Bricks and mortar
Reflecting on my ten house moves, family memories, and the bittersweet nature of homes.
I’ve lived in ten different houses since leaving my family home back in 2005. This averages out at a move almost once a year for the first decade, as I rotated through student houseshares in Leeds and then the London rental shitshow with my partner. We’ve been in our current home for almost seven years now and it’s almost strange to contemplate moving again.
I moved house a few times as a child too, including a big relocation from Merseyside to Nottingham when I was five years old as my parents decided to start a new life on the other side of the country from their family and friends. Now I’m the parent of a five year old myself, I struggle to imagine what that must have been like for them, especially in the days where you couldn’t just join the WhatsApp group for your kid’s new school and get to know the local parents. Does this mean people had to go and talk to each other?!
As safe as houses
I’m thinking about houses today because earlier this week, I watched an episode of Grand Designs which featured the parents of a couple of my best friends. My friends’ dad had embarked on an ambitious—and expensive—rebuild of his parents’ house, which he demolished and then replaced with an eco-friendly dream house that cost the best part of a million pounds. It was fascinating to watch.
The most emotional moment of the show was seeing Tony, my friends’ dad, well up as he contemplated his achievement. Sitting opposite enigmatic presenter Kevin McCloud, Tony tried to articulate his feelings about knocking down the house his own father had designed and built, to replace it with his own structure. Soon both men were holding back tears as they talked through the journey he’d been on.
It made me think about the houses I spent time in during my formative years. My nan’s house, on my mum’s side, was always a space full of people and food, and whenever we visited, I remember stepping into a space that felt mysterious (what was Nan’s room like? I never saw it), exciting (was she baking cakes?) and comforting (Grandad was sure to be sitting in his armchair watching the horse racing). As I watched the bulldozers knocking down Tony’s parents’ former home, I wondered who was living in my now-departed grandparents’ old house right now.
Houses of the holy
It’s a strange experience to pass by somewhere you used to live: on a bus in London a few weeks ago, I passed a few hundred metres away from the street where our first flat was, where we lived in 2010 as giddy new Londoners, excited to see what this huge city had to offer us (rent hikes and rodents, it turned out). The surroundings had changed hugely—that’s London—but I wondered whether the bedroom where I howled in pain from a wisdom tooth extraction was still there, or if the little patio where we had our first BBQ still had the tomato plants we’d grown.
I sometimes look at the old photos of my current home from when it was on sale before we bought it. Usually this is to reference something: how did the trees outside look back then? Was that mark on the door always there? But I usually end up getting distracted by the unheimlich nature of seeing the place you live suddenly look different. That’s my house, but why is the wallpaper like that? Whose dress is that, hanging up by the wardrobe? Which child sleeps in that bed?
The idea of someone else living here, or demolishing the place, feels faintly horrifying: we became parents here. My daughter was literally born in this house. I learned to drive while living here, recorded two albums here… how could someone else step into all of that history? Or knock it down?
Funnily enough, our house was demolished: the bloke we bought it from ran a building firm, and he bought the original century-old house, knocked it down, and built a brand new one. When we bought the house, we inherited all the historical paperwork – I marvelled at the ancient deeds listing the original landowners in flowery script. What had happened to these people? Do their ancestors live on, and sigh when they see the newness of my home where their old one once stood?
But houses are just bricks and mortar, really. It’s people, memories and the intangible things we leave behind that are the things that make us laugh (or cry) whenever we leave somewhere behind. The house that Tony’s parents built is gone now, but they kept back some elements to incorporate into their new one. The brand new eco-house is built on the site of the earlier house, too: every time they sit down to eat, or lay back to sleep, they’ll be doing so in the same place their parents did before them. There’s something beautiful about that even amid the bulldozers and brick dust.
Mini-feels this week
The unbearable lightness of being… almost kicked in the nads by a child
I was lying on the sofa yesterday morning when my son came barrelling into the room and ran at full-speed towards me, springing up and about to leap onto me for a full-bodied hug. I yelped in fear and my hands went instinctively to my crotch to brace for painful impact. My panicked reaction was just quick enough to pause Ted in his tracks, and he abandoned the jump.
“I just saw my whole life flash before my eyes”, I winced, sitting up. Ted was completely thrown by this phrase, and I found myself explaining to a five year old that some people believe that they re-live their life experiences briefly before death.
“So did you think you were going to die?” he asked me. “Well, maybe not die, but I was expecting that I was about to get hurt”, I clarified. He paused, as a sombre look reached his face. “I don’t want you to die”, he began. “Mummy would tell me off if I killed you”.