I was back in England for a coupla days last week. I wanted to see my sisters childrens children. I have none of my own and family is the best way to be remembered so there is really no choice. I want them to think fondly of me when I'm dead.
I spent my childhood in England, not the most successful childhood known to man. Not poor or anything but a fairly lousy family life made worse by a school right out of a Dickens novel. They would all be in jail today.
So i don't quite feel nostalgia though what I am trying to do with my family is instill in them some nostalgia for me once I'm gone. It is hard to miss a place you often hated, and when I think about on England, very rarely, it isn't with very much affection. Certainly, the music of my childhood provides me with absolutely no sense of loss: I have spent my entire life so deep in music it has lost all context.
And weather is ubiquitous though Manchester does feel unique in its constant rain against the grayest of skies: the days break late and night falls before 4pm and in between the constant cloud cover makes it dark even when its light. The drear can be soul crushing or,at times, it can be a wonderful half life: I remember staring out the window in class room when I was, seven, eight years old, as our Latin teacher conjugated verb after verb to the rhythm of rain tracking and trickling.
But I left Manchester when I was eleven for most of my teen years and left to the States once and for all when I was 22 years old so what I most find myself realizing is how English I am . Not really the accent but the way I thank people, my constant politeness and mundane apologetic aggressiveness.
Only once did I feel the tug of the past. I was on a traiin on my way to Scotland and we had just reached the Preston train station. Outside it was raining of course and the town disappeared to be replaced by endless, empty fields of grass. Laura Marling's "Goodbye England" came on my Ipod. The song is quite recent, 2011, but it is a timeless, gentle ode to time and loss and to England, the home I never much loved: