped back out through the front door and then down the driveway to the pavement. I whispered a goodbye for the moment, not yet knowing whether it would be forever or not.
However, a deal was done and four months later, on my birthday, we picked up the keys. As I turned the key in the lock I momentarily pretended it was only the day after we'd left. It had taken time, but my old family (no longer here) had returned. I took something personal into the house for each of them as if they were with me. My father's tin box with his name printed on it, my mother's Red Rum book, and my brother's box of early toys. Each of these consciously and carefully carried over the threshold.
The four of us had decided that we wouldn't be living in a museum. The house needed updating and expanding to properly and comfortably accommodate the four of us. I took the view that, had my old family never moved out, alterations and additions would have occurred anyway over the years, so it would never have been preserved 'in amber'. However, updating requires money, so I'll have to consider selling some of my comics collection to help raise the necessary funds.
Letting go of comics does not come easily. For every Donald And Mickey that was never going to make the full trip, there's a Mighty World Of Marvel that was meant to. Also, which is more important - the last issue of a set or the first merger issue the following week? Are graphic novels or single issues the ones to keep? I type this and stare at the wall. Yes, I've made the return home, but sadly, to meet the cost of improvements, not everything that's come home with me will be staying.
However, some will pick themselves to stay. They're the memory ones. Spider-Man Comics Weekly #55, bought in town where Boots is now. That first TV Comic bought at Teleski's near my Gran's. Dracula Lives #1 from Watson's, which I took to school at lunchtime, and so on. And it's with those souvenirs that the house comes alive again, with my old family now mixing in with the new. Moments that perhaps should be remembered with new souvenirs.
Interestingly, I'd considered what would've happened if the house on either side had been available instead. If I’d moved into either Number 5 or 9, with new folk going in and out of Number 7, that would likely have created an imbalance within me, akin to one of those Star Trek episodes when everyone is carrying on normally, but there’s one who senses that something is 'off' - and it is.
Given everything I've said, you could be forgiven for thinking that I regard this absolutely as my forever home and that I’ll be carried out in a coffin. The thing is, my legs have felt tired since childhood and I can foresee a day when the stairs might be just too much of a struggle for me.
So I plan to be here for 20 years, but then move into a bungalow. It would be tragic to move back and die at the foot of the stairs. Imagine that - as a kid running over the spot where you later die, then getting yourself away from there, and then putting yourself right back there for it to happen. So, getting back to the point, I intend to leave on my own terms when I know my time here is properly done. There is one alternative of course - a stairlift. I'll make the final decision when that moment comes.
Sometimes, as I sit on the old stone bench in the garden and listen to my wife and children chatting nearby, I also seem to hear the voices of my parents and brother, whose presence yet permeates the place of my boyhood. The past and the present combined, to accompany me into the future. In returning here, I feel that I've finally fulfilled my parents' wish, which fills me with a sense of achievement on their behalf, as well as my own and my brother's.
"Made it, ma (and pa) - top of the world!"
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