On a recent visit to Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester I took a few pictures of places I used to know so well.
Our local was just the plain old Trevor Arms, run by Stan and Mona. We used to go there most evenings and sat with an elderly couple Jack and Ann Harker. They had married, had a child, divorced, remarried other people, been widowed and remarried each other. Now the Trevor Arms is smart and posh:
A pub we only occasionally went to was the Horse and Jockey on Chorlton Green. Then it had low ceilings, stone flagged-floors, was always thick with cigarette smoke, and packed to the gunwales with students.
They were good days Lois, did we ever leave our comfort zone for the pub over the Mersey?
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Not so much comfort zone as staggering zone I think!
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Very perceptive & thought-provoking. It is dislocating to visit old haunts and find them so changed… but sometimes I also find it dislocating to visit an old haunt and find it unchanged, when meanwhile I have changed. Sometimes I then assess it differently, and that can be unnerving (though ultimately valuable).
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There’s another thing… places remembered, when a place exists in your head although what it was when you were there, and how it is now, is completely different. I read a book by a Scottish author which discussed Glasgow as a place he had grown up in, as it was as a known place, and how it is actually when he visited it… But I just cannot remember who the author is!!
I feel that about Cambridge where I was born and grew up, as a place my dad told me stories about, and as it is when I visit it now.
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Sort of a mental version of palimpsest, where instead of previous layers of painted image peeking through, it is layers of remembered image, or at least ‘seeing’ the remembred image behind the current physical reality…
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I like that idea, yes, a mental palimpsest! Oh and then there is the imaginary version, and the historical version too! layer upon layer!
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Oh yes, the imaginary versions! Brings to mind Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” which I read long ago while on a Calvino jag. And Rushdie wrote “Imaginary Homelands,” sort of close to what we’re talking about here.
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Calvino! I hd quite forgotten him… I must revisit as they say! I must take a look at the Rushdie book too… I just wish I could remember the book by the Scottish author about Glasgow… hmmm… it will come sooner or later!
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I’ve just remembered the book – ‘The Missing’ by Andrew O’Hagan, it’s a long time since I read it but it made a great impression on me and I have just ordered it from Amazon to read again… I hope I’m not disappointed!
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