What does it mean for anywhere to be our hometown?
Do the streets remember all the feet that have ever walked them?
Are the reflections of wide eyes frozen in the panes of shopfront windows?
Does the laugher, the arguments, the tears, the cries -
does it echo on through the underpasses and across empty car parks?
Once we go do we leave any trace at all?
Or are our tracks simply painted over?
Buried beneath the gleaming towers of each new regeneration project?
Should we pin our hopes on eavesdropping on a fragment of conversation long past?
Or have they all been swept into the endless suburban thrum?
Our memories, once faded from our own minds, all swallowed into the hungry waiting earth
Does the hometown I think I know so well - does it really know me at all?
We like to say we know it as well as the back of our hand
But how well can we really know anywhere?
Is my hometown the same as the man who lives next door?
And is his the same as the man after him?
Or does it put on a face to meet each face it meets?
Does it don its best suit for royalty but not bother for the hoi polloi?
We can't possibly move in every circle at every hour
Really, we're all strangers in the place we call home
Stranger or not, you can't help but build a picture of a place after a while
It might only be my blinkered vision but it's the only view I've got
And over time I've come to paint in quite a lot of the detail of my hometown
I've laughed at her jokes and her dry sense of humour
I've had heated debates and admired her wisdom
I've danced to her music and been inspired by her creativity
And I've seen her flaunt the wonderful patchwork coat she never takes off
I've tasted her food and tried to recreate the flavours
And I've been welcomed inside her churches and mosques and temples with open arms
I've read her books and been moved by her art
And I've seen her question every value she's ever upheld in the name of progress
I've seen her flourish and I've seen her grow
But I've also seen a darker undercurrent that's never far from bubbling to the surface
For my hometown is also a terrible neurotic
She's quick to lash out and struggles to forgive
She's a drunk, a thief, an arsonist and a fraud
She finds it hard to trust and rarely lets her guard down
She doesn't have many true allies or defenders but also doesn't think she needs them
She's very much in need of love
Well she's got mine
For I may not know her well but I don't know any other
And though she may forget me she'll always be in my mind
For my hometown is me