Agoraphobia
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4-minute read
It’s a resplendent autumn Sunday afternoon, and I’ve just returned from Morrisons. I’ve been enjoying the last week or so of good weather and the luxury of spare time by going out walking. I’ve lived in this part of my town for a year, but am beginning to see how little I really know it. Since quite a young age I’ve always enjoyed discovering places; usually the mundane streets, paths, fields and alleys of daily life. However, walking back from the local supermarket this afternoon, a walk which, bizarrely for a 1960s housing estate, involves a cliff top path affording views of lush green valleys, I had an overwhelming feeling of isolation and vulnerability, and the need to get home to comfortable, familiar, “safe” surroundings. I stopped for a moment and looked at my environs, and felt no warmth or emotion at all for what I saw. What caused this sudden wave of blackness? I know some will amusingly say “What do you expect living in M*x****n?”, and I sort of grudgingly see their point, it isn’t a place everyone would choose to make their home, but it is not that bad for me, most of the time.
Rewinding 5 minutes, or 50 or so yards, I was walking across a sort of field, although really it is just a bit of waste ground that for some reason wasn’t developed for housing along with the surrounding land, but is now a grassy island in the middle of suburban roads, “much loved and valued by the local community” for dangerous quad biking, burning of mattresses, and living illegally in container trucks. There are two narrow roads across this social amenity which have occasionally puzzled me, until I recently found out that the present 1960s built council houses are not the first residential homes to have adorned the area, but previously there had been a large colony of small concrete prefabricated bungalows, built cheaply and hurriedly in the late 1940s and 50s to house families displaced from slum clearance programmes in the town centre. The two roads, now partially concealed by vegetation, were once gracefully curved avenues, a sort of municipal cheap Metroland of the north, I suppose. I reflected on how optimistic a time it must have been for working people in the post war decades of austerity to have the prospect of a brand new home with heating, drainage, indoor bathrooms, and all sorts of indulgences which at that time must have seemed opulent. How sad that within 15 years or perhaps less, the feeling of hopeful aspiration, luxury and quality of life had turned sour (literally, the bungalows grew mouldy from the inside out), and today’s residents of the neighbourhood probably know nothing of their existence.
So, back to my point, agoraphobia. Had it not been for the existence of the internet, and specifically a group on facebook for sharing old photographs and memories of this old town, the huge searchable photographic resources such as flickr, and online mapping and aerial photography, I would not know anything about the old mouldy houses. It is true that the information will be there somewhere in public planning records, as well as people from the area still alive with memories and personal photographs. However, I would be unlikely to ever stumble upon the beginning of a story and feel inclined to hunt out more about it. Having access to whole acres of information online means I can explore places in my environs and further afield (I’m not going to use the word “virtual” in this context, as it has been rather over-worked in the last ten years. Now as for “cyber” or “surfing”…..) without leaving my drawing room-study, or even getting dressed. This must be a good thing in so many ways, but I can’t help but think this may have contributed to the feelings above, ie isolation, a sense of being out of place, and not belonging, because I’m so used to seeing exploring places and their story at home, my mind can no longer cope with the harsh reality of life in the raw.
Perhaps the answer is to follow Daphne DuMaurier’s example in The House On The Strand – take some LSD, jump on a horse, and go back in time. I’m not sure one would fit in the lift though.
