This feels as relevant today as it did 2 years ago when I wrote it. Possibly more so post Brexit
Source: House or Home #1000speak @1000speak
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About TanGental
My name is Geoff Le Pard. Once I was a lawyer; now I am a writer. I've published four books - Dead Flies and Sherry Trifle, My Father and Other Liars, Salisbury Square and Buster & Moo. In addition I have published two anthologies of short stories, Life, in a Grain of Sand and Life in a Flash. More will appear soon, including a memoir of my mother's last years. I will try and continue to blog regularly at geofflepard.com about whatever takes my fancy. I hope it does yours too.
These are my thoughts and no one else is to blame. If you want to nab anything I post, please acknowledge where it came from.
I recently met an older man who is living somewhere further down my road. I had seen him on several occasions wandering along, kicking at the stones on the pavement, coffee cup in hand, as Siddy and I passed on our early morning walk. At first I thought he was drunk as his words were thick and made no sense to me as I greeted him and walked on by. We passed by many times and I greeted him and didn’t stop walking. One day we met and were walking in the same direction and he made the effort to communicate by pointing at his heart and saying in thickly accented English “Me, Syria” And then the penny dropped. This explained the wandering up and down the street, the troubling speech – here was a man looking for the outdoor community normal to his homeland – not to be found here! There was a terrible loneliness emitting from him as we struggled to communicate. No common community, no common language, no common ethos, no common culture ……….. a million miles from anything he knows as ‘home’. I felt useless, but how can we not open our hearts and minds to these refugees?
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I left home at 19 when my parents had to move a fair distance and it was good for me; in the next few years I stayed with relatives, was a lodger, enjoyed insitutional living etc. When I married a policeman just after my 24th birthday ( seems quite young now! ) and moved into a police flat, it wasn’t ours, but it was home and I vowed NEVER to not live in my own place again! But we’ve moved a few times and it doesn’t take long for the new house to feel like home. I guess you could say the current residence is really OURS as it is the only time we’ve finished paying off the mortgage….
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