Essexmania
I am slowly becoming divorced from Essex. My family dead or increasingly lost to me. No property, no legitimate business to take me there. Each trip I take back only serves to further disentangle me from the county of my birth. Knowing this makes every journey a blackened pilgrimage to the past. The tubes and trains that carry me cut lines ever eastwards till they hit the edge of England, the edge of definition and memory.
I am that rare thing, an Essex boy with all the Essex being taken out of him.
Friday afternoon and I am trying to surf ahead of the commuter wave, battling the curse of Edgware Road. The slow clock of the Circle Line – Farringdon, Barbican, Moorgate – counts down the stations to Tower Hill. Stepping out of the yellow ritual marking, turning my back to the White Mound and Bran’s Head, I feel myself losing all of London’s protective magic. It is no surprise when the pain of pure remembrance crashes into me as the engine drags me backwards through Limehouse.
By the time the train hits escape velocity and is propelled under the M25, out of London’s last magic circle, the sky is apposite for my mood. Sullen grey and wearing bruised clouds, it lends the landscape additional dull menace. The capital ends and Essexmania begins. Forced by the track into repetition of views I know too well, there is no deviation in trajectory. No escape from the hurt of travelling through paces swollen with you own history.
I am that rare thing, an Essex boy with all the Essex being taken out of him.
Friday afternoon and I am trying to surf ahead of the commuter wave, battling the curse of Edgware Road. The slow clock of the Circle Line – Farringdon, Barbican, Moorgate – counts down the stations to Tower Hill. Stepping out of the yellow ritual marking, turning my back to the White Mound and Bran’s Head, I feel myself losing all of London’s protective magic. It is no surprise when the pain of pure remembrance crashes into me as the engine drags me backwards through Limehouse.
By the time the train hits escape velocity and is propelled under the M25, out of London’s last magic circle, the sky is apposite for my mood. Sullen grey and wearing bruised clouds, it lends the landscape additional dull menace. The capital ends and Essexmania begins. Forced by the track into repetition of views I know too well, there is no deviation in trajectory. No escape from the hurt of travelling through paces swollen with you own history.
Labels: Circle Line, Essex, M25, Sacred Sites
5 Comments:
You could be describing my own visits "home". It's not home any more; the homestead no longer belongs to us. The memories that linger are no longer accompanied by a place to go to resurrect them. So strange for it to be so easy to no longer have a physical home to "return" to. But it does emphasize the idea that your home is where your heart lies. And with your family of choice, sometimes.
Thanks for saying this so beautifully.
Home and not home? It sounds like maybe it's something you'll be relieved to be done with.
That's depressing. Really. I find the same thing tho, still living in the city i grew up in. Well, i lived in its suburb. Whenever i drive over there (a mere 10 minutes away) the memories push further and further back. The people are gone, the sun doesn't seem to shine as brightly. I see the ghosts of teenagers.
I understand.
Its a good thing I think that you and Essex are 'divorcing' - I dont think you were ever comfortable there- but look where you are now, it maybe a roaring bustling city but you turn it into a peaceful idyll for your soul with your words. The glass is half full if anything D.
Looks as if you have adopted London and She, you. You descibe her in magical terms. The place you were born to were not of yer choice. The place where you make yer home, is.
Seems strange that we are sooner parted with our mothers than our motherland.
Stay Stompy
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