The Adventure of the Homecoming

Since moving to Bournemouth at the end of last year I've barely spent any time back in my hometown other than in my parent's house. Over the last couple of weeks though I've spent a bit more time there as my parents are away and I've stayed there for a few nights for security reasons and to feed the cat (not that she has noticed my presence). 

I decide to go for a walk, retreading footpaths I've travelled along so many times for so many years, pretty much daily during the first lockdown. I find myself feeling oddly melancholic. I have very much enjoyed living in Bournemouth and on my own but all the same I will always have a huge affection towards my hometown. 

I turn the corner at the end of the street and pass the playing field and memories of being forced into activities I didn't have the skill for quickly wash over me. When I was around eight or nine my father took me over there to practice my catching skills- he didn't posses a cricket ball at the time so used a hockey ball instead, throwing it high into the air and instructing me to watch it and catch it. Somewhat inevitably I misjudged it and the ball smacked me straight in the face and my father later had to sheepishly admit to my mother what had happened. Then a few years later I was invited to join some local school peers going over BMX ramps. I had no real interest in such a pursuit nor any particular like towards those taking part but as an early teenager peer pressure was everything. After a few successful jumps I ended up crashing off my bike. Both events resulted in me having significant nosebleeds. 

I continue down the street and pass a tree whose branches have been shaped my generations of children sitting and swinging from them. It was at that location I bumped into a girl from school as I was riding around the estate on my bike (I liked to just go round and round for no reason) and she informed me how another local girl fancied me. I remember being consumed by this information at thirteen as the idea of relationships having recently become something I was actively interested in. Nothing ever came of it and the information was perhaps not even accurate.

I wander through the estate and reach the gate to the local fishing lake. The gate has been replaced and the footpath here upgraded since my last visit. It both looks largely the same as I've always known it and has a sense of unfamiliarity to it that I know will only increase as time moves on. I pass see a small hillock at the far side of a field, the site of teenage fumblings which was clearly far more visible from the path than we'd thought. Soon after I pass along the fishing bays and remember the painful moment I saw a girl I was in love with getting back together with her ex-boyfriend in that very spot. 

A short while further on is the exact spot my iPod began playing Journey's 'Don't Stop Believin' on the evening before my A-level results were due and my university place would be accepted. It felt silly but somehow at the time it felt like the universe was telling me things were going to be alright, which they were. As I continue along the path, the light now beginning to fade, I recall how myself and a friend once attempted to walk along this tree-shrouded path in the pitch black after an evening at the pub and somehow managed to avoid drowning in the lake. 

Suddenly a roe deer lifts raises it's head and stares at me in the meadow I'm walking alongside. I've had encounters like this many times locally but there's always something magical about them. I've moved on to new places now and have had glimpses of otters for the first time, which is also really special. But in that moment as the deer appraises me, concludes I am no threat and continues with it's grazing I realise that I miss this place. 

This was the actual deer I encountered

I head away from the lake and back onto the road and another memory hits me. A few years into my working life and finding things really difficult, for some reason it was on this ordinary bit of tarmac that my feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy over-whelmed me. If there had been a bridge there I would have jumped in that moment. I know that exact spot within inches from some five years ago and there's always a moment of fear as I hope I never feel that low again. 

Soon I'm back walking through the housing estate and arrive back at my parent's house. I recall a song I used to be fond of that goes 'how I miss you/ You're not my girl you're my town'. I'd never really appreciated the meaning of these lyrics before but now I felt I truly understood them. Well, I understood the sentiment if not the reason why. So many of the memories I'd dredged up hadn't been happy ones and I felt like I'd spent most of my life trying to escape this town. I thought I'd done it once when I went to uni but I still found myself spending great chunks of the year here. Then things didn't go to plan and I found myself living back here for another six years before finally escaping for good.

I have no desire to move back here but I have realised that this place will always be special to me in an undefinable way. Perhaps I won't leave it so long before I next walk these streets.