Train tracks, parakeets, making space and wearing stones.

(Strap in, readers. This one goes on a bit…)

1995 — 2011

Where you come from isn’t always where you belong.

I grew up in Battle. That sounds dramatic… For those of you who haven’t visited that historic and twee little town, shame on you, but also, don’t worry too much. You can walk around the entire place in under half an hour, there’s only one decent coffee shop — and if the scarecrow festival isn’t on, WELL, there really is no point. Save yourself the trouble and stick on an episode of Gilmore Girls, it’s almost uncanny.

I had a safe and mostly steady childhood there; walking to school every day over the cricket field behind the pretend castle, and coming home to a calm little cul-de-sac up the road from the station. The back of our house was only a row of garages and gardens — a very steep drop — and a wall of trees from the tracks. I’d hear trains coming and going on particularly still summer nights. In winter, after the leaves fell and the mulch had frosted over, the platform announcements would carry on the wind. My friends would complain about the noise when they came for sleepovers, and ask me how I could stand it. Everywhere I’ve lived since then has been within reach of a railway.

I always say, it was a great place to grow up. But when I came back after uni, quite unexpectedly, I realised quickly that… it wasn’t me.

*

1993 — present(?)

Where else do I belong?

I have another home, and half a family, in Australia. I grew up with a ten-pound pom mum (that’s why I speak a bit funny) who moved back over here for love in 1988.

I’ve never lived there long-term, but I’m a citizen on paper between embossed squares of leather and have probably visited enough times and for enough weeks to accumulate a good year or so of residency — why do I always feel the need to say that?

I often wonder, how can I feel like that? Like I belong somewhere so far away, have only seen certain sides of, and never truly set up camp?

Still, I yearn for it sometimes, with my entire body, and whatever tired old organ is buried in my chest. I can’t explain the pull — it’s intangible but firm. I can’t say it’s the culture, or even my family ties. It’s in the air. The smell of hot tarmac, tea tree leaves and factor 50 sizzling on T-zones. The sound of parakeets returning to roost at the beach in the evenings — and the bendy ‘i’ in ‘flat white’. The blue of the sky that goes on forever, much further than ours.

I may well end up there, one day. That passport (with a golden kangaroo and emu facing off on the front) is safely stowed in my back pocket, slowly wearing a hole through to my chub rub shorts.

*

2019 — 2022.

Do you belong because people know you?

I dated a guy once — would you believe? — who was well known locally, in this town and its little brother Leonard. Mostly because he regularly roller-skated along the seafront which caught a lot of attention, but also because he had the best smile probably in a hundred miles.

When he and I would walk through town, innocent people would pass, smiling, waving, giving him an ‘alright’ — raising eyebrows and metaphorical cups. He’d respond warmly, matching their energy effortlessly. Then we’d continue walking, I’d turn to him and say ‘who’s that?’

It would be 50/50. Half the time he’d be able to give me a full character profile, follow invisible strings and unpick whatever faded tapestry they came from — at the same time adding a crucial corner piece to the puzzle of him I’d been lovingly poring over on my living room floor since the day we met… then the rest of the time, he’d shrug, and say ‘no clue’. We’d laugh.

After a year living on Silchester Road (the quiet end), I became that person too. Once it was safe to, friends would come and visit me at my place — the tiny flat with shoddy floorboards, sash windows that whistled and a ‘bath tub’ that was about the breadth and depth of a banana cake tin. They’d obediently follow me through the window out onto my patch of roof then patiently listen as I told them all my lockdown stories, point up at all the windows I’d spied in then down at the gardens I’d have died for. I told them I’d befriended the fox living among the flowerbeds — that I planned to get him tattooed. Then when my adorable, bizarre tour of the place I didn’t and couldn’t leave for too many months came to an end, I’d take them for a coffee on Kings Road.

That’s when it would happen.

It was when I’d realise, time and time again, that I knew people but didn’t really know them all. Because as we strolled down the street, from the edgy opticians past the piles of forgotten gem furniture, the beauty salon whose name nobody seems to be able to pronounce, and the bakery where they apparently sell a ‘flat black’ coffee… I’d see, smile at, and even ‘alright?’ what felt like a whole train carriage’s worth of people.

The visiting friend would ask, ‘how do you know them?’

And I’d reply, either — ‘we went to school together, and I was her prom date. She’s been married once and is now engaged with baby number two on the way, and she’s working at the estate agents next to the charity shop right now but also training to be a lawyer, she’s coming to my mum’s 60th next year’ — OR — ‘no idea… we’re just faces we know’.

*

2022 — 2024.

Letting someone else belong with you.

When he left (not the rollerskater, a more recent one), I went through a period of mourning for the place we’d made together. I’d shared my hometown with him, not for the mere fact that he’d moved down here from that city up north with all the roundabouts, but because I could tell he needed somewhere.

He’d never had anywhere, really. And I remember seeing a light come on beneath his heavy brows as he settled by the sea — not literally, he hated the beach.

Before long he was asking if we could go to ‘the place off Queens Road with the freshest pizza’, expressing a preference of supermarkets, and following routes on foot without checking his digital maps.

He’d ask for ‘our usuals’ when we visited our almost-local, and formed a friendship with the genius who made my cucumber margaritas.

Soon it got serious. By which I mean, we’d be walking past a terrace, along the seafront or through a cute twitten and he’d nod or point (subtly) to secretly say ‘that one would be nice’.

So after he was gone, I was suddenly surrounded by a lot of haunted houses and sad shopfronts — old faithful cocktails that didn’t hit quite right and coffees I couldn’t taste past the first burn. He’d tainted my town. The one I’d given him, to belong in.

I took photos of places when I’d pass them. Our home of 10 months on Mount Road, with pure white seagulls painted above the front door. The pizza shed that’s been shuttered up for over a year — I even saw their enormous oven up for sale on Facebook Marketplace. The house we viewed with the pink door on Plynlimmon Road. The One Stop-slash Post Office I only recently felt brave enough to take a parcel to. The flat we offered on, round the corner from my parents’, that I never really saw us in.

I tell people I get tattoos to reclaim my body and feel more at home in my skin. (Also, they look cool). At some point I realised I had to do something similar with my town. I had to go to each place, and make new memories of my own. Something else had to shift and peel away, too — the festering resentment I felt at his rejection of the space I made for him, and the things I shared with him. Instead I needed to admire myself for that kindness and bravery.

I gave him a place to belong, in me and by the sea. And now both are mine again.

*

2026 — ?

Will I belong here forever?

You’ve seen — or heard — some snapshots of my twisting timeline now. I often find myself reflecting, wondering if I should be trying to find a home, another chapter, elsewhere. But where else is there? I do wonder.

We all know about the Crowley curse. So it won’t surprise you that I have collections of hagstones in every corner of my flat. They’re in Selenite bowls on side tables, or the cheap chipped dishes I adopt from charity shops — they’re tied on light pulleys, sitting beside my computer monitor and spilling out of a big hamper in the fireplace. I wear them around my neck. Some are even sunk into my freshly set patio.

I find them on the beach within seconds of stepping off the pavement, and I know it’s because I wasn’t born here — not in the Buchanan or the Conquest, or any living rooms in St Leonards. It could be argued I was a DFL of sorts at the tender age of two but with a Dad from Bexhill and a Mum from Sydney… It’s complicated. So, I suppose the stones feel they can be seen and held by me — even dropped in my pocket — because there’s no risk of loss on their part. I used to think maybe they wanted me gone, but I’ve reframed it — they know I won’t go, but if I did, they’d let me come back.

If they could speak, they’d say in undoubtedly croaky tones ‘go about your business, we don’t own you’.

All of this to say… My choice to be — to belong — here is evident every day, and it may well change, but for now I’ll stay.

*

Thank you for reading. It was a particular treat to read this aloud to an audience of over 80 people, on a summer’s eve amongst some castle ruins. Thanks also to Hastings Writers Workshop for that.