31 Postcodes - Poem 29

 

A wee dance

We rent two months in this Arbroath semi,

its owner moved on to care nearby,

a life left imprinted in dirt-brown carpets,

mid-century furniture, neat flowerbeds.

History hums, it’s warm to the touch.

We’re sleeping in someone else’s tent,

make do, dress up, keep up the dancing.

Grandma arrives with her house in a van.

Her dog’s unhappy, vomits too often.

The carpets really can’t take any more.

Then it’s time to move on quickly.

This house needs love, we’re promised elsewhere.

Hardly unpacked, we pack up again,

the books, the drawings, the oldest photos.

 

Here we’re a whisper, barely a sound.

RF 2021

Video/audio for this one here.

This is one of the shortest stays to make it into this project. Some readers have been amazed by the number of places I’ve lived but I don’t think it’s that many really. I’ve read books about people who’ve moved a lot more (some people who were in the care system, for example). I suppose it does give a very different life experience if you move less but I only know my own experience so it just seems (kind of) normal to me.

In summer 2004 (I was 37) we had to leave beautiful Auchmithie and move, quick as a flash, to a house on the other side of Arbroath, over towards Crombie Park. It was a faded semi in a quiet cul-de-sac on the edge of town and we were the first renters after its owner had moved to a care home. We were lucky to find a place so quickly and also that the helpful firm and family member of the owner letting it were flexible and didn’t hold us to the minimum 6 month rental (we were only in this house for a couple of months). Not long after we moved in my Mum arrived from England to join us and we started the serious hunt for a more permanent home for all 4 of us humans (Mum, Mark, Heather and me) and my Mum’s elderly and decidedly grumpy cairn terrier (Ailsa). Quite a lot of Mum’s stuff had to squash into the little Arbroath house with us all (though some went into storage too, I think) so it was quite a tight fit. Mum didn’t like her room in this house (it was in a little extension on the side downstairs and was small, dark and gloomy) so she was particularly keen for us to find the new place quickly. Her face could be very expressive.

But no matter how much we tried to hurry, the process still took a little time so we had a few late summer months in this house. It included some gardening time for Mum (and others), some nursery time for Heather at one of the primary schools, ongoing dance lessons (this was peak Angelina Ballerina era) and lots of visits to Crombie Park because it was so nearby. Arbroath had been our nearest town since we had moved to Scotland in 2002 so we knew it pretty well but it was nice to see it from a different angle. It doesn’t always have the best reputation but we’ve had great times there (it has the sea, much history, many cafés, some great playparks, the college, and it’s flat so it’s good for pushchairs and wheelchairs). Also, being a seaside town and a military one, it has quite a turnover of new arrivals (and departures).

At some point we did find a house to buy that suited our now extended family but we just couldn’t find anything near to Arbroath so this one was slightly further north – on the edge of the next town up the coast (Montrose). So tomorrow (only 2 posts left now!), that’s where we’re heading.

This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.