"It feels as though my childhood is being closed down."
I am 40 years old and my full time job at the moment is to keep my 2 year old son Harry out of mischief. I live near to my mum in Bentilee. I am interested and absorbed by photography and writing. I love the sound of poetry and the impact that words can have.
Inside Lives was excellent. Meeting people in the workshop was fascinating, as was hearing their stories. I am more convinced than ever, that we 'ordinary' people have valuable memories that should be treasured. I feel I have learnt a lot!
Brookhouse Green school has been shut down. The corridors I laughed in are sealed off. The classrooms I grew up in are empty. It feels as though my childhood is being closed down. They'll demolish the school one day, but for now it's being used for local community groups and, 30 something years after I left, I take every opportunity I can to go back there. Here I am, with my son Harry for his first Saturday morning dance class. I watch him secretly from behind the old door, he slides across the parque floor in the school hall that was mine.
I suddenly feel too big in my old small world.
I close my eyes and I can smell what it was to be 5 years old again.
I remember paper and pencils the sound of chalk on enormous blackboards the teachers desk like an island .....
you had to have an invitation to get there.
You could match the child to the house that they lived in by the wallpaper covering their exercise books,70's anaglypta in shades of orange and brown. Big crunchy patterns that almost looked edible. Harry's laughter brings me back to today, I see him stamping around the old hall, he is my echo. Those slices of memory have stayed in my pockets, jigsaw pieces of a whole .. round ... feeling, a picture, smell, taste of the person I was. I see the pieces building up in harry no, childhood never gets closed down
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