I have spent a good chunk of the day being shown around a part of the city I live in that I thought I knew so well, that I can navigate blindfolded, that I spent years of my life in and realising that so much has changed, new shops, new cafes, and trendy arts spaces. So much too has remained the same. But even in the familiarity of my living, evolving city, there are surprises that have always been waiting to be found.
Snickle
There’s a small alleyway
— a ginnel my mum called it —
between a row of fashionable
terrace housing
full of young professional families
and a “supported living community
at the heart of a lively city”
where inheritances go to disappear
in opulence and
declining
independence.
I’d walked the sum of these streets
a thousand times before;
pushing prams, rolling home after the pub,
wondering lost in thought,
personal crisis and rediscoveries.
But I’d never seen this snickle way before,
though it must have always been here,
sat between a fashionable terrace
and the old folks home.