A Return to Worcester part 3: Friday Night (the Old Country, after Nightfall)

I forgot about this. We didn't go out on Friday night, and had elected to stay in at Joe Bird's house. I needed something from the local shop, a can of drink, but found out that the local shop was closed. It was after 9'0'clock. I think I really needed a walk.
The one option open to me, well the option that appealed the most, was the petrol station at the top of London Road. I had worked at that petrol station from July 1998 - June 1999, and had lived at 136 London Road from 1997 - 1999. A return to the old country, after nightfall.
I left Joe and Joe behind, and after following Joe B's directions (It's amazing how, after 11 years away, a town seems to have extra road which weren't there before...) I eventually came to the base of Londoin Road. London Road is set on a slight hill - so it was uphill all the way.
It was a pleasingly strange walk. The whole job-loss shock was beginning to sink in now, and the initial nervous glee with which I had greeted the news was beginning to fade back into a kind of unreal anxiety. London Road, and 136 in particular, was the site of the most resonant experiences in Worcester. I have the most memories connected with this place; summer 1997, Ruth, writing my dissertation, the petrol station... This nostalgia mixing with the unreal anxiety caused an odd, if not entirely surprising, shift in my perceptions, a kind of hyper awareness I suppose. the night birds singing, the cars passing by, the past, the present, the future... aware of all of it, and myself in the centre of this strange unexpected vortex.
The road hadn't changed much at all. It seemed narrower perhaps, but the old pubs were still there; the Mount Pleasant, the Seabright. Our local shops just past 136 had changed though. The local convenience store 'Pause for Thought' had been turned into a carpet shop, but I was pleased to see that 'Odds and Sods' a miscellaneous second hand shop that opened in summer 1998 was still there. I remember selling some things in there - albums and a leather jacket - so I could go and visit Corin in Middlesbrough.
The petrol station had changed a lot. It now had a Tesco Express. In my day there was only a small, slightly grubby ESSO store. A lot larger too, as I entered, it felt like another place entirely... No connection to my past all. Not even at the counter which was roughly in the same place.
136 though... I suppose in each life there will always be a site of haunting... A specific place that will not close down. I glimpsed the garden between the houses, the garden where we held the 'fire festivals' of 1998 (and where Ross had said to me that over the first few fire festivals it felt like I was mourning something. I remember staying out in the garden late into the night, watching the coals flicker into pale red orbs... the romantic drama between Ruth and myself had ended badly. I was still trying to pick up the pieces. She had gone to Poland for the summer.) I saw Al's room, the shutters open, and his room black and empty inside (His room? It hasn't been his room for over a decade) and up above the bathroom, and next to that Tim's room (then Ross's room, then Rizwan's room). 136 was a tall and narrow house. Four storeys including the cellar, where the living room and playroom and entrance to the garden were situated.

(A fragment from the summer of 1997. It was a hot summer, an incredibly hot summer. One day I even got heatstroke. It was that kind of hot. I spent the summer not working, while Al and Paul worked. There were only the three of us in the house then, everyine else had gone home until term began. We said that Sally's room (or what was to be Sally's room) was haunted because it was guaranteed that her room would be noticeably colder than anywhere else in the house. Even on the hottest of days it would be cool in there. When any of the three of us had been out and had returned, too hot and on the verge of collapsing from the heat, we would rest in what we came to know as the haunted room. One of my memories of 136... Using a cold room to freshen up because we thought that room was cold because it was haunted. Life just doesn't seem so poetic any more)

Walking back downhill I listened to 'Silver Soul' by And Also The Trees. If any album can be said to sum up my time (or more accurately the second half of my time in Worcester) then it is this one. Listening to 'The Obvious' it felt like time was stripping itself back, like walking back through the beginning of summer 1998. I was in crisis now having lost my job, and I had walked this route at the same time of year in crisis before (funny how romantic dramas seem like the end of the world at the time). Same points in space reached through differenbt times. Same emotions, same place, differen times... or was it? It didn't feel like it was any time. A generic Worcester 'timeless-time'. It felt like I had been walking down this hill forever; started back in 1998 and eleven years later, like some ghost caught in an endless repetition of past events. I passed by Elmfield Gardens where Joe W lived, passed Harry's Wine off license, those still-familiar little alleyways leading up into unexplored streets... and all the while, And Also The Trees on my headphones; 'all I can think is, remember your way back here, remember, that's all I can think, remember, remember your way back here...'
How could I ever forget?

It was full dark by the time I had returned back to Joe B's house. 'How was the walk?' Joe W asked. 'Weird' I replied 'Very very weird'.