Today

Today’s been one of those days where you’re confronted by memories at every turn – so much so it’s impossible to turn your back on them and walk away, and all you can do is look them right in the eye and hope they won’t break you. And you know what? They haven’t (broken me, that is), although I do feel the kind of melancholy you can only feel when you think of something that you’ll never have again, no matter how much you’d like to. The end of an era. The end of life as you once knew it.

Soon after I boarded the coach to Oxford it passed through Notting Hill, closely followed by Holland Park and then further onwards to Shepherds Bush. My old stomping grounds, in other words, back when I lived another life, with someone who is now a different person entirely, unrecognisable as his former self - to me at least. Looking out of the window at the bars, the shops, the places I used to visit with such regularity and remember so fondly, memories suffused my brain – birthday parties in the Blag Club, lazy days spent lying in Hyde Park, house parties and endless rounds of cocktails in the sunshine. But most prominent in my mind was that terrible day in July 2007 when the bombs went off in London and for a short time all contact was lost, between friends, families. Lovers. That terrible panic I felt when I couldn’t reach Him, an ominous forewarning of loss. And then…the wonderful warmth of recovery. All was well on that occasion, in my own tiny microcosmic life, though how selfish I felt and still feel now by saying that, when for many others who were there on that day the feeling of loss goes on. But then in a way so does mine.

Two hours later we reached Oxford, beautiful, safe, friendly Oxford, my home town for the first eighteen years of my life and a place I will forever look upon with true affection. First I visited the John Radcliffe Hospital, where I was born, and then I went to see my great aunt in North Oxford. North Oxford – there’s a place! Red brick buildings, professors on bicycles, battered old bus stops, charming conservatory restaurants, leafy greenery and loveliness. My great aunt and uncle always used to host the annual family knees-up, usually on Boxing Day or December 27th. All of my Dad’s side of the family would attend, bar none – my aunt, uncle, cousins, second cousins, third cousins twice removed….everyone. There would be music, games, presents, cold turkey (nut roast for the more, shall we say, eccentric, members of the family) mulled wine and banana pavlova. Always this, the single most important ingredient, for without pavlova there was nothing. The cats played an important part too, of course, big orange fur balls that they were. Strutting around with noses held high and twitching, taking in the deliciousness of the post-christmas air. Fat with the sheer indulgence of it all. Eyeing me quizzically as I, the youngest child, ran around in my pretty dresses. Excited. Loving the attention.

The parties would always split up into groups – a mixture of adults and children in the main living room, the same in the big old kitchen, where it seemed obligatory for conversation to be conducted around the aga, with two adults warming their bottoms as they sipped their mulled wine. The dining room was adults only.

This formula never, ever changed. Even when I was no longer the youngest member of the family it went on, and I loved to see the excitement on the faces of my little cousins when it was their turn to hand out presents, their turn to be the centre of attention. Happy, happy days.

So it was a crushing blow to revisit that house of dreams this afternoon and find it as broken as the single woman still residing inside it. For there are to be no more parties inside it, not for our family anyway. And soon it will be sold to pay for the ever mounting cost of the full time care my great aunt now requires. Her husband died last year, but the parties stopped some years before that. They were both too frail to play the hosts, and whilst my aunt and uncle do a truly valiant job of recapturing the magic with their once yearly summer gathering, we all seem to feel, intrinsically, that something has been lost forever.

It’s a funny feeling to be confronted by your childhood in such a stark way. On the one hand there are the memories, so many wonderful memories, but on the other hand there’s the deep sadness that that’s all they will now ever be. Memories. Events that happened in the past and will never happen again. The coach even went past my school, the town centre where I used to meet my friends and go shopping every Saturday afternoon (and go underage boozing by night), Gloucester Green where I once lay down with a boy and gazed at the clouds for hours, making shapes in our minds. Dreaming of what could be. What we would be when we grew up.

And now I am grown up, in some ways at least. My childhood, my adolescence, my first true love, all those things are now behind me. But whilst I’m contemplative and nostalgic, I won’t let myself cry. This is the natural order of the world. Things change, people change, time marches on with not the slightest consideration for the people who live so obediently within the confines of its boundaries. All we can do is shrug our shoulders, hold our heads high and smile. Because at the end of the day, though memories may be nothing more than imprints of times gone by, they’re no less real for it. Not only have they made us who we are, they’ve shaped how we’ll be in the future.