I woke up this morning in a farm house next to Bewl Reservoir in Kent that belongs to my Mum’s boyfriend Peter. I’m unused to waking up in the countryside these days and there was something oddly unfamiliar but quite enjoyable about shuffling out into the garden with Mum to let the chickens out of their coop.
She drove me back to her house, the one I grew up in. There have been lots of changes since I was last here which always seems strange. There are no reasons why changes shouldn’t be made without your knowing but it feels odd to walk around a place you spent every day in for years and see it altered. It’s all for the best though, the old place is looking great, but you have a sentimentality towards anywhere you grew up, and change is unexpected. Even if your family don’t live in a house anymore, if you happen to drive past somewhere you used to live it seems strange to see a different car in the driveway, alternative curtains hanging in the window, and alterations to the front garden. You feel like banging on the door.
I think people have a special connection to their old bedrooms. Some don’t feel these should ever be changed, and in some cases that goes for the parents as well as the previous inhabitant, now moved out and working in the city. My old room is still a bedroom but I imagine it’s a relief to guests that it no longer resembles my old room much. I went through that teenage thing of sticking everything to the wall. Couldn’t put enough stuff on your wall as a teenager could you? I AM AN INDIVIDUAL it screamed. Teenagers are all idiots.
As I say, the house looks very good. The garden doesn’t look anything like it did when I lived there. In the house – I didn’t live in the garden. Things move on and evolve don’t they. Shame I don’t.
I got on the train to London, intending then to move through to Euston and finally get back to Liverpool. This trip has gone on a bit. I knew that I was working tomorrow but didn’t know where without my poor, lost computer (oh what are they doing with you now?) and so rang Paula, my beautiful agent and masseuse. Turns out tomorrow I’m down near Gloucester, which is a long way from London, but not as far as it is from Liverpool. And without a car it would have to be a train… I would have to stay South another night.
If I had any sense I would have arranged this when still down at Mum’s and stayed there the night. Now I’d have to stay in town. A was away, Aria and Wade also. Oh hell, this trip has been expensive enough, I don’t care anymore, I’ll deal with it all later, and so I checked into the Charing Cross Hotel and put a call out on my phone for people I know in London that I haven’t seen in a while. I.e., people I don’t know well enough to stay with but know well enough to go out for a drink with.
Monica answered the call. I went to her and Mark’s wedding a year ago and not seen them since. Both of them met me at Clapham Junction and we visited a few bars. This is an old theme of mine I know, but it’s strange to be out with people my own age who are married. They’re younger than me I think. I think that some people are now starting to see me as a bit of a drop out from organised and proper society but I’m only 29 for goodness sake. They try the “And when are you going to…� etc.
On the flip side, it’s pleasant and satisfying to see people like Monica and Mark married. They look well and happy together. I have nothing but admiration.
A good night. 2am almost instantly. Funny how some drag and some skip by isn’t it?
I really should be at home though, not wandering back to a room by Charing Cross with a plastic tub of tuna pasta salad from the convenience store. Let’s get tomorrow in Gloucester done and out the way, then it’s home time. But keys… Oh it will all get sorted.
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