You can take the...
Mar. 30th, 2006 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
undyingkingHad the slightly strange experience today of driving to and then walking around Chelmsford, where I spent most of my teenage years. (This was because T had some stuff to do for work but was feeling too grotty to drive [not anything serious], so I took a half-day to chauffeur her.)
When I moved away from Chelmsford, immediately after leaving school, I was pretty confident I would never be going back: it was a smallish and rather boring town, London and the wider world beyond had been calling me, etc etc.
Since I've moved to Ipswich, though, I've been going through Chelmsford on the train fairly regularly, and each time I scrunch down by the window in case anyone happens to be walking past on the platform whom I knew at school.
Today was the first time I'd driven / walked there, so of course the risk was much greater. After a few minutes T innocently inquired as to why I was being so furtive, and then puzzledly as to what would be so terrible if I did happen to meet such a person. I had no satisfactory answer -- I somehow felt that it would be dreadfully embarrassing and cringe-making, but I'm not at all sure why.
Clearly this is some sort of phobia, as it makes no sense at all, but I wonder what could be causing it. I hated being at school, of course, but that was because of the teachers etc, not because of the other kids -- I got on pretty well with people generally.
Maybe it's something to do with having shaken the dust of that episode of my life off my feet so throughly when I left, 20 years ago. I've never looked on Fiends Reunited to see what they're up to. Ah well, if this was a short story then there'd be a satisfying ending now, but as it is I just drove back home still musing.
When I moved away from Chelmsford, immediately after leaving school, I was pretty confident I would never be going back: it was a smallish and rather boring town, London and the wider world beyond had been calling me, etc etc.
Since I've moved to Ipswich, though, I've been going through Chelmsford on the train fairly regularly, and each time I scrunch down by the window in case anyone happens to be walking past on the platform whom I knew at school.
Today was the first time I'd driven / walked there, so of course the risk was much greater. After a few minutes T innocently inquired as to why I was being so furtive, and then puzzledly as to what would be so terrible if I did happen to meet such a person. I had no satisfactory answer -- I somehow felt that it would be dreadfully embarrassing and cringe-making, but I'm not at all sure why.
Clearly this is some sort of phobia, as it makes no sense at all, but I wonder what could be causing it. I hated being at school, of course, but that was because of the teachers etc, not because of the other kids -- I got on pretty well with people generally.
Maybe it's something to do with having shaken the dust of that episode of my life off my feet so throughly when I left, 20 years ago. I've never looked on Fiends Reunited to see what they're up to. Ah well, if this was a short story then there'd be a satisfying ending now, but as it is I just drove back home still musing.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 05:12 pm (UTC)It begins... (to be continued by the next poster)
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Date: 2006-03-30 11:08 pm (UTC)I was browsing the search engines for the whereabouts of of old school chums, I couldn't help but notice several historical inaccuracies in the histories related on your web site...
;-)
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Date: 2006-03-31 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 10:19 am (UTC)Nice one, do you have a freeform written yet?
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Date: 2006-03-31 10:28 am (UTC)