A diary of home
More random thoughts about home and belonging
It happens every year, but every year I’m surprised at how poorly my creativity is flowing by this stage in the summer. It’s an effort to drag out words. One of these years – maybe next – I’ll remember, and I’ll schedule the entirety of July and August as a ‘no pressure’ time zone, which will encompass no book beginnings, endings or other writing deadlines. As so many of you were wise enough to suggest after I whined (AGAIN) about summer in my last newsletter, perhaps I should just get a grip and refuse the call to franticness during this season (I so wanted to say franticity but tragically the word doesn’t exist, though it should) and let everything else grow, bloom and fruit while I just sit and watch and read books.
Anyway. Summer’s almost over, but it isn’t over yet. So I thought I’d switch gears a little in this week’s article, and offer you all some more random thoughts on home and belonging, as a follow-up to this post. These, again, are fragments of writing from a work-in-progress (which will be in progress for a while, as I’m working on another book). They begin sometime in March 2023, as we leave Wales and return to my homelands in the north of England.
Sharon
There are two roads which might bring you to the door of our new house: the tamer B-road which runs north to south the length of the valley, or the all-out wild one – the single-track stunner which runs from west to east across the high commons. The house sits near the eastern end of it. In January, when I came to meet the estate agent here, this narrow, high-sided valley was deep in snow and ice. I parked in a layby on the tame road and walked in, sliding precariously down the lane and skidding over the old stone bridge across the river; the slender, winding road over high land that I’m navigating now was impassable. But here I am finally, sailing along it, and this first time of meeting it enchants my disquieted heart. It’s a ghost road, this one, all the way to the end: devoid of houses, of hedges, of turnoffs to farms or barns, and the ground never quite manages to rise above it on either side. It’s a creature of pure passage and oh, how it soars – a score of rising and falling notes, with sunrise at one end and sunset at the other.
***
Last week, before we left, E. emailed to ask why I kept talking about going home, when I wasn’t really going home at all. I guess you could argue it’s true. In deciding to live in Mallerstang, I clearly haven’t returned to the place I was actually born; Hartlepool is an hour and a half’s drive to the east. I was born in County Durham, then, but I’ve landed just to its west – on the eastern flank of Cumbria. I try to explain that it’s not about coming home to a particular town, it’s about coming back to the North – but she clearly thinks I’ve lost the plot. The North is just another of those Humpty-Dumpty ideas, she writes, and I suppose you could argue that this is also true. E. is one of those legendary southerners for whom the North begins just north of Watford Junction, whereas for me, Hull is verging on the Deep South. E. is also extremely worried about the idea that I might claim that any part of England constitutes the North, when the region I’m talking about is actually south of several other places I’ve lived. Such as Scotland. E, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is a lawyer.
***
Down by the river, a clatter of jackdaws circles me, shrieking. They’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t yet know what it is. I don’t yet know what part they play in this new story, though I’m certain enough that they’re in it, because I’ve met these jackdaws before. The layby where I left the car, on that snow-ridden, blue-skied January morning when I first came to see this house, was the parking area for the castle. (Yes, there’s a castle in this story too, and its name is Pendragon Castle; legend says it was built in the fifth century by Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur.) I half-fell out of the car, exhausted by a five-hour drive through decidedly inclement weather, and as soon as I set foot on the icy ground a great black cloud of jackdaws exploded out of the castle walls, screeching for all they were worth. Even before I saw the kitchen, and even before I stared down into the light-filled flow of the river, my decision had been made. The jackdaws have it. The jackdaws always have it.
Jackdaws are in this story, then, along with a river, and a castle. I don’t know what role I play in it: I don’t even know what story I’m in. Do the jackdaws know? Tchak tchak, says Jack, from the branch of an ancient alder, and how can I do other than agree?
***