There's no Place Like ...

I'm sure my readers will not need the traditional three guesses to complete the well-known phrase that forms my title this week.  It was a hard fought choice, competing against 'Home, Sweet Home' and 'Home is where the Heart is'.  The origin of this last is said to be in 1820's America, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that it stems not from 'the heart' (indicating love) but, far earlier, from 'the hearth' (meaning light, warmth and energy, without which primitive peoples couldn't do without.

One way or another, my thoughts in recent weeks have focused on this idea of home.  A few weeks ago I wrote here about a 'new' book that now graces my bedside after several years of waiting in the wings.  I won't be a plot spoiler for any who might want to follow me through the pages of Howard Spring's "The Houses in Between" but suffice to say that the action of the story takes place against the background offered by a variety of different households, ranging from luxury flats and houses in inner London and a country mansion with an army of servants, through a small cottage in its grounds and a labourer's cottage built in the corner of a field, to the squalor of slums where a family is accommodated in two or three rooms with the barest stick of furniture with which to survive.  The vivid description of these in the book is an art form of itself.

So I've been prompted to recall some instances from my own life.  I grew up in a typical council house.  Ours was one of a small cluster specially designed for (but not strictly limited in their occupation to) farm workers - a breed who, perhaps fifty or sixty years earlier, had been known for the size of their families - and as a result included three generously proportioned bedrooms.  Growing up as an only child, it was thus an accepted fact of life that there was a 'spare' bedroom that I was forbidden to enter.  The reason for this ban, I later discovered, was that therein were stored family trinkets, mementoes and heirlooms, which meddlesome three- and four-year-old fingers could potentially destroy in all innocence.

By contrast, my first dwelling as a married man was a small flat, one of two converted from a semi-detached town house.  I well remember the first social visit by a school friend who, in the midst of conversation, suddenly turned her head and asked 'what was that?'  She had heard the sound of the fridge, which lived in the corner of the lounge, since the kitchen area was too small to accommodate it.  Even after just a few weeks living there, its sound had become to us part of the background and was unnoticed.

On reflection, I now realise that, wherever I've lived - be it permanent or only temporary - I've always gone through a process of 'expanding my boundaries'; sometimes it has lasted only a few hours, in other instances, a week or more.  About twenty-five years ago, I was asked to spend a week or so in the home of my boss's son in Florida, to do some work for him.  On the day of my arrival I had been welcomed, shown the kitchen and told, 'there's tea and coffee in there, help yourself.'  The kitchen of a single man living alone was not the same as that of an older divorcé with a history of domestication behind him (however loosely this influenced - or didn't - his present behaviour).  I remember my hesitation in selecting a cup and spoon with which to operate, and the contrast between this and my confident use of the kitchen just days later.

On another occasion, my family and I moved into a different town and I recall, during the first few weeks that we lived there, feeling very much that this was a 'holiday home' as I walked around the estate to the small general store just two streets away.  It was some while before this frequent walk became part of the 'home scene'.

Rather like the fridge in our newly-married home, one aspect of living in a bespoke block of flats, as I do now, is the cacophony of slamming doors, echoing voices on empty staircases and the clanging of something hard hitting against the metal banisters.  Talking of 'neighbour noises',  there was the time, nearly forty years ago, when I lived in a terraced cottage.  One day, I met my next-door neighbour in town.  That was the first time we had actually conversed, for my back door faced that of the neighbour on the opposite side of my home.  She remarked on this fact as she explained that she would shortly be moving away ... that we should finally speak to each other after sleeping just a foot apart for the last five years!  For all that proximity, I believe the only time I heard any sound through the bedroom wall was a solitary occasion when she and her husband were arguing in bed.

Terraces and flats have this in common, for party walls are part of the structure of both, although the more modern the build, the better they are insulated.  This is something to which I shall shortly have to re-adjust, for I'm in the process of moving to a much older terrace than the flat where I presently dwell.  It will be interesting to compare the noise level there to what I've become accustomed to here.  One thing, however, is indisputable.  After that time of adjustment, and the expansion of my boundaries, home will still be home.