One of the strange things to reflect on is how much time I am spending at the moment within my childhood and early life. Apart from organising a 50th anniversary gathering for the drama department and theatre we all worked in when I was in my early teens, I was also yesterday back in the immediate area I lived until the age of 8.
I write this blog mindful I have a roof over my head. I do not have war raging around me. I have the right to live in the Country I call home. I have sufficient to pay my bills and I have the love of an amazing partner of 24 years. But I still find this train journey and this week a time to explore.
As an only child who went off to board into charitable schools from this age “Home” is a debatable concept. I never knew my father, was brought up by my grandmother, and my mother worked away in London. I had a happy but quiet early upbringing. The few friends I had at 6 and 7 I then lost when I want away. Then the few friends I made at my first boarding school I lost when I moved to the next school. I learned to be self-reliant, to go relatively unnoticed, and to be useful around the place.
Yesterday I was at a playreading about a University reunion and, whilst the exceedingly dramatic revelations of these characters never happened to me, I was struck by my own growing up and not really ever being part of a band or team or gang or clan.
I quickly became part of the theatre world – with a first theatre company when I was 15-16. These workplaces and communities became my Home.
It is only in the last few years that I have realised how hidden from reality I became whilst at my senior school. I have learned from others of the amazing queer scene which passed me by, the antics in the 6th form club which I don’t think I ever visited, the bullying and stresses on some of my peers, and the abuse some suffered and kept quiet about for decades when there was no protection from the staff they should have been able to confide in.
So for me Home is a very conflicted and strange muddle of things.
Yes – it s Cheam where I grew up, but if life-long friends are part of what home is all about then that was curtailed by boarding school. I did grow up in a very safe and loving world with my Nan – and for that I am forever grateful.
Then it is also School but here I was unaffected by trauma (I think) but in recent years what felt to be a safe world, I learn now, was actually masking many hidden dark sides.
So is Theatre my home – well yes I think it is. But that is a very transitory world and, especially in my school days there were hundreds of people passing through my world and, as an admin / company manager, I chose not to get too close to most.
There is a reason, I suspect, the universe has helped me find my lovers and partners – they each have strong families and a deep connection to Home and Place. Something I am only now knowing is missing from my DNA really.
They learned how to weather the rough and tumble of having brothers & sisters, and the noise of a big party at a shared dinner table. This is something I find very challenging and those who know and care for me ‘get this’.
They all had strong home and school friends. I was struck at yesterday’s reading there were folk there who first met at age 6 and are still best friends. It is through having lovers and partners that I have found deep long term friendship – and for that I am eternally grateful.
I did have a few years when I gained a wonderful Step-Father who I loved spending quality time with in my holidays. He suddenly died whilst I was at Uni and so I never had the chance to have him in my life as an adult. He and my grandmother, who died shortly after, feel to me core influences on my life.
So thank you Nan and Cheam for starting my homelife, to Pete and my Theatrelife at school and beyond for giving me a path to follow. And of course my thanks for my mother who inadvertently found me in her life when she was still very young, and chose to give me life.
And now back to organising the 50th reunion of my first theatre family who will all be a wee bit older than they were when they were amazing creative colleagues 1972 to 1976 ish. Most I have not seen for 40-45 years.