October 2016

There’s an aphorism that warns against returning to visit old territories, places that were once known and supposedly understood, places that come with histories, memories and embarrassments.  You know the pitfalls of disappointment, and yet…..

You get the urge to revisit, to check the accuracy of your memory, only for someone to mention that within the first week the new owners had cut down a cherished cherry tree in your old garden, replacing it with the devil’s spawn, a ‘Leyland’ hedge. Or you read a press report that the local authority has bulldozed the street where you were born, name-changing and re-branding to bury old stigmas. Or you bump into a colleague from your old workplace to learn that an idea, long advocated by you, has finally been implemented… after you left.

“…don’t look back”; it’s all relic memory.

It’s a maxim that up until now I have generally adhered to; however after thirty-five years, curiosity has got the better of us.  Already we’ve taken one deviation around our old Angus stomping ground, a county that lies between Fife and four decades of memory. We were married, lived and worked there for three years. The church still serves the parish, shrouded in a skeletal of scaffolding; the reception venue, however, has closed yet again, having morphed through various incarnations.  The school where the Navigator took the local cubs has finally closed, only to reincarnate as a retail experience. ‘A House of…..’ (insert geographical place or clannish surname then offer ‘a Danish style treasure trove of wondrous gifts). Strangely, if said gift was to be recycled the following day through a charity shop it would be termed ‘bric-a-brac’.

Lock-out @ halls of residence.

As an exercise in nostalgia, it’s vaguely unsettling, emphasised by a lame day of moody weather at the solemn end of autumn. With a City Brechin that still feels like a lost soul, a cast off from the age of exotica; half-day closing and rock hard avocados, Mini motor cars and a publican’s ten o’clock call for “last orders please”. Relocated by a by-pass.

The roads might relocate but surely the towns and cities can’t – and yet they too seem to be out of kilter, their relative remembered positions seemingly disposed, disjointed, displaced.

“don’t look back”; it’s all mothball memory.

Now I know why I haven’t been back before.              Still, we will repeat the same misguided exercise when, a few days later we visit Aberdeen.

The Navigator’s flat that contained four students, two bedrooms, one virulent in apple green walls but no toilet facilities, demolished, replaced by a beautician’s wholesale warehouse. The halls of residence where we both resided, that came with brutalist concrete and a sink but no shower, demolished, replaced by a wildflower meadow and a redeveloper’s plan. The ‘Refectory’ that came with a hall of pillars that were so injurious to ceilidh dancing, has relocated, ‘The Union’;  that subterranean warren of beer-hall Victoriana, has morphed into one of Seattle’s caffeine emporiums. With the addition of a reconfigured Union Street, scattered roundabouts like tiddlywinks and a belatedly started city by-pass, much has changed. Still somethings have stayed constant; the cobbles still dispense a twist of ankles and bone rattling cycle rides, the docks still dispense an eau-de-fish and towering supply vessels, the bakeries still dispense pig-fat rowies and sticky pink buns.

A city that still dispenses a distort of memories, only relocated into a new localiti memoria.