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Last night, I was talking to a friend about Terence Davies’ film ‘Of Time and the City’. While I was disappointed by  its self-indulgence, my friend was deeply angered by it:

“I grew up in Liverpool. I grew up in poverty. I know what it’s like to go a couple of days without food. But it wasn’t ALL like that. It wasn’t ALL slums and destitution. I remember the city as being a glorious place.”

One of the brighter aspects of the human condition is our ability to edit our past. Actually, I see it all the time when intervieweing people. Gaps, failures, disappointments, errors tend to drop onto the mental cutting room floor, and what’s left is a polished, shining version of the past.

While some choose to the ‘economical with the actualite’ most people genuinely believe that the version they are giving is the version that actually happened.

It’s called nostalgia.

So as another tactic in my ‘happiness drive’, this post will be about 10 places I have lived. (Apologies – like Davies’ film , it will be self-indulgent. I have no idea where this will go, nor what it will reveal. It’ll be raw, top-of-mind and unedited – save for the spelling You might want to stop here and try the exercise yourself).

1 Church Road, Woolston.
My parents’ first house as newly-weds, in a not-very-affluent part of Southampton. Edwardian terrace, originally built for dock workers; right now I don’t remember much about the house, but the neighbours are as vivid as a Pixar movie: Mrs Edselle on one side, permanently in her pinny; on the other, Auntie Fairfax and Uncle Harry – who came up with a great one-liner to describe his ne’er-do-well son: “He’s addicted to fast women and slow horses.”

2 Caerleon Drive, Thornhill
One of 20 self-build houses that my Father and 19 friends built between them. Semi-detached, centrally-heated, a prize-winning design at the 1969 Ideal Home Exhibition. Oh, how my Mother thought she was lady of the manor. Given the nature of the project, there were a lot of young families involved, so I grew up with an extended gang of mates: the Baileys, the Davises, the Holloways, the Hobbs. Football in each others gardens, go-kart races down the road, a street party for the 1977 Silver Jubilee.

3 Capel Road, Forest Gate
First year away at Uni; six of us (all male) sharing the front of a house, overlooking Wanstead Flats, while the landlady and her two children lived in the back. Living off toast, baked beans and Wimpy meals. I roomed with Tom, a second-generation Pole from the Midlands, whose underpants flapped like a spinnaker. Dominic and Mark, Rob and Tony; the latter probably certifiable, who we once handcuffed to a cow.

4 A flat, somewhere in Merton
My first workplacement and I needed digs. Rented a room with a less-than-wholly successful salesman called K. Watched as he ran parallel streams of love-life: with S, to whom he had been engaged (she’d broken it off, but he was trying to get the ring back); and with XY&Z, a series of secretaries from the office. A significant part of my tertiary education. Often took a ride home with R, another salesman, who in a previous life had worked in a TEFL school in Teran, before the fall of the Shah. Escaped after being run out of town by supporters of the Ayatollah. Fantastic stories – but could see the rest of his life playing out as an anti-climax. I hope he was wrong.

5 Capel Road, Forest Gate
Two doors down from the first house, this time with my own room. Lodging with L & K, a couple of social workers; she took her children on anti-Thatcher marches, he played football for Red Star Hackney. Full of stories of an East London still like Hogarth’s. Most memorable tale of a ‘Client’ home visit, where N found the ‘husband’ laid out naked, dead, covered in talcum powder, nail varnish, lipstick and a necklace because the ‘wife’ had “wanted to make him look nice for God.”

6 Peres Road, Hammersmith
My first digs in the world of real work. I’ve already written of the Blessed Margaret on a previous post; a septugenarian Kiwi who taught piano, ran a counselling service for pregnant teenagers, and who had never heard of Michael Jackson. Summer evenings drinking tea in her tiny back garden under the budlia bush.

7 Fentiman Road, Vauxhall
First flat with my girlfriend (now wife). Ground floor of a grand house in the “Belgravia of South London (Daily Telelgraph)”. Landlady was the wonderful Elspeth, a grande dame with piled-up hair, heavy ju-ju beads and the finest collection of Scots whisky inside the M25. Funny, friendly, she would have been quite at home as Headmistress at St Trinian’s.

8 “Dingly Dell”, Finsbury Park
House-sitting for girlfriend’s work colleague who was away on a 12-month assignment. Bizzare decor combining Samurai swords (there were two hanging over the bed), primary school paintwork, a tank of fish (that we killed off in the first week), a telescope trained on the house opposite and a paint-by-numbers portait of Noddy and friends hanging above the four bar fireplace. Nowt as queer as folk.

9 Matthew Street, Dunstable
My parents started in an Edwardian ‘cottage’; J and I started in a Victorian. Two-up, two-down with kitchen and bathroom tacked on the back. A designer, sripped-pine floor ‘master bedroom’ in the loft, which clinched the purchase. Little did we appreciate that we’d have to completely strip the groundfloor back to bare brick and replaster six months after we moved in. I built a bring shelf for my hi-fi in one of the old fireplaces – three hours to lay 36 bricks – then found I’d forgotten to mix in the cement and had used only sand. So much for being the son of a self-builder.

10 Tadley, Basingstoke
Six months with the in-laws while we waited on what is now our current home. Evenings in ‘The Treacle Mine’ playing darts and crib. Honorary member of the Tadley Hackers; playing poorly, laughing in the 19th ’til it hurt.

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If you’re still here, thanks for reading. I’d be delighted to hear your instant recollections of the Places You’ve Called Home.

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