Postcards From Home - Part 4

Wembley, Teampall Sílín and Szczecin

As this is the fourth edition of the Postcards From Home series, I thought I’d add some thoughts on the 11 postcards I’ve received.

Firstly, these are all postcards from friends, so perhaps there’s some bias (insanity) involved. There are, however, a few themes that have become apparent.

The need to escape where one’s from is present in many, which I think is an example of the bias I spoke of earlier, having met almost all in London. Some look back at home with warmth, others with PTSD.

The happiest memories seem to relate to nature, or that perhaps nature informs some of the most vivid experiences in youth. This includes mine below.

I’m really interested in seeing where this goes next, how age might taint or enhance memories and who has come full circle in their relationship with “home”.

If anyone wants to join in, wherever you’re from, please contact me in the DMs.

Dean - Wembley, UK

It’s great to see you B, and after so many years. I think of you often.

Do you remember King Eddies Park? Where we were beaten up by older boys? I took a heroic penalty for 10th Wembley, only for it to be saved. The same thing happened when Tony Currie was charging 5p for charity to take a penalty against him in the estate at the back. We met Stan Bowles there too.

B, do you remember sitting at the back fence in the playground? That small stretch of grass only ever existed in Summer. It was where I first fell in love, aged four. Clara Bo was her name. Describing her to my Mum, I thought she was blue, I hadn’t yet learned to categorise people by race, I just thought her luminous.

B, do you remember sitting on the roof of the changing rooms in Autumn, drunk and shivering, watching the fireworks go off 360 until midnight? Some for Diwali, others for Guy Fawkes.

I still have two parallel scars on my arm from that Summer in 1989, where I smoked grass for the first time and tested how sharp your pen knife was. You always carried it but didn’t use it when we got mugged.

B, do you remember the smell of biscuits from the McVities factory? When the wind blew in the right direction, I was always transported back to baking fairy cakes at infant school.

Everyone I knew who didn’t grow up there thought we were so lucky to live next to the stadium. Free tickets for England games and playing run outs around the complex at lunch time.

B, have you heard about J? Pregnant at 13 wasn’t the last of her troubles. She had her kids taken from her after a stretch in prison. Her and I once made love in a thunderstorm on Barn Hill. I know it happened, but somehow it feels less real than a dream.

B, do you remember H? We were so in love. I used to steal phone cards just so I could speak to her for hours at the phone box around the corner. I would lie in bed at night, looking past the ceiling and the stars beyond, imagining us escaping her strict parents. Do you remember when she fell off the swings in King Eddies and got concussed. I didn’t see her again for 20 years after that.

B, do you remember that time when we promised each other we’d never become them? You know, the others.

B, do you remember me at all?

No, me neither.

Alan - Teampall Sílín, Eire

Where I grew up, this is what I would see on my way to school:

• Sheep.

• Corn fields.

• A black flag on a crumbling castle.

• Additional sheep.

Adolescence arrived and I was convinced that fate had played a cruel trick on me. All of life was happening somewhere else and I wasn’t on the guest list. I was supposed to grow up in Teenage Wasteland, not Teenage Farmland.

I began a concerted campaign of running away from home on a regular basis. It wasn’t so much a cry for help as a cry for an economy train ticket to Dublin. It never lasted more than a day or overnight because (a) I had no money and (b) I’d forget to pack a lunch.

I stopped eating the sheep on my 15th birthday. There was no going back after that. In the draughty village school prefab, I plotted my escape. Aided and abetted by an overly indulgent art teacher and the conviction that I would never belong in this place. Not with the sky gazing farmers, the sheep grazing with doomed determination, the rattling tractors careering along bendy roads, pockmarked with potholes.

My son is 17 now. Same age I was when I left this little hamlet. He lives in the greatest city in the world. His life is full of variety, vibrancy, vitality.

With unerring irony, he loves to visit the place that spawned me. Wants to bring his friends there, show them how wonderful it is. And of course he’s right. The welcome and the warmth we receive when we roll off the coach is a hit of pure dopamine. The things that made me run are now the things that drag me back.

In Ireland we say: you can take the boy out of the bog but you can never take the bog out of the boy.

I am that Bog Boy.

Still don’t eat sheep though.

Ines - Szczecin, Poland

I grew up in Szczecin, a city in northwest Poland near the German border. It’s not a place that tries to impress you. A lot of the buildings are grey post-communist blocks, where older architecture was stripped of its details—sculptures and ornaments removed to make everything uniform. Likewise, people can seem grey or reserved at first, but they’re straightforward, generous, and incredibly honest. Trams still run through the city, and the streets are wide, thanks to the Prussians.

My school was a huge old German boys’ school. It felt more like a fortress than a school, and its size made it feel like it held a lot of forgotten stories. Outside the city, by the many forests, people still forage for mushrooms and berries, and often sell by the road whatever’s in season. The food in Szczecin is really good, homemade and filling, but definitely not flashy.

Szczecin isn’t a tourist destination. But once you spend time there, you realise it has its own quiet character. It’s been through a lot, and it shows, but it also holds onto what matters.