Briz belongs to me

My long-awaited memoir (long-awaited by me), AKA a bunch of essays, capturing my uneventful life growing up in Briz (Briz is Brislington, not Bristol: anyone who says otherwise is talking bollocks), is nearing fruition. There are a few more to finish and a few more to try and improve, but generally speaking, I’m getting there. By the autumn, the Christmas stocking filler for your worst enemy will be available, probably in your nearest recycling centre.

Anyway, my project, as I loftily call it, has been given additional impetus by the fact that I have now spent longer living away from Briz than living in it. I left 31 years ago today. (Thanks, Janet.) But thanks to the fact I never changed dentist and I still go through Briz when working, I still feel the connection. Still, Briz belongs to me.

Just this week, I paused for lunch at the top of Sandown Road where, at number 40,  my grandparents Alfred and Nellie used to live. They died many years ago – approaching 40 in the case of Nellie – but the memories remain. And when I am there, I always need to take my voice recorder and note book because things, often tiny things, come to mind.

At the top of Sandown Road, there is a house that used to be a shop and it looks like it, too. Ken Bleathman ran the corner shop in the days when there weren’t supermarkets. He was the tall man in the white coat, with the sleeked back thinning hair and tombstone teeth, who fed the street. At the foot of the hill is the Tarr’s Ice Cream shop and the small factory, if that’s the right word, where the ice cream is made. The shop has barely changed at all since I was a very small boy, stretching up to the counter to reach my tub of ice cream. I took an unnecessary drive past, turning right on the insanely large ‘square’ which is almost bereft of road markings.

I’d be surprised if many, if any, of the people I knew back in the day are still alive. I’ve not seen many of them for, perhaps, 45 years, some for longer than that. But in my mind, they’re still alive and they still look the same. And the house near the top of the road which had new replacement windows long before anyone else did still seems to have the same replacement windows.

And in my dreams, I am feeling guilty about not visiting them, walking past their house, fearing an angry response. They aren’t dead in my dreams but I never knock on the door.

At least on the face of it, little has changed. The very nature of the houses means they don’t look any different, although there are far more cars. Even Sandy Park Road, the main road in the area where the shops and takeaways are, still looks the same, although the little dairy Nellie worked in and Sampsons newsagent have long gone.  So, sadly, has Kay’s, the record shop, not that I ever bought a record there. Maybe no one did and that’s why it closed?

There are no ghosts in Briz because ghosts don’t exist. But they do exist in my mind, by way of my memories. And I’ve written about it in a bunch of essays.  When it comes out, I hope you buy it in your thousands. Around 10,000 and I can probably retire.

Photograph: Bristol Evening Post