The return to innocence

What price nostalgia? Last week, I spent £15.70 to have a look at the past and see what it was like. A couple of weeks back - probably around the time I was watching the No Surprises video over and over - I had a lengthy chat with my mum to try to get to the bottom of why I'm so predisposed to feeling melancholy; she's known me about as long as anyone, so it seemed a reasonable bet that if anyone knew then she might. I don't know that I got many answers, but in the course of discussion I came to wonder whether I'd been "happier" prior to moving house from Haslemere (Southern Fairy fancy town where footballers live) to Heswall (Northern monkey fancy town where footballers live). It sticks in my mind that I was happier before then than since. Perhaps there's something in that...

Besides, class had finished early for the day, and I quite fancied a nice walk in the sun. If nothing else it would be nice to see how well I could remember places I'd not set foot for over 18 years.

I took a train from London Waterloo to Haslemere, a journey I'd not made since - at best guess - I'd last been to visit London with my dad all those years ago. It seemed odd to be making a journey like that again after all this time, and doubly strange to think of it as a journey that my dad made every working day for about 7 years. I wonder how much faster the trains are these days... It's a very different journey to my commute into Manchester. The railway line appears to carve out a path through woods and forests, where my journey merely runs past a slag heap and through a handful of small towns. I'm struck by how green everything looks, and by the different plants that grow around here - there's bracken everywhere, for example. I don't know where I'd go to find bracken up North, but it's all over the place down there.

The train approaches Haslemere, and I feel nervous, like I'm about to meet someone important, or do something dangerous. I remember travelling to Newcastle, my birthplace, from Durham, while at university, and feeling similarly strange. This is a stronger feeling though - I left Newcastle at 18 months, and don't remember it at all, but I feel I know Haslemere like the back of my hand. I've not brought a map with me, but I'm confident I'll be able to walk about 5 or so miles around the town without getting lost.

Stepping out of the station, I take a right towards Wey Hill, and I see a dentists on the other side of the road. It looks very different to when I was there last, when I had my first orthodontic brace and my brother had his first fillings. Apparently it's the Denplan Dentist of the Year. Heading towards Wey Hill, I pass a pub, and it occurs to me that my landmarks for navigation are completely different to anything I'd have used back in the day. These days, I work on pubs and churches. Last time I was here, I attended one church and no pubs.

I pass the library and a fabric shop that I remember my mum taking me to. I don't see the toy shop where I bought a Lego set and a teddy bear with one year's birthday money, so I guess they've closed down. At the bottom of the hill, I'm disappointed to find that the old leisure centre where I learnt to swim has been supplanted by a Tesco store and a few blocks of flats. I wonder how long it will be before Tesco crushes the Co-Op over the road, the scene of my first shoplifting crime in which I took a tin of Quality Street off the shelf and started eating them. I don't recall if my mother was made to pay for them, but I know she wasn't best pleased. Behind the Co-Op there's a children's playground with a very tall slide that I'm sure I never went on, much as I wanted to. I toy with the idea of going on it now, for old time's sake, but there's kids everywhere and I'm not sure it would go down too well.

On towards Shottermill, I pass a church where we attended a Finnish School of sorts for a number of years with my mum, and a layby outside a newsagent where I remember discussing the withdrawal of half-pennies with my dad. I press on, heading out of town somewhat, towards the roundabout that takes you to Liphook, and pass another pub that I don't remember. I assume it was here when I last was, but I couldn't really say. Shottermill Ponds are as pretty as I remember them, with ducks, geese and swans swimming on them. I take some photos and hope I can put together a panorama later.

I can - click for a big pic:

Rounding the corner into Camelsdale, and heading back towards town somewhat, I pass children in school uniform, playing by the ponds and in a park where I remember a fete of some kind. Some of these children are the same age I was when I left. The younger ones could feasibly be children of people I went to school with. Of course, I don't recognise anyone, and even if I did, what could I possibly say to them? Since our lives diverged they've doubtless run parallel courses, but what could we have in common any more?

I'm starting to get thirsty walking in the sun, so I call in at a newsagent for some Ribena and a Double Decker. The name - Cee Gee's - is the same as it was when I was last here, though it appears to be independent these days, where I remember it as part of the now defunct Happy Shopper franchise. I toy with the idea of asking the shopkeeper how long she's owned the shop, but decide against it. The gentlemen behind me in the queue talk to each other and I wonder how my accent would sound against theirs. They would probably think I sound Northern, which would at least make a nice change from being up North and sounding Southern. I expect my voice will always sound like it belongs in another part of the country.

I walk down towards St. Paul's church and Camelsdale Primary School. The vicarage has been extended but the church is just as I remember it. They've cut down the elder tree from which my siblings and I used to pick and eat the small black berries after church. I look through the church windows, trying not to appear too suspicious to the parents picking up their children from the playgroup in the church hall, and I'm proud to see that a banner my mum spent weeks making still hangs in the church, exactly where I left it. I'm glad they're still enjoying it, given the work that I saw go into it. The school is also much as it was when I was there, barring the removal of a few trees and some rebuilt outbuildings. I don't see the small outdoor swimming pool that used to be there, and either way I'm sure that the laws nowadays wouldn't permit children to get changed in the open air with only a towel to protect their modesty...

Back up the hill and past the street where I went for piano lessons. I recall sitting in our car on the piano teacher's drive while my mum spoke to her, and letting the handbrake off to see what would happen. Had my knowledge of physics at the time been as good as it is now, I would have deduced that the car would roll down the drive and into the road. I may even have figured out that that was quite dangerous. As it was, no such thoughts occurred to me, though mercifully my actions didn't lead to any injury, death or damage.

I approach one of the hills that surrounds Haslemere, and head further out of town, past a builders merchants (I remember it as Jesse Mann - it now calls itself Coomers) and then round a bend in the road to the site of many a grevious crime against humour, as perpetrated by my dad... The turning towards our house is on a bend with very poor visibility so whenever we drove out of that junction my mum had to get my dad to duck so she could see past him. Sometimes when my mum asked him to duck my dad said "Quack", much to our amusement.

Smiling to myself at the memory of this, I head on towards the street where I used to live. The road is quite narrow, and I remember the days after the '87 hurricane (or "storm" if you must insist on meteorological accuracy) when it was blocked by trees and you couldn't get a car out of there. At the bottom of our road I pass a little stream that goes under the road, the venue for many games of Pooh Sticks (Google lists a website for a Pooh Sticks World Championship, which sounds awesome. Alas, the website is rubbish). The houses around here are enormous, and the gardens look like they could have been transplanted directly from Ness Gardens or somewhere similar. I imagine that some of these gardens would be a full time job to look after, but if you can afford to live around here, I imagine that you can afford to pay someone to do that full time job.

I walk past our old house, but I can't linger to look at it for long as the owners - who also own two BMWs - are just pulling into the drive. The house is as I remember it, though I fancy that the end of it has been extended out towards where we used to have a greenhouse and a vegetable patch. I shudder to think how much the house is worth nowadays. Half a million? More?

At the top of the road I turn briefly to the right down an old bridlepath that we used to walk with our nanny, who looked after us when my mum was finishing up her English classes. There's the overgrown remnants of a log pile that we used to hide in and around, and I'd like to walk further but it would deviate from my planned route. I turn around and head back in the opposite direction, past the house of a girl I used to know; my mother informs me, and I vaguely recall, that I used to fret about whether she'd marry me when I grew up. Ah well, it wasn't meant to be! Onwards round a corner, past ponds where I once found a snuffbox - old fashioned even then - and more enormous gardens. There's a small table outside a tired farm building with boxes of eggs and an honesty box, though I fancy the eggs aren't at their best after a day in this sunshine. I take advantage of my age and independence and walk a path that I never trod but always wanted to, through woods that skirt the edge of Shepherd's Hill. I see a fox sat in a field, but I don't have the right camera to get a good shot of it. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that when I was last here mobile phones were the size of a briefcase, the 35mm camera was just in fashion, and the Walkman (the ones that played tapes - remember those?) was hitting it's stride. These days my mobile has Walkman written on it, and a camera in the back of it.

I pass a house for sale with a sign that says "Plot and 33 outbuildings". My mind boggles somewhat.

I get a nosebleed - they've picked up this past week for some reason - as I head into the town centre which seems apt given how they plagued me as a child. At the other end of town is the doctor's where they cauterised my nose after first anaesthetising it with... cocaine.

I have a quick look at the nursery I went to, where I remember puzzling over the difference between addition and multiplication - why should 2 + 2 = 4 = 2 * 2 ? Surely one of the signs in question is redundant? I stay long enough to take a picture of the building, but I feel self conscious, as though in this day and age I could be arrested for even looking at any kind of school with children in it.

The town centre is an odd thing, with a building stubbornly located in the middle of an elaborate roundabout. I look at the shops - there's a bookshop and a Woolworths that I remember, others that I don't. The bookshop's sign doesn't appear to have been painted since I left. I wander past the museum and take a quick look at the doctor's, then head back into town to look for somewhere to eat. I settle on a Wetherspoon's pub, different and the same everywhere you go. I sit down for sausage and mash with a pint of cider. I watch a cat climbing over shop rooves and I call Alison and Beth, and I miss my family. Beth is pre-occupied with her Duplo, so conversation with her is brief. I finish my meal and listen to the surrounding clientele curse out their conversations, and for a moment the only difference here is the accent people are talking in.

I get up and head back towards the train station. Passing a small park, I see teenagers loitering, and I wonder whether they have always loitered here. These ones probably weren't even born when I left, but perhaps others loitered before them and I was just never around to notice them. Rounding the corner on the approach to the station, I come across a gang of men, suited and booted, no doubt returning from their days at work in London. I think of my dad again, coming back each day from work and heading home to his waiting family, and I'm reminded of how I feel like my dad every day, getting the train to and from work, coming back to a house with Alison and Beth waiting for me.

I run over the station bridge and get on to the train to Waterloo (how many time's did my Dad nearly miss a train here?) and reflect on what I've seen...

I think it was easy for me to remember things in a certain way, given my age and the simplicity of my life when I lived here. I didn't know the world was broken at the time, but plenty of bad things were happening when I lived here. Vietnam and the Cold War had just about ended, but the Gulf War was brewing. John Lennon wasn't long gone. Fred and Rosemary West were burying people under their patio. Meanwhile, I was a child, playing in the garden, reading books, going to piano lessons, walking in the woods. I wasn't worrying about exams, girls, popularity, sex, money, work, wars, recession... I was innocent, and protected from all the troubles of the wider world. They would have got round to me eventually though, and I'd have found out about it all, and it would have probably been just as difficult to deal with as it was for me up North.

I wonder if I was slightly naive to think of my time in Haslemere as trouble free - a simpler life - but perhaps it's only natural that my mind has picked such a prominent event as a 200 mile move as the dividing line between my innocence and my... enlightenment?

I'm reminded somewhat of Rob's fixation with Charlie in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (a masterpiece, as I've said before, in both book and film form) and how he had made her, in his mind, the root of all his problems.

I'm not sure what questions I was asking in going to Haslemere, and I'm not sure they were answered, but I definitely learnt something, if only about myself. The ancient Greek aphorism Know Thyself comes to me. I think I do understand myself a bit better following the trip, and that's got to be worth £15.70 of anyone's money.