Going home

There is something about going to Tunbridge Wells that always feels like going home. Come out of the station and there it all is, in the same place it always was, Mount Pleasant and the High Street and Grove Road and - OK, it's another store now where it used to be Weekes, and there's a pizza place where the Cadena should be - but it is still home. I haven't lived there for forty years, not full time - there were a lot of years when I went home to visit or stay with parents, but even that is long ago now and I've lived in my present house longer than ever I lived in Tunbridge Wells. But it is still familiar, I know what people are going to say (and what they mean when they do, which isn't always the same thing, especially in Tunbridge Wells) and there is a great sense of relief and relaxation in being back.

Lots of people feel like that about the towns where they were born, it isn't unusual.

But what I am starting to feel is beginning to worry me, because it isn't just the place I was brought up that feels familiar, but the time. I am starting to look at bits of old film, old newsreels, archive film in documentaries on the television, and I am thinking, yes, that looks like where I'd feel comfortable. Men in hats, and those long raincoats with belts (long before trench coats), and women with wide skirts and duster coats. That looks like where I would feel comfortable and at home.

Now, I hated Tunbridge Wells when I was growing up there, it was dull and boring and suburban and bourgeois and I couldn't wait to get away to that other place somewhere else where all the clever and funny people were. Not only do I want to go back to that place again now, but to the time that it was when I lived there. I don't want to be the person I was then, I don't want to be seventeen again, but oh, wouldn't it be nice just to go home, really home, to home like it used to be?

Now, that was embarrassing

A few weeks ago, walking home from work in the dark, a hunched teenage figure came up the road towards me, hoodie up, and made no attempt to avoid me, coming straight for me - and I thought, ho hum, I'm going to be challenged, or maybe even mugged... Turned out it was Son. Well, they all look the same at that age, don't they?

Needless to say, he thought this hugely funny.

One night last week, the same thing happened. Same teenage figure, same hoodie, same dark road. I wasn't going to be fooled a second time, so I went right up to him and glared at him.

Only it wasn't Son. Just some frightened kid who thought he was about to be mugged by a mad granny.

Frustration

Why does the washing machine always hit its spin cycle at 10 past 11 on a Sunday morning, so I miss the climax of The Archers?