It may come as no surprise to any of you, but from a very early age I was much given to looking back on the past. My remembered past, obviously, as I wasn't interested in or capable of reminiscing about events which pre-dated either myself or my ability to recall them. When, aged five, I moved from one house to another just a few short minutes away, I made it a point to return to my previous street on a regular basis so that I could re-experience the nearby woods in which I'd once played and again take in the expansive view from the top of the hill.
Over the years (and houses and neighbourhoods), I always found it comforting to return to the places of my youth and reconnect with them from time to time, and for almost the first three decades of my life, most of these hallowed haunts remained essentially unchanged. Each time, the experience was akin to the hushed awe and reverential atmosphere so exquisitely described in The PIPER At The GATES Of DAWN chapter in Scottish-born author KENNETH GRAHAME's beautiful book, The WIND In The WILLOWS, published in 1908.
It was almost like returning to the dawn of creation, when everything must've seemed magical and mystical, and from which every living thing derives its strength and power. Revisiting the environs of my early childhood recharged and revitalised me in some way, but it also somehow made events from even only a few years before seem like a far-distant era - at the exact same time as making them, paradoxically, closer than a lover's kiss. I suppose, to a seven year old, three years is more than half one's remembered life, and perhaps half one's life seems just as long or as short at any age. Does that make any sense?
Then things started to change. First it was lampposts being supplanted by newer, thinner models, placed on the inside of the pavements instead of at the kerbs. Then it was the paving stones, replaced with tarmacadam, dark and dismal in the gloom of the night. Next, it was building on fields and green areas, and the removal of swingparks, resulting in open, spacious, well-planned neighbourhoods being transformed into crowded, claustrophobic, concrete ghettoes.
Earlier this evening I decided to retrace a certain route to my first primary school. Sometimes, as children, we'd take a detour into a swingpark and then through some woods that led to the school. The swingpark is an empty space and the trees were cut down some years ago, the fallen giants now littering the overgrown trail they once used to shade. On previous occasions over the years, visiting the area was like a pleasant journey into yesterday and a salve to my soul. That these places could always be relied upon for the same simple welcome seemed like one of life's unchanging truths, but, alas, that is no longer the case.
I'd always thought that, in my declining years, the locales of my boyhood would still exist and that I'd be able to revisit them one last time, and find solace in the fact that these spots would yet be around for future generations to enjoy similar experiences to my own. I'm now only too well aware that when my final bedtime comes, that, sadly, won't be the case. The only hope left to me is that, should I awaken on 'the other side', I'll find all those familiar places waiting to greet me and welcome me home.
Night has fallen and the daylight seems a long way off. Is that my name I faintly hear, carried on the whisper of the evening breeze?
I tell you what's a mystery to me, speaking of these gradual changes. - Just WHEN did all the telegraph poles go? I never noticed it happen, no sawing of them down, no digging up of the stumps and filling in of the holes. Yet there were millions of them and I am always out & about! It's as if they were all erased one night while I slept. Either that or the whole event has been wiped from my memory!
ReplyDeleteYou're right, JP. They just sort of faded away when we weren't looking. I wonder if they still exist at the edges of roads in the countryside? There used to be loads of them there.
DeleteI downloaded 'Wind In The Willows' as an e-book last year (only 61p) out of curiosity because you think so highly of it, Kid - that Piper At The Gates Of Dawn chapter was just weird, like it belonged to another book I thought. So what would you do if your childhood homes had been hundreds of miles apart - would you feel the need to visit them again even so ?
ReplyDeleteWhat did you think of the book overall, CJ? I suspect one has to be a certain age (or mindset) to fully appreciate it. As for your question, if my childhood homes had been hundreds of miles apart, I suppose I'd still have felt the compulsion to visit them, but just wouldn't have been able to. Funnily enough, they seem hundreds of miles apart nowadays and it's an effort to visit them as often as I used to. (What did you think of the chapter entitled' Dulce Domum'?)
ReplyDeleteKid, the book was pleasant enough and I read it to the end but the whole anthropomorphic animals concept was jarring - in my opinion the book could have been written with human characters and wouldn't have required many changes. I don't mind anthropomorphic animals in light-hearted cartoons but I couldn't see the point in WITW. And the bits where the gang are tucking into roast beef or pork etc were downright disturbing - in the book's internal logic I assume all animals can speak but there seems to be a grisly class system among the animals where the ones at the bottom are killed and eaten. OK, I may be taking it too seriously. Also shouldn't even anthropomorphic animals be a bit like the animals they actually are - but Mole is not blind and Toad lives in a mansion miles from any water. Still, I'm glad I read it - I'm not surprised the Dulce Domum chapter appeals to you !!
ReplyDeleteThere are, admittedly, certain inconsistencies. For example, sometimes the animals are clearly animal-sized, and sometimes they're nearly human-sized. However, it's so bloody well-written, that, in the end, it doesn't seem to matter. Toad's one of my all-time heroes!
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