This morning I was, at least metaphorically, “Zippin’ up my boots, goin’ back to my roots (yeah)”. Despite leaving the Bristol suburb of Brislington, or Briz as Briz folk call it, over 35 years ago, I have maintained at least one link with it: my dentist. My dentist’s surgery is, and always has been, situated at the end of the road on which I lived until I felt forced to move out of my own home for fear of further domestic violence. It is impossible, I once thought, to return to the area without feeling at least a degree of nostalgia.
The old house looks the same, although the front garden has been paved over for a small drive. I look at the house not with any great memories or even loss, although there is a small part of me who will never forgive somebody that I used to know for stealing it from me. Sometimes, when I at my lowest ebb, I wonder how she can live with herself, knowing what she really did to me physically and mentally, but I do not dwell on it. For once in my life, I was able to move on with a whatever will be, will be attitude. Whatever she thought she had won, I was never defeated by her.
No family remains in Briz and there are no longer any friends left from before I left in 1990. Well, there was one, who I used to like, but he became a fanatical supporter of the Fagash Fuhrer, Nigel Farage, and something had to give. It had to be him. Ironically, he shares a first name with Farage so I am beginning to wonder if there is something very wrong with the name? We were so close once upon a time but you can’t be a friend of a fascist, can you?
After being prodded and poked around the mouth area, I thought I might wallow in nostalgia, driving down the streets that once were mine. I drove past two of my old schools, even though I remember next to nothing about either of them. Then, I drove down the street my grandparents lived on and stopped outside number 40, where I spend a huge amount of time as a child. They’re both long dead and in truth I am not over fond of the limited memories I have of my time there. There will be another time to dwell on that more deeply. Instead, I drove on to the old railway bridge where I used to wait for the trains that never came. The line in Briz was the late, lamented Somerset and Dorset railway and it closed in 1966. I am not sure I was even aware it had closed when I was a child because for some time after the tracks remained and I would sit there for hours in hope of seeing a train. Of course, they never did.
I thought of my old house, which my parents bought in the 1950s and where my mum brought me up and I did not think of either of them. While I have no recollection of my father ever living there, I spent several decades with my mum and I swear I don’t think of her at all when I look at the house. My mum shuffled off her mortal coil some 26 years ago and my dad 14. I am not one of those who think mournfully about them every day, quite possibly because the house I grew up him was a broken home and I recall little in the way of joy and happiness. That is because there was none. And while I have found myself unable to cry this year, despite an alarming death toll among those I know and love, the think I took from my return to my roots today was unhappiness. And the place where I felt at my lowest, bizarrely, was when I was in the dentist’s chair.
That was my unmagical, no mystery tour of Briz. All there were buildings. There were no ghosts because there are no ghosts. I would obviously prefer it if those who have died hadn’t died at all, but that isn’t an option. I left the area and reached the St Phillips Spine Road, which didn’t even exist when I moved away, before joining the M32 and back home to South Gloucestershire. My teeth ached after a thorough examination but not as much as my brain did.
I got home and concluded that I should be thinking about the good times. But where were the good times? Very few were spent in Briz because, frankly, we didn’t have a pot to piss in and couldn’t just go out for something to eat because we had no money or perhaps visit some other people because, being a Dutch migrant, my mum didn’t know any. Maybe that’s how I became the loner that I remain today?
I’m back in Briz again in a couple of weeks for something entirely different and I will be in and out as soon as I can be. The somebody I used to know actually did me a favour when fucking me over and taking my house and in a strange way I am grateful to her. While I have zero feelings towards her these days, and haven’t had since the day I left Briz, every now and then I think: wouldn’t she be pissed off to find out she actually made my life better?
Briz was mine but it’s not mine anymore. And as I find every time I go back, I don’t miss it at all.
