When I check through my recent posts, I’m shocked at how long it is since I updated on my Local wanderings. I scroll through my calendar, my recent posts, and look at the actual map, and the reasons are clear in all three areas.
It has been a busy Summer – the best kind of busy – walking, exploring, being on boats and islands, with more of all of that to come before Autumn fully kicks in (though she’s knocking at the door already). The single map has taken a bit of a back seat, by which I mean it has sat on the dining table accusing me of neglect every time I walk past.
Naturally the posts have followed the life. That’s the way I have chosen to do this: live first, write second. Another reason not to expect a book from me anytime soon. I don’t have that drive, or focus, or ambition, or whatever it is. I want to live first, and then write about living – rather than setting out to live an adventure worth writing about. I am enthralled by Humphreys’ notions of living an adventurous life (whatever that means) but at the same time I’m trying to explore the idea of the
value inherent in an unadventurous life, a simple and quiet life.
If it's not working, that's because I’m not sure which kind of life I am living.
I trust all will become clear in the fullness of time.
If not, then my own time will reach its fullness and it probably won’t matter to me anymore. In the meantime…a quick catch-up on where I am with my #ASingleMap excursions.
It will be quick, and will probably explain why the last two squares have taken so long to hit the page.
I have the map open in front of me as I write. The two squares that I last explored have not a single pixel of green, and all of the white space is private garden or school playing field land. No public access in other words. This is a thing to bear in mind if you take up the challenge of your own home-centred map. If you live in the city, town, suburbs, there will be squares that surprise you with their wildness, but there will also be those that fail to excite you at all. These were two of the latter.
It is an area of streets, and houses, a couple of schools, the old technical college that has reinvented itself, a couple of churches. Mostly though, it is streets of houses. It also includes another of those streets on which I used to live.
Back then I had what would pretentiously be called a studio flat: a bed-sitting room, a bathroom and a kitchen. It was a lovely house on a lovely road, but a pretty crappy flat to be honest. The bathroom was a bath and a toilet, no handbasin, no shower (unless you count the dripping overflow from the immersion heater). The decor was the kind of thing you just slap paint over and hope for the best, because you're not planning on being there long (I was wrong about the last bit). The main room was damp. The landlord was a bigot.
But, importantly, the rent was cheap. I stayed for a long time. I weathered the interactions when the bigot came to call.
Then, I got sick. I forgot to switch the heating off…there were strict rules…I had anargument with the man as he sat in my front-room/bed-room. I was wrapped up in a duvet at the time. I had not been to work for over a month.
When I got well, I would have to repaint the bathroom – let’s just say there was splatter.
I got well. I repainted.
Then within a few months, I bought a house and moved out. The room was still damp. The man was still a horrible person, but I would not have to deal with him anymore.
I understand the house was sold soon afterwards, with its sitting tenants. The new landlord tended to the property and its people with more compassion and grace. It looks better now. From the outside at least. I would love to know how the inside fares…but not enough to going knocking on the door. For many years after I moved out, I would have dreams in which I ‘broke in’ to my old room looking for something I’d left behind.
Now, I walk down those old streets again. Memories come in randomly.
The mornings I would get up early and power walk a circuit, trying to get reasonably fit for a hiking holiday. The days I would walk other circuits just to clock up the miles. I suspect both of these had a bigger impact on my mental health than they ever did on the body.
Further away, in time and space, I remember the shop on the corner when it was a cobbler’s…run by an Irish fella…always ready for a chat, reasonable in his pricing and quick with his work.
I remember when the pub was the Lily Langtry – a place you could have a quiet drink and a good conversation without having to shout above loud music. I remember an evening in there saying goodbye to someone who had travelled a long way to see me. I wonder what became of him, and whether he ever forgave me.
I remember when I first discovered Christchurch, in its little hideaway, and how many times I would detour just to walk through the quiet enclave. I have still never been inside.
I remember later, all the times during 2018 that I walked Christchurch Road, seeking out its shade during a hot summer, when I had two five-mile round trips, to go feed cats that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to give homes to, confused little chaps who didn’t really understand what I had told them about Clive not coming home again, but who must have understood that something horrible was happening.
Nearby on this walk, I was surprised by a sign high on a wall, that read “Dodgers”– one of the cats was called Dodger and a cat looking very much like him, was resting on the doorstep round the
corner. I had to look up pictures to be absolutely sure, but no, not our Dodge. A whole host of other sad memories flood in on the back of that encounter.
I remembered earlier walks and later ones. I walked a road I had walked many times before, but mostly not with a camera, mostly not with an eye for the wildflowers that are exploding after this warm wet spring. This time I take pictures. I see where the house that burned down has been replaced. I see others that look unfamiliar.
Time.
When I walk familiar roads, I step back in time. I remember the first time I walked them, the last time, the many times in between. I remember walking and cycling to work along one road for over a decade. It did not change during that time. It has, a very little, since.
I remember our favourite restaurant, long since demolished.
I walk past shops I used to frequent, and the pub that we never did.
I remember people, whose names I never knew, but always spoke to. One woman looks like she remembers me as she passes. We both turn and look back. Neither of us speaks. It has been over 20 years.
Memory is such a splintered thing. Our connection to place doesn’t shatter when we move away from it, but it does erode with the rains of each passing season. What we see when we look back depends as much upon on our present state of mind as it does on anything that happened then.
If I’m honest: there were as many happy times in these spaces as there were the other kind, and as many of the other kind as there are happy ones. I wouldn’t want to go back. Memory Lane isn’t somewhere to settle down. Take a stroll and move on.
