" I still see my childhood bedroom exactly as it was, the pink walls and floor with the swirly patterns, the bedroom window looking directly out onto the garden. The little inlaid wardrobe to the left, the old brown wardrobe to my right. There's that little shelf near the door my mother kept my night light on. My single bed faced the door. A dressing table complete with mirror faced the window. It was so cold in there, sometimes when I daydreamed I lay on the bed with my old auntie's bedraggled fur coat over me, my smoky breath coming out in quick bursts as I pretended to be someone else, or pretended to be somewhere else. When I rose I left an imprint on the bed like a criminal chalk outline. The room was arranged exactly the way my mother wanted, it couldn't be any other way. Sometimes there'd be the glow of a two bar electric fire when the nights were really cold and a hot water bottle tucked under the various shaped blanket cut outs and shapes that decorated my bed. You had to be imaginative to stay warm.
I go there inside my head all the time and it is always as I remember it. I can't imagine how it must look now, I'm not sure I want to. I'm sure it conforms to the designs currently in fashion, maybe a wood panelled floor, oak floor boards if they can afford it, or linoleum if they can't, a cheap substitute but popular these days. Whitewashed walls and oak effect shelving, a minimalist dream. All a million miles away from the bedroom I remember. I can only remember it the way it was, that's the way it has to be.
I now have a better understanding of the word 'hiraeth,' a Welsh word that has no exact translation, it is a word for longing, a craving for the past, a place, or someone. In Levels of Life Julian Barnes had found a German equivalent 'Sehnsucht,' "a longing for something" (p.112). I wonder if someone has to die before you feel hiraeth or Sehnuscht, or maybe a broken love affair or a falling out will suffice. I do not have the answer."
