These Streets

Sometimes you have a dawning realisation, something that should have been obvious to you, but you have misread it. When I walk around Brighton, stories of my previous life there swirl around my head, my late teens and early twenties hiding around corners and peeping out at me; I walk around Newcastle thinking about my Dad working in the Toon and my job in the X-ray department as a technician; I walk around Camberwell thinking about the perils of trying to raise two children there on a tiny income. Last week, we went to the village where I was brought up. I can remember where everybody lived, what the shops used to be, and where I hid from the lightning during a massive thunderstorm. Once I went on holiday with someone, and realised I had gone on holiday with their memories of other times they had been there with someone else.
All of those things are rolled into this song: the past has demons as well as angels, and both characters are likely to make an appearance unbidden when you tread old ground. I am very grateful for the present and the future.