The Circle
We grew up at 20 Felbridge Avenue, in a semi-detached house, middle class housing that developed around Belmont Circle. Behind our garden was the nursery and beyond that the disused railway line that linked our imaginations to the local woods. As children we spent a great deal of spare time playing outdoors. Our world consisted of the 'rattler', the local name for the former railway line, that once linked Harrow to Stanmore, and the woods that surrounded the local golf course. We knew these areas like the back of our hands. We even had names for certain trees: the lighthouse, the spiral staircase, the hollow tree. This was our territory that we laid claim to, where we built our camps and invested with our childhood fantasies.
We were an assimilated Jewish family that had spread out from the East End of London several generations back. We still attended synagogue for the main events, the Jewish festivals: Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Purim, but we went to mainstream school and mostly forgot our religion. Our grandparents lived further out, in Mill Hill and Finchley. The family had spread as far as Hampstead and Willesden, part of a north London diaspora. The extended extended family was even further afield, in Boston and Toronto.
Belmont was, as the name suggests, the 'Bell Mount', constructed by the Duke of Chandos in 1728. The artificial mound had a summer-house perched on its summit with a spectacular view over London. The golf course was built subsequently, spreading over the hill like a carpet, retaining this spirit of indolent leisure. The fringes retained the wooded area. We named these woods the 'light side' and the 'dark side,' referring to the density of woodland. On one side we made camps, on the other we raced home-made go-karts kamikaze down the hill.
Returning now there is no 'light side': the area is heavily wooded and the dark side is virtually impenetrable, the pathways long since covered over now that the passage of childhood has gone. Likewise the shops I remember as a child have been replaced or refurbished, their façades no longer recognisable. Only the rear sides hold a semblance of memory, barely changed in their clutter. The demographic culture has changed: the butchers I had my first job in is now Halal, the Belmont Pub now the Cardamom Club. The cinema has gone, as has the fresh fish shop but the chippie remains as does the Belmont Cafe. The house we lived in has also had a serious facelift, smart red brick, as have many others: new doors, new drives, new owners.
The rattler was the local name for the former railway line, that once linked Harrow to Stanmore. We had no idea why it was called the rattler but were filled with childhood speculation: it was where rattle snakes lived: we turned over rocks searching for them, occasionally finding the elusive slow worms, those strangely slippery, legless lizards, which, if we mishandled them, would cleave off their tails. Or, the rattler was the breeding ground for rats, which we knew lived behind the shops that backed onto the old railway line. Our cat brought home a rat as large as a kitten. Or, it was the echo of former trains rattling through our dreams.
Our imaginations were filled with the films of the time: Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Oliver Twist and the Railway Children. The Dickensian merged seamlessly with the images of war-time evacuees and the magic of musical fantasies.
One way led to the woods, the other to the new Harrow & Wealdstone railway line. The remains of the platform was still there, like the relic of a Second World War bomb shelter. As we grew older we used the abandoned train tunnel beneath the bridge to light fires in tyres and concoct even more reckless activities. Our imagination held no bounds, from scaling the steep concrete bank to laying coins on the new train line - turning ha'pennies into pennies.
This was our territory that we'd laid claim to, where we built our camps and played our childhood games. The golfers became the Germans and we were the Brits behind enemy lines - strange relics of collective memory. We were brazen: we'd run onto the fairways and steal the golf balls; we'd lead enemy raids at night and swipe the flags; we'd plan enemy runs from copse to copse all the way to the clubhouse, where the enemy gathered in numbers. We indulged our fantasies to the extreme: fashioning guns out of branches, slicing open golf balls as if we were defusing hand grenades.
Our camps were elaborate and hidden from adult eyes: shaped into willow trees, suspended twenty foot off the ground, burrowed into bramble bushes. The bough of a tree was our meeting space, it's tall limbs a place to hang a rope and swing a tyre.
When the nursery behind our house closed this area became our new territory for a summer, ripe for discovery. We built even more elaborate camps within the log piles, like air-raid shelters or post-Apocalyptic homes, adding carpet and car batteries for lighting. We built an elaborate skateboard ramp, a precursor to the Harrow Skate Park soon to be built in Byron Park.
Returning like this, after forty or more years, seeking traces of what no longer exists, is a circular journey, a passing of time: my circumnavigation analogous to the circle of life. There is a ruination to memory which takes me through a tunnel that spans a lifetime. The return truncates time, bringing images to the surface, like trauma battling through amnesia, like dreams breaking into consciousness.
This is the unheimliche: the unhomely: home become uncanny. It's not just time that is truncated but my entire internal map, like a bird without it's navigation system. Streets I remember as long distances are now just short stretches.
What came first - the circle or the steam train? When did local memory turn into childlike dreams? What I know now changes the memory again. The railway was defunct before I was born, so I have no real memories of it, yet I see the train steaming through, carrying history in its carriages. The train-line would have opened at the end of the 18th Century, the same time that my great-grandparents were migrating to Britain from Poland, Lithuania and Russia.
We were assimilated Jews. My maternal grandfather was born on Wentworth Street, off Brick Lane, and, together with his brother, run errands for the local kosher butchers and anyone else that needed bundles carried. My father's family was wealthier, carrying with them jewellery. The family had spread out from the East End of London, to more affluent areas, and, four generations on, we were now assimilated Jews, attending synagogue for the main events but mostly forgetting our religion.