Thursday 29 November 2007

Roots and branches

Till I was eighteen I lived in just two houses – whose gardens were close enough to call across – in a south Derbyshire village where schools, churches, Scouts and Guides wove the 1960s blossoming of families into a community.

During the next twenty years I moved house thirty-five times; once every seven months, on average. Sometimes within the same town if a landlord proved fickle, sometimes to the far ends of the country; and once it was only three doors down. And sometimes everything went into store as we set up home in some foreign city.

But I’ve never thrown off my early years, when people committed themselves to something more than family. Stepping from my front door, I moved within a story that those around me already knew – and were only too happy to predict the outcome. A yearning to mean something to the people around has stayed with me, which occasionally takes me into Easter services in strange churches. It makes our walk together to the Polling Station each election day an inviolable ritual.

When we moved into the heart of London, I rediscovered the sense of belonging. In the constant churn of the city we have the stories and the stimulus, the changing scenes, the best of national culture and the cultures of every country of the world, often just a bus-ride away. Yet we have, too, community. Once again I leave my door believing I’ll be more than a passing extra in someone else’s scenery. My ambitions are known to enough people who are happy to comment on them as I buy my pound of apples or queue for aspirin at the chemist’s. In the café on the corner, I’m guaranteed to always see at least three people whose news I’m eager to share.

I’ve even joined the fundraising group for the local children’s playground. It’s not yet a school governorship or trustee of some local arts venue – our inconstant years act as a warning against so much commitment. But it’s a start.

As we prepare to say goodbye to our neighbours and friends here, I wonder if our plans to return really will happen. Will this community still be ours or will we once again be passing strangers, part of those masses who lubricate London? This is a new feeling, the hope of return.

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