Homing instincts

by Tom Hughes in At home on 01.08.08

Following a second spell of living alone in the big wide world (well, East Anglia) I decided it was time for another breather back at home - the family home.

I could probably cite any number of financial excuses for this. Apparently, the credit crunch is explanation enough for any caprice the grown up world wishes to play: houses are too expensive/houses are too cheap. People are spending too much money/people aren’t spending enough (does it have any influence on the apocalyptic/apocryphal global warming debate, I wonder?)

If I’m honest however, there is simply something pleasant about returning to what you know.

I heard this story on the radio: a couple had moved 100 miles away from the city in which they had been living since who knows when, relocating to a sleepy village in the middle of nowhere - a place whose limited fame had never touched upon their lives in any way.

After realising they had rather more time on their hands than when living among the distractions of the big smoke, they got into tracing their genealogy - seemingly a common pastime for the retired and recently online.

Amazingly, they discovered (through research, not via a bucket and spade) relatives buried in the very churchyard which lay opposite their new house.

A sort of homecoming

The question posed by the radio piece was this: do we all have an inherent genetic homing instinct, calling our bones back to the land of our ancestors?

An interesting thought, but one which is likely to remain forever a moot point.

What is more apparent is that people do return to what they know; what they feel, quite literally, at home with.

This same imperative resulted in surely the world’s most adventurous drive-thru.

Someone I know went to Thailand for their gap year, but on checking into the hotel realised the standards of cleanliness weren’t quite as expected (equally surprising to them was that “things weren’t in English”).

He headed straight out to the Bangkok Burger King to soothe the burn of the unknown, before retracing his steps to the airport and getting on the next flight home.

As for me, I’ve returned to the family home to find it a microcosm of the housing market: I’m in negative bedroom equity, having been bumped down to “the small room” by my gazumping brother, himself moving up the pecking order with his fiancée; the cuckoo in the nest.

Still, my possessions, piled high, fill every nook and cranny of my tiny room, staking my territorial rights.

I’m not going anywhere.

IMAGE by Flickr user guldfisken