Homesick

On memory, its imprecision, and the people that made us

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There is an unusual comfort in the power of misremembering; in the faint blur of memories that are mostly true but which buff out the grit or noise which might otherwise breed indifference. As if there were a delicate bubble surrounding them, preserving a snapshot in time like a 35mm photo; clear but soft, colours amplified amidst the preservation of smiling faces. The power of a moment. Lost immediately, its like never to be replicated. The intangibility of what was once tangible, and a personal insistence on keeping them close. Forever. In a cacophony of noise and instability, there is a home comfort in looking inward, and reflecting on the good that has been, and the good that will be only because of it. The people met, the people lost. The permanent human effects aiding our constant evolution.

My earliest memories are of family: of the kindness of grandparents, and the innocence of youth. Of history lessons with Nana, chain smoking L&B at the kitchen table, recounting the brilliance of Field Marshal Montgomery, or the many wives of Henry VIII. The young blonde lad sitting listening, barely even blinking, overwhelmed by warmth and affection, unaware then of the importance of moments, but grateful. Definitely grateful. Of trips into town with Grandad, sitting in the town square with his pals, Raymond and Cyril. Last of the summer wine. Three pensioners and a toddler, no doubt dressed just like them; spikey blonde locks and a harrington jacket. Sitting on a park bench eating midget gems, or feeding the ducks. Then, having experienced all that the market square could offer, heading to the bookies where, thanks to the charm of my geriatric praetorian guard, I would nod to the bloke on the desk and sneak in. In time, aged 5, I would become (presumably) the youngest ever entrant to be banned. If only they’d put my cute little face, rosy red cheeks, on a board simply saying: barred. The fuzzy snapshot of a memory, detail mostly removed, but preserved by emotion, by contentment, by love. A memory retained only by its attachment to someone special. Of trips to the park with granny and my cousins in the late summer evenings. Bouncing on the way there, and trundling back. And her cooking - oh her cooking. Nothing like it. Memories.

The most vivid is the arrival of sister Holly. It’s the sharpest I have, its details much clearer than the fuzzy warmth of most. Sitting on my granny’s sofa - I’m sure it was a garish one - just next to the kitchen door. Someone came in the house, I think it was dad, but it easily may not have been, and told me I had a little sister. England had just won the Rugby World Cup. Jonny Wilkinson had, only hours before, dropped the ball onto his (weaker) right foot, a drop goal for glory in extra time against the Aussies on home turf. Beyond being given the news, I don’t really remember anything else but the clarity of that moment - surely less than a minute - is razor sharp. I remember the gifts that followed - presumably folk assumed I might not take kindly to some competition (as if). One, I’m sure, was a toy McDonald’s Drive Thru set where little hot wheels could drive to the window and pretend to order a mayo chicken. Strange. Very strange. I also received a purple Mace Windu lightsaber around this time. My brain connects it to this moment, but it’s very likely - and possible - that it came years later. Who knows. The fun with memory is the inability to fully trust them.

At school I was a contradictory mix of brash and insular. Cocky but quiet. Universally admired by staff, certainly in Primary School. When Holly was born, it also happened that I had an aversion to PE. Ever the opportunist, I would exaggerate the extent of my fatigue, and staff would set up a makeshift bed in the classroom and let me nap while the rest of reception threw bean bags and jumped through hula hoops. To this day, the charm I clearly deployed in that moment is something I am most proud of. What an achievement. Even now it still feels naughty - so keep schtum, you hear?

The seeds of my rebellion - or perhaps the overconfidence of my idleness - were sown in nursery when, in an attempt to avoid having to go and do painting (I hated the smell of the paint and the newspaper), I would sit and hide in the corner of the doll’s house convinced that no one knew where I was, which, of course, they did. My success may have been on account of the fact I used to tell our teacher - a kind older lady - that she was sexier than Kylie. Smooth even then. But it worked and fed the ego of the monster who would soon sleep while his peers exercised. Vox Populi.

The teenager arrived with all the subtlety you’d expect. Rugby had been the constant, the thread running cleanly back to dad, to Sunday mornings, to something that felt like identity before I even knew what identity meant. I broke my wrist and trained through it in a cast, desperate not to lose my place in the county squad, willing my body to cooperate through sheer stubbornness. But something else was breaking too, quieter and harder to set. The county boys were different to me, or so I told myself. Posher. More assured. At home in their skin in a way I couldn’t locate in mine. And so, with a talent I’d spent years building, I did the strangest thing - I made myself smaller. Shied away in trials. Dulled the edges. Fell, gradually and then all at once, out of love with the thing that had felt most like me. I’m not sure I’ve ever fully fallen back in.

The insecurity had other expressions. Hiding in the school library because of a bad spot or blemish. Minimising interactions so that I couldn’t be seen. Then university, the great promised reinvention, and the whiplash of arriving somewhere enormous and loud and new, nursing a diet coke in the corner of a pub, terrified, performing a version of fine that convinced no one least of all me. The only place the fear lifted was on stage. Acting, of all things. Pretending to be someone else entirely, and somehow, in doing so, finding something that was actually mine.

But the distance between that person and this one is not something to mourn - it’s something to marvel at. Those moments were necessary. The cast on the arm. The library corner. The diet coke. All of it. You don’t get from there to here without them, and here, it turns out, is somewhere brilliant.

The person who hid in the doll’s house, who sweet-talked his way past bouncers at five, who slept through PE and charmed his way through most of what followed - I barely recognise him. And yet.

There is something quietly profound in that. That the self is not fixed. That we are not born whole but made, incrementally, imperceptibly, by every room we sat in, every person who held our hand or let it go. The brash, insular boy who thought he was getting away with it. The teenager who would follow, convinced of his own invincibility in the way only teenagers can be before being struck by the weight of insecurity. The young man after that, stumbling through the gap between who he was and who he was supposed to become. Different people, almost. Strangers, in some light.

And yet.

You cannot subtract them. Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels. The cockiness that became confidence. The idleness that sharpened, eventually, into something more deliberate. The warmth learned early, at kitchen tables and park benches and bookies’ doors, quietly becoming the thing you return to most. The people who gave it to you, some still here, some not. All permanent. All cellular.

Memory asks nothing of us except honesty. It doesn’t demand accuracy - it barely offers it. What it offers instead is feeling; the emotional residue of a life accumulating, softly, like sediment. The details blur. Faces soften at the edges. You can’t be sure if the lightsaber came before or after, or whether it was dad at the door at all. It doesn’t matter. What remains is warmer and truer than fact.

So you hold it loosely. You let it be imprecise. You accept, with something approaching gratitude, that you will never fully know yourself - only approximate yourself, from the outside in, through the fragments left behind by everyone who made you.

The blonde kid on the park bench, eating midget gems, had no idea.

That’s the whole point.