Looking back can be a bad thing to do.
But sometimes.
It’s good.
1987
In the summer of 1987, I was 18.
That’s the year I was driven from a Derby ‘home’.
To a Newcastle Polytechnic home.
By a now-dead pisshead stepdad that, depending on alcohol content, swung between wife beater and bore.
Paving Stone.
In the summer of 2023.
37 years later.
As I attended some Northumbria University event or other.
I re-stood on the exact same paving stone that I had first stood on.
As I stepped slowly out of the pisshead’s car, 37 years before.
I Tried Hard.
In the summer of 2023 I tried hard to position my feet in the exact same place.
Flat.
Together.
Pointing at The Claude Gibb Halls of Residence in exactly the same way.
I tried hard to see through the dirty windows of the 9th floor of Claude Gibb where I laughed and lived for 12 months, all those years ago.
And I tried hard to compare two moments.
2 Moments.
In the summer of 1987, I was 18.
Stood on that paving stone, I was pleased to be facing an unknown future.
Because I’d had my fill of the fucked-up present that I knew.
And for that, I felt grateful.
Excited.
Alive.
In the summer of 2023, I was 55.
Stood on that paving stone, I was again pleased to be facing an unknown future.
Not because I’d had my fill of the fucked-up present that I knew.
Life’s good.
But because I realised that, in the 37 years between the two most memorable times I’d stood on that one paving stone.
I had avoided something that, back in 1997, worried me more than anything else.
I realised that as I stood on that paving stone in 2023.
37 years after being dropped off in Newcastle.
I realised I had not become the man that drove me there.
2023.
Looking back can be a bad thing to do.
But sometimes.
It’s good.