A trip down memory lane.

This was my first visit home for two years.

According to most of the people I spoke to there, I hadn't missed much. But for me quite a lot had changed.

I spent a lot of the time recounting old memories to the friends I'd brought up with me: "That's the shop we used to hang around, that's my old house, I used to fish off those rocks, I've been drinking in this pub since I was 15, etc.... I also incessantly pointed out the new stuff: "thats must be a new build! A Chinese takeaway?what the Hell?!

It was strange seeing everything from my childhood again. Such is the lifestyle of a highschooler in Gairloch that every nook and cranny has a memory attached to it- something as banal as a particular pavement or a short-cut, even. But at the same time everything seemed so distant. Every detail of the village was so familiar that it didn't even register in my head as we walked around, but the living memory of it was irretrievable.

For me it is an environment permanently locked in my school years and its meaning had changed so little that returning to it and trying to rekindle the old Gairloch into the present seemed impossible.

It was really pleasant to be back, though. Enveloped once more by this familiarity, I even became a little competitive, at times, with the people who had moved in since I left. Making sure they knew I was here first.

Which is extremely odd now I come to think about it.

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