Durham dreamin'

My children were all born in the northeast of England, the eldest in Newcastle, making him a Geordie, and the younger ones in Durham, making them travel a shorter distance home from the hospital. Last week, the New York Times published an article about this corner of England. It made me nostalgic, homesick even, almost to the point of tears. I hope the link works here:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/travel/lost-in-time-in-englands-northeast.html?referrer=

It's a lovely piece, written as it happens by one of my favourite novelists, Jane Smiley, apparently during her stay in one of Durham University's colleges. She mentions the first street in which I lived in Durham-- Dun Cow Lane-- and describes Durham's appearance of belonging to a time long ago. It's true. It's properly called a city because it is home to a cathedral, but really it's a small town. It's old, and it's folded into nooks and crannies and constrained by its oxbow of a river. 'It did not remind me of anywhere else I have been in Britain,' Smiley wrote.

I agree. It does not remind me of anywhere else at all. I like to quip that, having lived in so many places, I can be homesick wherever I am, but the homesickness for Durham has a particularly poignant quality. Durham is where my life as it is now began and yet, while I am lucky still to have wonderful and dear friends there, I have no material or traditional hold on the place, no real right to feel homesick for it. It's not my hometown nor my husband's. We only passed through, but like magic, were completely different coming out from going in.

(Durham Cathedral with scaffolding, just as a reminder to self that the place was not perfect)