#05 The past!
Lincolnshire, London, Gerrard's Cross, High Wycombe, Royston 10.06.24
I’ve just spent the last 6 months (my time in Bologna) or maybe my last 3 years (my time in New York) feeling very grown up and trying new, new, new things. My memory is poor and, even if I can remember the past, I don’t think of it so much. I’ve always been moving forward, perhaps caused by being in institutions (school + work) that constantly push me to be busy and not sit back and reflect.
A series of factors this semester have had me thinking about the past more. One is arriving on a program in January where I had to introduce myself anew to a group of people; this kind of situation calls for a lot of self-chat that you don’t have with familiars (how many siblings do you have, what were you like as a kid, why do you study the thing you study, etc) and therefore a real-time self-creation as you try to summarise yourself. Another is being in a city and in an academic program that, maybe for the first time since childhood, slowed my pace of life and allowed for unprecedented levels of free time and time spent chatting. Another is the big-airquotes “situation” at Columbia (my home university) and parallel situations at other universities, where peaceful student protesters on their own campus in support of Palestinian liberation were arrested and brutalised by police due to the actions of their own president, ON THEIR OWN CAMPUS. This made me think a lot about what the role of a university president should be, at times like this and in general, in terms of pastoral care and safeguarding their own students, and the hiring of an ex-banker as university president as symptom of education’s increasing business ontology—something I also watched happen at my secondary school. And at the same time as things going on at Columbia, a death of a friend from secondary school, which I feel no need to go into here but is related to a string of tragedies and unwellnesses that seem to encircle that school and seem to be a part of the culture it creates.
So, increasingly, I’ve been thinking about the past and about the institutions and people in my past. And then I came back to England for 10 days. Most university students I’ve talked to about going home articulate it as a complicated kind of regression, especially when independence is lost at a parent’s house or one realises how different they’ve become from their old friends or from their old self. These home-realisations are sometimes comforting, sometimes infuriating, upsetting, completely perspective-altering. I’m not really sure what I feel about this trip and I’m not sure those personal takeaways are what I want to write about either, I just spent a lot of serious time in old things and old memories and want to recount some of that.
The first is being at home. Colours: limestone (shared with Cambridge and Stamford, also visited on this trip), grey sky, green grass, the navy and occasional fun pop of green worn by corporate people on the train to London, blue-grey of my bathroom tile, the plummy purple of English plums, dark wood. Sensations: British sunshine coming in and out, walking across gravel barefoot, the intensity of the shower pressure in my mum’s bathroom, the smell of her shampoo, itchy grass, little nettle stings, the scratchiness of the sofa that was clearly bought for aesthetics over comfort, my room always being colder than every other room in the house. Sounds: the creaking of certain floorboards, the sound of the kitchen door banging shut, the bolt on the front door locking and unlocking, car driving on gravel, dogs howling when we’re not paying them enough attention (little shits), muffled mum on a zoom call. Tastes: milky coffee, nice red wine, lentils, bacon, posh Cook ready-meal.
Because of the threat of moths, mum took all the boxes out from under my bed and told me to go through them so we can give some stuff away and put the rest in better storage. A lot of old toys, teddy bears, pictures, sparkly hair ties, things that light up and things that make noise, notebooks and sketchbooks, things I remember and don’t remember. The strangest is anything written, because it is alarming proof of past sentience. A journal I wrote in every day during a 10-or-so-day Brownie camp, recalling the ups and downs of being 9 and in a weird environment. I have basically no memory of this so it is surprising to be reminded by my writing that at the time I was fully present, experiencing and thinking and processing and acting. The birthday card my dad gave me when I turned 8. The school diary I had in 2012 where I noted an upcoming open day at the school I ended up going to for secondary, with the name horrendously misspelled. I got kind of freaked out by all of this and had to stop.
In the train station waiting room, I notice one of my primary school teachers who was also the mother of a boy in my class who I had a crush on for a time. I don’t say anything, not sure if she would recognise me now and feeling not very chatty anyway. On the train, in Stevenage, I see the headquarters of the company that catered my secondary school that we all used to make jokes about. At Marylebone station, I meet (on purpose) a secondary school friend of 9 years, Victoria, and we get on the same train we used to take to get to school. We are meeting another school friend, Ellani, and spending 48 hours together, including attendance of a school-organized reunion-type event—my idea because of all of my recent school-self-thinking.
To get into the reminiscent mood, we listen to the same party playlist and drink the same awful drinks we used to at school (Koppaberg strawberry & lime). The next day, we take the same walk down from the train station through the same underpass and walk through the same campus and see the same classrooms and have the same snack (BEAR Yo Yo fruit rolls) see some of the same people. The politics are also the same, the headmistress mentions the threat of a Labour government to private schools and there are plentiful posters for the Conservative candidate in the school mock-election (none for any other parties). Afterwards, we go to the same pub and then, for dinner, the same restaurant. When we get home, we watch Love Island which we used to watch obsessively in our common room. We spend the whole time talking and not just about the past. It is all delightful and less creepy than it sounds.
It is A-Level season, Ellani’s sister is revising in the library and I can see the classrooms set up for exams, looking terrifying. I don’t see that many people I know very well, but faces and names are familiar and looks and smiles are exchanged. The school event is shared between anyone who has graduated and wants to come, so the population is a lot older than us and we have lunch in a marquee seated at a table with some ex school staff, who cared about teaching/pastoral care so much that they came back. They keep getting more rosé and more giggly and one reminds me that they, as oppposed to us, are the ‘old guard.’ Despite being out of school and feeling very grown up and moved on in life, I’m still only a few years away from those years and have a lot of changes and future whatevers ahead of me, which is amazing.
On my way back to Cambridge, there is a rail replacement bus from Royston for the final leg. I get in a van with maybe 6 other people, riding shotgun. I got to skip the line because I was the first person after about 20 who was travelling alone and therefore could fit. It is very intimate, as we ride in this small-ish taxi together and listen to Radio 2 Midlands and I get to control the window height on my side. We pass one cyclist who has parked his bike and walked into a poppy field to take pictures on his camera. We also pass a bicycle made for two, with two riders. These are not anything, but I enjoyed them. And those are all the reflections I feel like giving.
