Time to go north
Until now, I always lived south of the river. At 21, I moved to Elephant & Castle. Since then, the house shares and flats I lived in between there, Balham and East Dulwich map a triangle of South London addresses.
While lots changed during those years, I clung to the familiarity of those neighbourhoods: the bus routes and tube maps I know by heart and coffee shops and restaurants that I knew I could rely on.
At the weekend, by pure coincidence, my social plans took me on a tour of that triangle - from East Dulwich to Balham and through Elephant & Castle. Each place felt weighty with memories, big ones and small ones. More noteworthy memories of first dates, birthday parties and breakups are mixed in with ones that made up the humdrum of my life at the time – the supermarket I’d visit daily and the shops I’d kill time in when waiting for a friend.
Travelling in between each one, I reflected on the years I’d lived in that place, the job that moulded my daily routine, how I’d felt during those days. I was being especially reflective because on Sunday evening I moved my things into a new flatshare, outside of the triangle. I live in East London now, north of the river.
While I was mentally preparing for my move over Christmas, I had chats with friends about the regression that happens when we return to the place where we grew up. It made me think about how places with memories attached have a way of transporting us back in time. “Nothing hurts like a hometown” is the powerful opening line to a piece I love by Joy Sullivan about how the place you grow up in can evoke such a mixture of emotions.
It’s true, nothing pulls us back in time in the same way that places do. As my friends and I discussed in the context of regressing back to our teenage selves, it can feel stressful revisiting places, reliving those memories and seeing versions of ourselves that we want to leave behind. But it also serves as a reminder that we found a path that makes more sense to us. When we return to our own lives, there’s a renewed sense of freedom.
A similar thing happened when I left South London at the weekend.`After reflecting back on the years I’ve lived there, I chose the northbound line instead of the southbound one and it felt freeing. I am retreating, for now, from the places that weigh heavy with memories that I want to leave behind.
In trying to articulate what it is about holidays, trips and being in nature that is so beneficial for our mental health, psychologists developed a theory called Attention Restoration Theory. Explaining it, researchers speak about environments that create a ‘sense of being away’ as a way of recuperating. They say: “To achieve the sense of being away an environment has to (1) have the ability to shift attention to different cognitive content, and (2) provide an opportunity to gain physical distance from a psychologically demanding environment.”
The streets here are unfamiliar. I have to open Google maps at least three times a day. Yesterday, I found myself stranded on the side of a motorway I couldn’t work out how cross. The view from my room looks out onto the canal, a daily reminder that I am in a new place where water birds visit and there’s a community of house boats. When I pull the curtains shut at night, I can see their fires going and the dim lights on in their cabins. They’re my neighbours now. All this newness makes me feel like I am ‘away’ and it already feels restorative.
It’s timely because for the next few months I’m focussing all my attention on an exciting new writing project which I can’t wait to tell you about it. It means my newsletters will change. My newsletters will now be fortnightly rather than weekly. Only the occasional one will be available to free subscribers. Paying subscribers who send me £3.50 a month or £30 a year to read my writing will get two newsletters a month plus access to the archives.