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Fears
I am moving into a flat I've never seen before on Friday.
Last night I was overcome with nostalgia for my old home.
I used to live in Hillhead, my favourite part of the West End.
It's not as grand or swanky as other neighbourhoods. It's slightly down at heel, rambling, with lush vegetation and old trees growing between the buildings, blocking out light, covering the pavements in parchment leaves.
The grid-plan street-system is riddled with little lanes, shortcuts and back-alleys that only some people know about, that take you through hidden back gardens and past garages full of rusting bicycles and barbecues purchased in moments of rash optimism.
The architecture is homogenous, warm, the light sandstone of the tenements and the gentle crumbling of classical lintels, window-sills and columns softening the regularity of the roads. And the occasional house stands apart from the rows of tenements, roses round the door. If someone has left their close door open, you get a view into the stairwell, lined with ornate 19th-century tiles, the jewel-colours of light through stained glass dropping down the steps around the curving wooden balustrade.
I loved living in Hillhead. It was good to me, and the cheesemongers was just across the street.
So I'm nervous now that my new flat won't be quite the same. Perhaps the boiler won't break down every two weeks, and perhaps the bathroom will be larger than a broom cupboard, and perhaps the oven will actually have a temperature gauge, and perhaps when it rains particularly hard there won't be a mysterious leak into the central rooms from some ancient encircled gutter, and perhaps there will actually be double-glazing rather than old thin single-paned windows.
Oh yes, lots of things will be better, much better. But there was something wonderful about that flat, about the afternoon light through my huge windows, about pulling in the shutters in the evening to keep out the dark and the cold, about the kitchen with its rosy bare brick wall and beautiful view out over the spires and the towers of the West End, about my lovely bedroom fireplace and our huge hallway and the way that the university was no more than 6 minutes' walk away.
It must be nearly 15 from my new place.
Time to buy a bike!
Last night I was overcome with nostalgia for my old home.
I used to live in Hillhead, my favourite part of the West End.
It's not as grand or swanky as other neighbourhoods. It's slightly down at heel, rambling, with lush vegetation and old trees growing between the buildings, blocking out light, covering the pavements in parchment leaves.
The grid-plan street-system is riddled with little lanes, shortcuts and back-alleys that only some people know about, that take you through hidden back gardens and past garages full of rusting bicycles and barbecues purchased in moments of rash optimism.
The architecture is homogenous, warm, the light sandstone of the tenements and the gentle crumbling of classical lintels, window-sills and columns softening the regularity of the roads. And the occasional house stands apart from the rows of tenements, roses round the door. If someone has left their close door open, you get a view into the stairwell, lined with ornate 19th-century tiles, the jewel-colours of light through stained glass dropping down the steps around the curving wooden balustrade.
I loved living in Hillhead. It was good to me, and the cheesemongers was just across the street.
So I'm nervous now that my new flat won't be quite the same. Perhaps the boiler won't break down every two weeks, and perhaps the bathroom will be larger than a broom cupboard, and perhaps the oven will actually have a temperature gauge, and perhaps when it rains particularly hard there won't be a mysterious leak into the central rooms from some ancient encircled gutter, and perhaps there will actually be double-glazing rather than old thin single-paned windows.
Oh yes, lots of things will be better, much better. But there was something wonderful about that flat, about the afternoon light through my huge windows, about pulling in the shutters in the evening to keep out the dark and the cold, about the kitchen with its rosy bare brick wall and beautiful view out over the spires and the towers of the West End, about my lovely bedroom fireplace and our huge hallway and the way that the university was no more than 6 minutes' walk away.
It must be nearly 15 from my new place.
Time to buy a bike!