Home is where??

They say that Home is where the Heart is…the great collective “they”, the people you speak to in the street, or would have done 100 yrs ago when “they” were the collective consciousness of society that everyone spoke to and about. Not the “they” that people ignore these days. In many places it seems that speaking to a stranger is a no go area where you are in danger of being nabbed by the rozzers for being suspicious and / or taken away for being a little bit mad – talk to strangers…oh how very early last century! (unless of course you are speaking to strangers and stalkers on Facebook, Twitter ….or in a blog)

(c) SJD, 2010

So where is home then?

Where I’m sitting right now is home. It’s where I live and where I’ve made a little nest for my family. It’s a highly untidy, messy, cluttered, full of animals and occasional people nest, but still its home. For now. I love my house, but I can’t see myself living here on the edge of the world forever. It’s my home, but it isn’t Home.

I spent a great deal of my life in Aberdeen on the North East coast of Scotland, but that’s not Home. I remember it with fondness as a place I spent my teenage years, where I went to college and where I had some of the best times ever. I also met some of the best people a girl could wish to meet (including the ever suffering hubby). It was home, for a very long time. But it has fallen into the rose tinted past as a former home.

And then there’s the multitude of homes I had as a child. We moved around an awful lot, always in the same geographical area, but no one house from that time is Home. Although I have to admit that the area is home, if home can be 50 square miles of countryside. When I “go home” I know I’m getting near as soon as I pass the Angel of the North, then when I see the Cleveland Hills I know I’m Home. The area stretching from the Hills, over the moors to the sea. That’s Home.

But for me, as I mentioned in my first post, Whitby will always be Home. I wasn’t born there, in fact I lived there for a very small amount of time. My family is there and I suppose that is what matters.

The countryside around Whitby is Home, even though it extends miles around and branches towards the towns I grew up in before the move north.

(c) SJD, 2010

So perhaps Home is a set of conditions and a mind-set. I say I’m going home when I’m out…but when I head off down to Yorkshire I say I’m going Home. When I see Heartbeat on the telly box I get home-sick but when I’m in Yorkshire and about to start the long drive north…I’m going home.

Things must have been so much clearer in the dim and distant past when people stayed in the same village all their life.

Where is your Home?