41 years later

[carl_allery]

41 years ago, I started at school in Wells. 5 years later we moved into the city and ever since then, wherever I've lived (never far away in any case), I've been in Wells every week or two at the very least to visit my parents or check on their house if they were away. For 2 and a half of the last 3 years, I lived there again, looking after my

Comments

[birdsedge]

Moving out of a house is definitely a weird feeling. We've been in Birdsedge for 34 years, but prior to that we had a house in Wakefield and a house in Netherton (between Wakefield and Birdsedge). I regularly drive past the Wakefield house and although I feel brief affection for the memory of what it used to be, possibly because it was our first house, the instant we moved out, I ceased to have any deep connection with it. I have no feelings whatsoever for the inbetween house at Netherton. It was never more than a stopgap house for us, even though we stayed there almost six years and our first child was born there. I came to the conclusion that 'home is where the stuff is.' Whatever the walls look like, it's the stuff that makes the whole place feel familiar. Even that last look round as you move out is weird, because once your stuff has gone the place doesn't feel like home anyway.

I may feel more of a twinge if I ever have to leave here because - well - thirty four years and counting, but as long as we have books, computers and personal stuff I think we could settle in a new location.

[carl_allery]

To be honest, I've now lived in this house the longest - 15 years. 5yrs, 8yrs, 11yrs, 1yr, 2yrs, 7yrs and now 15. It's certainly not the last one I'll inhabit, so 36yrs of association with my parents house made it somewhat of ananchor I suppose.