February’s arrived after a ridiculously stormy January. Ed and I bought a new car named Clarence which will be our new Adventure Buddy for traveling the West Coast. And I spent the entirety of January in hermit-writing mode finishing writing a book. A big ol’ book. The Big Old Book that I’ve spent almost all of last year working on. It feels momentous in many ways, and in others, this enormous relief to know, for a little while at least, that it is out of my hands, and then, it’ll be back, and I’ll be editing it and pulling it all apart again throughout this coming year. In a way, the 1st of February felt like the New Year for me.
We awaken in a city. On a high street in Bristol. A fold-out bed on the floor, a suitcase, backpacks, clothes spilling out of their once organised, well-folded, well-packed spots. The city rumbles outside, cars, people, the beep of lorries reversing, the clatter of vans being loaded and unloaded. It’s been so long since I’ve been here, since I’ve been in a city, in the thick of the vibration of life moving with such purpose down busy streets, shutters rattling open, humans sluggishly lining up for their first coffee of the day, pastries being wrapped into brown paper bags, crates of fruit being heaved out onto the street, shops creaking open. The world moves so differently in cities, it’s so odd to no longer be quite a part of it, to be a visitor in what was once the street - the city - I called home.
I’m writing this at my friends’ flat in Bristol, all of us sat in the living room, a slow Saturday morning after a full, wondrous Friday. For two and a bit years, Ed and I lived downstairs from them, and after one evening of deciding to knock on their door and invite them in for drinks, we really did become the best of friends. It was everything I’d wanted my 20s to be, sharing life with two other brilliant humans. Many evenings after work were spent in each others’ flats, many weekends knocking on the others’ door to share a trip to a Sunday market together, to a cafe, to a pub.
It’s so odd being back, it feels like home, a day spent out wandering half of Bristol, an evening at a gig, a morning sharing coffee the following day. It’s weird not being able to go downstairs to our old flat, to be here, in a city I lived in for years, now being ‘on holiday’ in it.
Returning to old homes is always a strange experience.
To be back somewhere that you used to live and to see it from a new perspective. My dad often talks about when he was a kid and there was a big hill outside of his house, and how, as a teenager his parents took him back there and the hill was a tiny hump in the ground. Sometimes our memories can feather at the edges, enlarging or shrinking, shining or growing damp and mouldy.
Home is such an ethereal concept. I remember the first year after I left home - left my parents’ house - that I would talk about ‘going home’ when returning to see them. And then, how, slowly but surely ‘home’ became the place I lived. For a long time though, it wasn’t. Home was many places. My parents' house, and, all at once, also a houseshare. Then, eventually, my parents' house became ‘my parents' house’. Home became my flat.
The day we moved into the flat below the two people we had yet to meet, the two people who would come such close friends, we had so few possessions. We set up a futon on the floor of our new bedroom to sleep on that first night, and a folding camping table and chairs in our new dining room, and we ate a takeaway curry from what would soon be our favourite Indian takeaway of all time. The flat echoed around us, so empty, fresh paint, dirty skirting boards. So strange. So very much ours. I remember running through it together, a bizarre thrill that we had this, this was ours, our space, a space we would buy furniture for, a space we would fill with vintage shop finds and charity shop discoveries, of photographs we’d taken, of plants I’d grow. A place we would host parties in, host friends from other cities, eat dinner together by the window in the living room, watch the world unfold, make awkward eye contact with people sitting on the top of double-decker buses that would drive by.
The previous tenants had left a few pieces of junk mail in the kitchen cupboards, and the landlords had left very few directions of how to use the heating, we stood before the thermostat trying to figure out how it worked, watching a YouTube video together to see if we could fill the flat with warmth, fight out the cold, stagnant air. We wondered if we’d made the right decision, moving in lockdown to a flat we’d had 5 minutes to view with only two photos of it on Rightmove. It was so different when we viewed it, curtains closed, a fousty cigarette smell, a black leather sofa, a black dining table I remember vividly, a bare balcony that looked out over the bins of the pizza place below. Afterwards, we sat in the car and both said we just weren’t sure about it. But this street, it was fantastic. And the rent, oh boy was it cheap.
Let’s apply and just see, I said, and proceeded to send an email to the estate agent with the most convincing letter I could write about why we, of all people, should please have this lovely flat (that we were secretly really not sure of).
Somehow, we got it, up against 5 other interested parties. Fate played it’s little part. I can’t imagine how different our lives would’ve looked had we not lived there. It’s so funny these decisions we make and how enormous the outcomes turn out to be, how fundamental they are to your life.
I was so lucky to have a flat like the one we did, albeit the mouldy walls and crappy shower, we lived out a little high-street city dream. We turned the balcony into a haven, and grew tomatoes in the summer as I’d imagined. When Ed quit his job, I threw him a surprise Yay-You-Quit-Your-Job-and-Now-Have-Weekends-Free-for-a-Bit party in that very flat, hid birthday decorations under the bed, bottles of spirits under my office desk, had our neighbours let everyone in and decorate the flat while I kept Ed occupied. As we opened the door to the flat, suddenly all these faces appeared, screaming surprise!!
The party was in the kitchen, as the best parties tend to be, and spilt out onto the balcony, where somehow eight people all sat, where somehow my visions of what I wanted a flat in my 20s to be like played out before me. The sticky summer air, a bowl of punch, party games playing out around our dining table, bowls of snacks, a display of cocktail-making-experiments occurring across the kitchen counters.
Now, most of the furniture we bought for that flat lives in other flats, was sold to people on Facebook who dropped by to collect different pieces. Furniture loves to do that, wander off to other homes, holding stories we’ll never know within the wood, the fabric, the screws.
Objects can hold such unique memories. I remember the pattern of the sofa that lived in my grandparents' house, the teddies that lined the staircase, the figurines that sat on the fireplace. Smells that hold weight. Tomato soup. Chicken bones being turned into broth. Pancakes, the smell of butter melting, of sponge cake baking, of jam tarts, of lasagna, of smoked salmon. Of a certain perfume. A specific deodorant. Sometimes, I think these things are best preserved in memory, that revisiting or recreating them can fuzz out the original memory. But sometimes, revisiting is so magical, so wonderful, healing or curing.
Last night, I stepped out of the shop opposite my old flat and looked up at it from across the road, at the window that life played out within for two marvellous, challenging, beautiful years. At the pizza place below, at the lights and the signs and the cars and the way life will always roll around this place, and people will live out their lives within those walls. Walking up the staircase to our friends’ flat and past the door of our old one, I felt suddenly sad that I couldn’t open that door, that behind it didn’t wait a place I’d lovingly decorated. That at some point, I choose a different path, a different place, outside of this flat, outside of this city.
I glance out of the bedroom window of my old neighbour’s flat, across the road at the shop opposite, its bright neon sign and overwhelmingly bright lights, and see my love step out, a box of baklava in hand, and I’m reminded of all the times I’d watch him walk to the shop opposite. My heart swells. As I reach out at the year ahead, my brain feeling untethered from a month of writing, I am so grateful for the knowledge that life will unfold in so many directions, so many paths yet untaken.
That sometimes, we have to lose something marvellous to grow. That in the process, you have no idea of the wonders you’ll gain.
TO READ: I absolutely love this short story from the master of short stories, Lauren Groff, about motherhood.
TO WATCH: Okay, so I’m planning to watch this and have heard excellent review after excellent review, so, I thought I might as well recommend it to you before I’ve even seen it, and we can hopefully fall in love with it together: All of Us Strangers.
So, I missed out on getting a playlist made in time, so I’m sharing a playlist I made a long time ago because, for me, it’s very strangely nostalgic - as I think music often is.
Thank you, once again, for letting me spill out all the prickly, strange, mushy bits of my brain. This month was a little more waffle-y than usual, and a very last-minute write, but I’m excited for next month when I have a little more time to write a beefier, better-thought-out one! Here’s to the homes we’ve had and the homes we’re building.
Thank you, as always.
