You Can Never Go Home

I have always felt that no matter where I have lived, my parents house has always been there, like a safety net. I’ve gone there to see my parents at some of the highest and lowest points in my life. It isn’t just the house, it’s the people, it’s where I grew up. Over the years the decor has changed, the garden has changed and yet. It feels the same as it ever did.

The surrounding area and the town itself, have also changed, some of these are harder to accept. In my head these changes, particularly the ones close to home, take away something and ride roughshod over feelings of nostalgia, making me see those memories and feelings associated with them, can’t be recreated, they were unique moments, never to be recreated. For the past six months knowing, but not acknowledging that it is a sense of loss, and I am fighting against grieving that loss. If nothing changes, then nostalgia survives in it’s original state, where it can be recreated.

I grew up on a suburban housing estate, surrounded by trees, fields and a golf course. I knew every street, every shortcut, all the paths through the woods, the good trees to climb. The fields have been shat upon with a new housing estate, all as close together as possible, no driveway down the side of your house, no personality, identical gardens and mono block driveways. Parts of the woods have been “managed”, they came in and cut down loads of trees and opened the area up, making it less pleasant to walk through, the huge tree that was was about 4 or 5 ft wide that had come down in the 80s was removed. Ironically “the rally track”, which was a small section of the woods where everyone would ride their bikes and try jumps, etc has now been left to nature. Even the streets have changed, over run with cars parked along them rather than in driveways. The play park taken away in the 2000s due to constant vandalism.

What of my old primary school? They recently built a huge extension on the 70s architecture and got rid of all the grotty huts (temporary classrooms) that were in existence for over 40 years. They also changed the fence I used to regularly hop over and go through the grounds as a shortcut to a fence that makes that difficult to do. It’s that I am going to be jumping over that fence, but if I ever felt the need to I now can’t. The good ol’ internal resistance to change kicking in there just to wind me up.

In the past five years they changed the entrance to the estate, no longer traffic lights, they cut down more trees and moved the entrance and put a roundabout in. Over the past 10-15 the council went made with the speed bumps lowering the speed limit to 20 mph from 30mph, during that time the post office and newsagents that I used to get 10p mixes from closed down and became a hair and nail bar.

With not living there, and visiting from time to time, I don’t see gradual incremental changes, I see huge glaring fuck off changes that seem to threaten my memories, changes that alter my perception of the place I still feel on some level is my home. I can’t go back to what I once knew, because it no longer exists and that jars badly, it have trouble reconciling this.

It threw me into a bit of a depressed fug for a couple of weeks, realising the full extent of those changes to my world and how discordant they now were with my memories.

Back when was between 17 and 21, I regularly used to walk from the centre of town home, late at night, usually after midnight. I have been informed on several occasions that these days this would not be a wise choice as there is a high probability of trouble. My wife mentioned to me that, back at that time, she knew someone who got a severe beating in the memorial gardens around that time. One particular evening after being at the pub on a school night, once I got home from work in Edinburgh, due to my inability cope well with alcohol at the time, I couldn’t sleep. I got up at about half 4 in the morning and picked up my acoustic guitar and went for a walk and sat on a bench on the golf course and played that for a couple of hours, before returning home and getting ready to go back into work. When I told my girlfriend at the time, she told me off about how it wasn’t safe to do something like that. Which leaves me wondering if I have been incredibly naive in the past? Is my home town really that bad? I’ve never felt in any kind of danger when I lived there.

I’m grieving for what I once knew, and I was unaware it would hit me like this. I wonder if this is why there are so many Daily Hate readers? People who refuse to accept change, they hold on to their hazy tinged memories, where they think everything is perfect and, at the time it wasn’t, instead or being objective about this, they lash out at any kind of change they don’t like? Just a thought.

I’ve got the chorus to this stuck in my head now. https://hordesofus.bandcamp.com/track/never-go-home