Regeneration?

I'm finding it hard to write at the moment. I'm overprotective of my new, three month relationship. It's special, I want it just for me and I don't want to share us.

But I wrote this back in July about My First Love and thought I would share this instead. There is a part two... which I will share in a few days.

July 2007
The fact is I do love him; I always have done and probably always will. I wouldn’t have stomped over old ground by catching the train to Manchester to chat over tea with his mum in the kitchen and remark on how big his little sister has grown if I didn’t. But confused by my motives for coming, he used the open space on the drive to the lakes to question my purpose. And before I could answer, he told me that all he had said last year about how he could definitely envisage having children with me and only me, was no longer true. He was back to not wanting them, he wasn’t ready to marry and he had gotten to a place whereby he saw me as a friend and that was the only reason he could have me to stay with him. I nodded, slightly winded and considered whether I could get him to do a detour to Lancaster station to drop me on the route home. We sat in silence most of the way to Morecombe, which was long enough for him to realise that I was hurt and to start back peddling. He didn’t mean to be harsh, it had taken him five years to get over me and he had only just managed it last year. He viewed me as I had viewed him the year previously, when he had journeyed to see me - driving to London to tell me that he could live without me but his soul couldn’t. He laughed when I reminded him of this speech, “no wonder you ran a mile” he proclaimed. “No, I said, that wasn’t it, I was just getting over somebody else”. We ignored our confusion for the rest of the weekend, we re-visited our caravan tucked away in Ambleside, we ate Tapas in Windermere, which was the place where we sat by the water’s edge six or seven years ago and let the gulls jump for bread. We walked down the pier at Morecombe, his new home and stopped for tea. His choice of home, did not startle me, it made perfect sense. It was how I had envisaged it, knowing him so well. I had been slightly bemused by the cries of “Morecombe is such a dump…you’ll hate it” from my friends but I knew him well enough to know that while he can live in shabbiness, there has to be beauty. And there is beauty in Morecombe, miles and miles of blue sky, it’s a panoramic place, known for its healing properties. The green, calming influence of the lakes on the other side of the bay tells you that you are a million miles from London. And it’s a place of regeneration, half of Morecombe is currently held up by scaffolding, splints repairing the broken bones of the old buildings. There will be a day of glory when the old Art Deco Hotel finally resurfaces and becomes a central point in this slightly shabby but special seaside town. But whether our love can be regenerated, that I don’t know.

A Cross To Share

"In 1290 the wife of Edward Ι - Eleanor of Castile died in Nottingham. It had been a marriage of love and not the usual arranged marriage of political convenience. Her body was brought to London for burial and everywhere the cortège stopped Edward built crosses. The last stopping place was in London at Charing (an Anglo-Saxon word for 'turning') where the road turned to Westminster and Charing Cross was erected."

This is the most fascinating fact that I have read in a long time. How romantic, how exciting, how simple and yet grand a gesture from a King of England to his beloved, deceased, wife. And so I delve a little deeper and discover more new facts… You know those signs that you pass as you navigate your way towards London? The ones that say “London 23 miles”. Well have you ever wondered where they measure that from? I have. And now I know. They measure it from the site of the original Eleanor Cross (South of Trafalgar Square). Imagine that, a simple romantic gesture now defined as the centre of all London.

I am reading one of my stocking presents - “A History of England in a Nutshell.” Before this, the total sum of the history that I remember from school amounted to a vague recollection of a school outing to a muddy field which, it was explained, was the site of the Battle of Bosworth (but I couldn’t have told you what relevance the Battle of Bosworth had on anything). I also remember a fat, ginger, king called Henry VΙΙΙ alongside the ditty to remember his numerous wives… divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Oh and the Second World War. That’s it. For some reason the government didn’t think to teach kids in the 80s history in the order in which it actually happened and gave so much attention to certain events that it gave everyone a warped idea of their importance in the course of history. Just before I gave up history at 14, I got an A grade in my summer exams. Extraordinary.

Well, on Monday as I trudge back to my job, I will be placing the palm of my hand on the replica of the Eleanor Cross in front of Charing Cross station and pledging that 2008 be the year that I no longer live in ignorance of my country’s history. But that is not my only pledge. Time is precious, I am a part of history and I’ve wasted the last two years of my history in a job which answers to arrogant, petty managers, for very few silver pennies. In 2008, I will go all out to better that. Oh… and hopefully I’ll make a bit of my own romantic history too with my new man man and our first holiday abroad together. How very exciting!