You can't go home again - Part 2

So the last couple of Gunsmoke Files dealt with my visits to Bannockburn and Stirling Castle, which both happen to be just down the road from my birthplace of Larbert. What do you mean you’ve never heard of it? Why, it’s famous for uhm...well remember in the Laurel and Hardy films...remember the angry guy with the black moustache that was always on the wrong end of their mischief? Well, he was from there.

Although Larbert isn’t my home town in any real sense of the word. The people who claim to be my parents spirited me away at the tender age of two and transported me over the border to England where I grew up (in the loosest sense of the word) in a little town called Kendal, population 26,000 or so.

I haven’t been back in 8 years and even then it was just a quick visit, so I was looking forward to wandering about and seeing just how much the old place had changed. I was kipping with my friend Steve and his family, but he wouldn’t be home from work for some time so after dropping off my bag, I set out on a wander. Steve’s house sits at the base of Castle Hill, which has some of the best views of the town. Yeah I know, another castle, but don’t worry - this one won’t take long.

It’s a ruin, you see, and has been for some time. The family of Queen Katherine Parr once owned this place and as I’m sure you know, she was the 6th wife of King Henry the 8th and the only one to out live the syphilitic old git. I doubt they’d recognize the place now; it being little more than some tumbledown walls but it’s been cleaned up a lot since I last visited and these days it has plaques and signs all over the place telling you exactly what used to be there. From this I learned that our childhood guesses were apparently way off the mark. What we decided were the stables were in fact the kitchen, the dungeon was merely a storeroom and so on.

The view duly admired from all angles, I took myself down the far side of the hill and into the town proper. And yes, the place had changed. But not quite as much as I was expecting it to have. Yes, the one-way traffic flow had been re-routed so now cars were hurtling at me from the left where I was expecting them to come at me from the right. And there were buildings where empty spaces used to be. But mostly it looked much the same, albeit much sunnier than it ever was when I lived there.

I had a lot of fun trying to remember what used to be in a specific location but was oddly surprised to see certain shops still looking exactly the same. Interestingly it seemed to be the crappy places, charity stores and amusement arcades that had survived, most of the upscale shops had changed. My favorite bookstore for example, had returned to the location it had occupied when I was a child, having moved back from the one it had occupied when I was an adult. Who says you can’t go home again?

In a town of 26,000 people, you get to know a lot of folk, especially if like me, you work with the public. And also when you invest most of your time, money and energy into cultivating an active social life, (OK, by “active social life”, I mean I went out drinking every night, but then you knew that) you tend to become something of a familiar face. So it was entertaining in a mildly frustrating way to walk past someone and find myself wondering “OK, who the heck was that; where do I know them from?” Sometimes I would steal a look over my shoulder to see if I could better identify them and would catch them doing the same thing; obviously trying to recall who the heck I was.

I wasn’t always sure if I actually knew the person, or if I was just used to seeing them around. Occasionally I would be confident enough to exchange the traditional north of England greeting ("Hiya, y’areet?") but even then, I rarely managed to put a name to the face although sometimes I would figure it out a little later along the street. On one notable occasion I realized that the woman at whom I had stared quizzically a little earlier was in fact Mary, wife of Pete, the friends with whom I was going camping in a couple of days. Never the stranger to social awkwardness, me.

Even the jewelry store where I used to work had changed, having expanded into the space next door. I’d been told about this, but it still seemed a little odd to see it. Some of my co-workers were still there though, even though it’s now 17 years since I sold my last bauble. So, I stayed for a while, distracting them from their labors while they brought me up to speed on the local gossip.

I’d called in with the intent of dragging my friend Graeme out to the pub, but somewhat predictably, he wasn’t around. He’s the boss and in true management fashion was off taking care of personal errands while the staff did all the work.

It’s good to know some things never change.