Inpursuitof

The other day I watched a YouTube spoof of my hometown. (Actually, it was my schooltown but my hometown is so small YouTube hasn’t found it yet.) It brilliantly summed up every reason most of us moved away: the chavs, the thugs, the teenage pregnancies, the throroughly uninspiring environment, the chavs, the thugs. It’s a typical south-east London/north Kent town; it looks and feels like another 57 in a 30 mile radius. It’s not Brixton, it’s not Moss Side, people don’t (often) get stabbed there or anything. The town is just the grubby side of mock-Burberry-beige on the Dulux metaphorical sample chart.

I reckon you can split people into two types: those who stay around where they were born and those who get the hell out. For me, I knew I had to get out as soon as I could, the cloying fear of stagnating in a place that offered so little for me rose when I was about 13. But some of my friends will stay around where they were born for the rest of their lives, and that’s fine too. There’s a huge amount of safety and comfort in a place you know so well, full of people you love.

So many people hate their hometowns. I know I do, I feel a distinct level of shame and a little bit of sicky-fear when I go back. I get the sense that for a lot of people there’s a rejection of the person they were then mixed in with the place. A lot of people love it though, and will marry a local boy or girl, bringing up their kids ten minutes from where they grew up themselves. Moving somewhere new brings more than new surroundings, I think. It gives you a chance to find out who you are and how you cope without an immeadiate safety net. It forms who you are and who you will be.

1) Some soy milk. Don’t ask

2) A polar bear. I didn’t, but I didn’t want to write down the same old names.

3) A man who was swearing lots at the Barclays Bike Rack. I made it work for him