Perhaps because I went back to my hometown after uni, I have a stronger and stranger bond with mine. Maybe others have different kinds of connections; first jobs, or cities they studied in abroad, or places they collected over the years of travel? I can’t say, because my experience is my experience, and for me, the only town I’ve lived in other than where I was born, happens to be magnetically beautiful... and pulls me back to my early twenties like the moon pulls the tides. Oh and right now, with a hatful of memories, and for the first time in a long while, I’m actually in it.
Bath. So familiar, so different. There was a warm breeze in the air tonight as I strolled through the old streets of Georgian bath-stone and fanlight windows. Queen Square (where James Taylor and I tried street evangelism with hilarious naivety), the Podium (where I feel certain the Saracen’s Head has switched sides of the road), Pulteney Bridge, the dark buttresses of the Abbey with its moon-like clock, and the Boater on the other side of the river. Memories I didn’t know I had had came flooding back, as rapid and real as the inky water tumbling over the sluice. This was a place I had felt young, free, alive.
I had been expecting sadness - and, to be fair, that may come tomorrow in the daylight. But this time, and so far, there was a warmth to this city, as though people I knew might be just around the corner...
There was the tree with fairy lights, where I once met Sally Buckingham. She was going to help me do my Christmas shopping. There was Joshua Mills waiting to take a group of us to a church that we’d later describe as ‘enthusiastic’. And Steve and Dave and Catherine and Sara and Mark and Eb and Phil and Ruth... waiting outside the Odeon before we headed inside for Toy Story 2. I felt those people there, waiting in the street - and I was surprised at how warm that made me feel, even though we’re all long gone, and Toy Story 2 was out twenty two years ago.
I’m not here to do a typical city break. I’m here to pray, in the heart of where I once felt so hopeful. I figured that this was the place to come, detached but familiar, a rewind, and a perspective-bringer. I need perspective. I need to be here.
A lot has changed, naturally. Since the Romans discovered what must have been a miracle (hot water on this foggy, frozen island!) people have been building and changing things here to accommodate, and yet so much of the old is still exactly where it was, where I remember it. Me too then - the Bath I remember was also in transition, and still is, even though our memories try to freeze it into place. So familiar, so different.
Anyway. The next few days will be interesting. It won’t be my usual ramble around a city, because unlike everywhere else I’ve been, I know this place, and it feels like memories are etched into the stones. There may be new things to discover, there might be old things to rediscover, but either way, me and this lovely old city are absolutely not strangers. I know it. And as I strolled through (the geography still super-confident in my mind) I got the feeling that this place, with all its elegant whispers, knows me too, and remembered me just as fondly.
And that’s really quite grand, when I think about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment