I'm back in Derry to see my dad, and my old house still has that familiarly unfamiliar feeling of time passed and preserved. This year will mark the point at which I’ve lived away longer than I ever lived there, and yet I have a sense memory of this house, and the surrounding fields and paths, that feels eternally baked-in. When my son pitches headfirst through its rooms or gallops over its garden fences, I steady and swerve his body to avoid pratfalls and outcrops on which I’ve grazed myself a thousand times. If these walls could speak, they’d probably say, ‘Mind yourself, bloody hell!'
I can trace a chronology of split foreheads, carpet burns, and sprained toes all the way from my old bedroom into the hall at the front, where my brother Conall and I played indoor football.
As I keep my son from collapsing into our kitchen's 12ft table, I realize I know its contours better at child's height than I do my own.
Even this doesn’t really make sense. I left Derry as an 18-year-old, but my thoughts of this house remain fixed on my childhood, at the expense of the many, and more recent, years I spent here as an adolescent. More things survive here from those years than from my younger days, as I discover when I find an Aphex Twin mixtape still occupying a slot in the kitchen’s dusty CD rack.
For the last few years I lived here, I was the same height as I am now, so why am I astonished at the low hanging of countertops or that I can catch my reflection in the mirror that hangs high on the wall? Sometimes, peering at that tired, but devilishly handsome, man in the mirror evokes the same bittersweet feeling of vertigo you get from visiting your old primary school, as you stand 3 ft higher than you’re supposed to, like some befuddled Lemuel Gulliver.
Very little material evidence of my actual childhood remains. My dad and my sister Caoimhe have headed up substantial refurbishments, so that few of the rooms look much like they did when we were growing up. Conall has overhauled the bedroom we shared so it now has a deluxe gaming setup and the home cinema we were cruelly denied as children. Under Caoimhe’s expert eye, the other bedrooms are a lot more "rural chic" and a little less "covered in glow-in-the-dark ghost stickers we got in a packet of Weetabix as promotional tie-ins for 1996’s supernatural family romp, Casper".
It’s been a long time since its walls contained the riot of noise that my entire, 12-person family generated. From 1992, the steady outflow of older siblings to schools, jobs, and lives elsewhere began. But, when we return, we’re pleased to discover just how easily the noise of a toddler, or raucous post-dinner character assassinations, feels the same to me as ever before. It’s a good thing these walls can’t speak, because they’d never get a word in.
... we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity, and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters from 180 countries now financially support us, allowing us to remain open to all and fiercely independent.
Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness, and to demand better from the powerful.
And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.