Last week’s solar eclipse stirred an unexpected memory. As I stood outside in my garden watching daylight briefly change – albeit not as dramatically as I’d expected – I realised I was standing in almost the same place I’d been during the eclipse of the 1990s. Back then, though, I wasn’t at home. I was completing work experience in the council offices that once stood here. Those offices have long since disappeared, and my house now occupies the same piece of land.
Before the council offices, the site was home to a hospital. And long before I was born, my great-great-grandfather died there.
It made me think about the many lives a single place quietly accumulates. Buildings come and go, and generations arrive and leave. Yet the ground remains, gathering stories. Some of which belong to us, while others belong to those who came long before. But occasionally some of the stories brush against one another. And perhaps that’s why some places feel familiar even if we don’t yet know why.
R. H. DIXON 