For a change, I took the bus to work today.
My daypack bulged with books: the Rough Guide to Cyprus, Colin Thubron’s Journey Into Cyprus, Tim Boatswain’s A Traveller’s History of Cyprus, and a number of careworn notebooks with “Cyprus” scrawled on their covers.
The more observant among you may spot a common theme. But alas, no, I’m not off to the eastern Mediterranean right now. Just refreshing my memory about my childhood home, for reasons that should become clear another time. And as usual, Rough Guide, Traveller’s and Thubron are my starting points.
I scrambled up to the top deck of the no. 1 bus to the York train station, eventually found a seat not occupied by teenagers so bleached by fast-food malnutrition they looked like extras from The Walking Dead, ignored their innocent, carefree 120dB banter about who shagged who last night, and buried my nose in my books.
Ten minutes later, I nearly missed my stop at the train station.
Not quite. But nearly. I suddenly became aware we’d stopped, swore, scooped my books into the air in the general direction of the stairs and tumbled out the door like a crash-test dummy. Pausing just long enough for everyone to laugh at me, I crossed the road and dove into my connecting bus.
Ten minutes later, I completely missed my stop at the University.
If you were wandering across campus today and you saw a smartly-dressed man run past, wearing shoes that would have been sensible for anything but an attempt on the unassisted world landspeed record, a bulging rucksack whirling around him like a slingshot scaled up for siege warfare, cursing his life, cursing the buses and cursing you, then we’ve met. Briefly.
(Hey, I hope next time it’s under better circumstances).
The reason for all this running is simple. I fell through a hole in my own mind. Ever done that? You blink and suddenly it’s Much Later, and you’ve been sat there all this time, except you’ve really been elsewhere?
Well, I’d been in Cyprus. Suddenly remembering things that had been buried deep inside my head for more than 20 years. Joining together vivid bursts of light and sound and smell and taste to passages of Cypriot history in front of me, and then to things I’d seen in 2006, when I was last on the island. Remembering when I went to a fancy dress party as Captain United Nations (saving the world since the age of 7). Remembering geckos. Remembering when I drowned. (Long story, that one). Remembering things with such powerful longing that I was tugged right out of my own skin. Remembering them so hard I felt a little sick.
(Homesick).
And this precious ability to be utterly focussed and transported, this gift of the imagination of pure, selfless escapism – I thought it had gone forever. Nibbled out of existence by my attention-shrinking digital habits, the ruin the Internet has made of me.
So, that was nice.
But it still hurt.
Lost. Lost. Lost. And then I looked up, and the University looked a bit strange, which was because I was seeing it from the wrong angle. I ran out the door, and through sliding doors in succession, college after college after college – back here, back in England yet again, not elsewhere, yet again not elsewhere.
But somehow…
Changed.
Yeah. I think that’s the word.
