The intersections between here and there aren’t always in the old places. Sometimes the new places generate enough energy to allow access, and ghost images begin to manifest at the margins. So it was for a moment in my childhood - between boy and young man, at 15 I was in a place that was neither here nor there, an overspill council estate demonised by people and peopled by demons. The world was at one of those moments where we could choose this way or that, and there would be consequences. But for now, the skin between worlds was thin and sometimes elastic and permeable.
My whole world was a series of housing estates. The one I lived in, half-finished, and pushing outwards to the limits of the next estate, half-built houses and piles of sand and gravel everywhere, door- and window-frames stacked and leant against each other in labyrinthian patterns. No minotaur here though, not even an adult to stop us from careening through the skeletal half-built houses as if we owned them. No Health & Safety rules or sign of any Risk Assessment, just perfect preparation for a life spent running while carrying scissors.
And then to the next fiefdom, an older estate populated by families fleeing the East of London as the lack of foresight or investment or both left the docks abandoned. That estate was filled with rhyming slang and people who thought the Grapes of Wrath was a pub in Limehouse rather than a prescient blueprint for their journey west. And then, like some mythical world of kingdoms, alliances, heroes and villains, across the next border into a new land. If you like.
In reality, these estates were named for the farms they replaced, not fictitious tribal lands that were consumed by the growing sprawl. But some of the farms were in places that were settlements of earlier waves of settlers - Neolithic, Bronze age, Iron age, Danes, waves of interlopers who took the land by force, spilling blood rather than delivering compulsory purchase orders. Add in some small, short, extremely violent Civil War encounters (and the potential power from disturbances caused by fratricide shouldn’t be underestimated…) and a clever man might see a pattern developing, but not a teenaged boy. But that’s were the intersections are, the places where the ground was defended against aggressors, over and over again.Layer on to that a fresh population of intruders, gate-crashing into the town, confused and bewildered by the speed in which their lives had changed so dramatically from their forebears. And then add a long, hot, dry summer and a boy, and you can see why the crossroads might become a little more fluid and confused than normal.
By mid-Spring, most of the grass had dried away or died away and the ground cracked and crumbled under the endless sun. There was a constant heat haze everywhere, and, mixed with the dust and the pollen and the seeds, every morning seemed clothed in a golden, sparkling mist. But the once-green areas that punctuated the estate were now an arid mixture of dirt and softened asphalt ruined by weeks of drought and abandoned by the children who preferred some shade. I walked through the concrete canyons, tunnels and dusty tracks between the houses, a nomadic tribesman, tanned and bleached by the long weeks of relentless summer. Wandering, mostly aimlessly, avoiding casual contact with the rest of the human race wherever possible. By early afternoon, every day had become oppressive enough to crush any plans. All that was left was to lay on some patch of hard, broken, dead grass, close your eyes, and feel the sun on your face. Even the birds gave up singing most days.