Going “home”

***Storyline:* *50 years later***

Bus #33 that took us to Alex’s childhood home

April 12 2018:

Today we are truly visiting my past. We are going to see the house where I lived for my first 13+ years. Last night we researched how to get there on the transit system and found that one bus would take us from Piccadilly Gardens through Salford and Eccles and onwards to Winton. Of course, it’s all Greater Manchester now, and I’m not sure that Winton exists; but the old neighbourhood does.

The morning was, well, gray. And chilly, even for me. There was also some light drizzle in the air. Where were those darned gloves? However, it was just a short walk from our hotel to Piccadilly Gardens, where we boarded the #33 bus and bought a day ticket from the driver for £5.60 each. With a few exceptions for some express buses, this ticket was good for the entire system. The bus, which was bright and clean (and purple), wound its way from Manchester centre to Eccles, where I finally began to recognize some landmarks. And although I had often ridden my bike between Eccles and my home, I was surprised at how much closer it was than in my memory. That’s what 50 years will do to you.

We got off the bus at the right stop…not an easy feat since it arrived much sooner than I had thought. Plus, there was a huge 10 metre wall in front of us that carries a motorway built not long after I emigrated. The walk through my old neighbourhood to the house was…interesting. Everything was smaller: the streets were narrower and shorter; houses were smaller and the local church was nowhere near as impressive as it had been to a small boy.

In only a few minutes we stood on front of number 10. It’s part of a terraced row of ‘council houses’, or townhouses to some. These were rental homes then owned by the town council. My mother had lived here as a child during WW2 and had always remembered the day when a German bomb had exploded not 50 metres away in a field behind the place.

Houses on the street seemed well-maintained although there were changes, like parking pads where the front lawns had been, and low brick walls topped with metal fences where there had been privet hedges. As I gazed on the house, I felt…not much. It had been too long for me to feel any real connection to this place. The memories I have from my childhood still live in me, but I became Canadian almost 50 years ago, and here I was just a visitor.

It being cold and damp, we decided to move on. I felt no need to see my primary school or other places nearby, but as we walked under the ‘new’ Motorway we came across the little library where I had spent so much time from age 4. I had to go in. Of course, it had changed, but remembering all the Enid Blyton books, then the Hardy Boys series I had borrowed from here before finding Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” series and becoming engrossed in the adventures therein, took be back to that place and time more vividly than anything else I experienced on this trip.