THE OLD PARK

I had a little free time tonight - in between a phone call that finished early, and my next meeting - so, I went to the park.

Not my usual park. The park opposite the house where I grew up. This park was part of my life until I was 31. And for whatever reason, I haven’t been there in quite a while.

Talk about the feels. The smell of the pine leaves, the sound of happy kids clambering over the monkey puzzle tree. The bowling green I watched on my way home from school during exam times, the view across the south, the armada beacon, the early-morning benches, the fallen log where I used to sit, thinking, and to which I ran madly, in my green trainers through the wet grass on September 30th, 2007. It’s all still there.

I sat on a bench. There, on an Autumn day, my pal Tom once tried to film a music video to one of my songs. If I closed my eyes I could still see his brother, Ben, scooting by in a leather trenchcoat. He used to do that. Tom thought it would look cool on film - like something out of The Matrix.

We never finished it.

It’s strange going back to a place you knew so well, and loved so much. It is largely the same - the shape of the trees, the long grass, the darting birds. Yet you are different: older, more lived, more weathered, more known. Its constancy reminds you how much you yourself have changed. We all have places like that, I guess.

I didn’t have long so I ambled back to the car, along the path where ten-year old me whizzed along on his bike listening to Bon Jovi through a massive pair of 80s headphones.

Things can’t be as they were. The trick is to be thankful somehow, acknowledge the good, and move along. Just occasionally a glimpse of an old place, the smell of pine leaves and the sound of summer bowls and birdsong, can remind us how great this whole journey can be and how far we’ve come.