“And so it is said,” quoth the ancient texts that I’ve just made up in my head, “that the Place in which a Man shall lay his Roots is not chosen by the Man, but rather the Place.”

And so it was that this weekend I found myself back in the vicinity of Southampton, the City of Lost Dreams. The circumstances under which I was back in said city (or specifically, the adjacent town of Beastleigh Eastleigh) are not the subject of today’s post; rather, the curious twists of fate that lead someone to return to the same place time and time again are.

My original choice to go to Southampton was based almost entirely on the university campus. The lush greenery, the pleasantly rolling hills of the campus grounds, the pleasant water features—all of these things combined to make me think that “yes, this is the place I’d like to be”. That and the fact that it was one of very few places in the whole country running the English and Music course that I was interested in studying. Incidentally, if you’re about to go to university and you are currently justifying your choice of degree subject by saying “it’s a good general qualification, good for anything, really” then just stop, punch yourself in the face and go and pick something specialist that leads directly into a career you’re interested in. Seriously. It will save you a lot of annoyance a few years down the road.

I studied in Southampton and successfully completed my degree, despite a few early-morning lectures ditched in favour of trips to the campus coffee shop, and one piano workshop which I had to leave in favour of being a bit sick in the Turner Sims concert hall’s toilets. I decided that I liked it there for various reasons, so I took on a teacher training course primarily as a means of staying in Southampton, and also as a means of getting a career appropriate to my skillset. Once that was over and done with, I moved to Winchester, which is a much smaller, nicer and more expensive town than Southampton. But my heart was still in the city of WestQuay.

I spent two years in Winchester, living in The Nicest Flat In The World for the first year and A House That Would Be Quite Nice Were It Not So Mouldy And Smelling Of Gas in the second. Following this, I moved to Aldershot to be closer to my job. I then quit said job and moved back to Southampton into another Flat That Would Be Quite Nice Were It Not So Mouldy But Not Smelling Of Gas This Time because I had a job in, yes, Southampton. Tired of mould, I moved into the place in the city centre that was to become the final resting place of my hopes and dreams for my life that was. During all that time, even when I hadn’t lived in the city itself, it felt like “base camp”, home. A place to be centred. This was partly (or probably mostly) to do with the people who were there—people who were and still are important to me.

Leaving the city behind was tough, as was probably apparent from the blog posts around that period. It was so tough, in fact, that it took nearly all day to say goodbye to four people. In fact, it did take all day, and my overburdened car was not on its way up the M3 until the sun had long since dipped over the horizon.

Now, circumstances, Fate, whatever you want to call it; something has intervened and is dragging me back there. I’m not complaining (except at the cost of petrol or train tickets, both of which are extortionate) but I do get something of a wry grin on my face when I think of the city (and, by extension, its surrounding smaller towns and cities like Eastleigh and Winchester). It’s like a stubborn child that won’t quit until it gets what it wants, tugging on my metaphorical coat sleeves to attract my attention and pointing, oh look, over there, there’s a badger with a gun, can you see? Wouldn’t it be awesome if that was in your back garden?

So what will happen in the long term? I couldn’t honestly say. A lot will depend on the job situation, which still isn’t resolved yet. But let’s just say that there’s something of a quasi-gravitational pull in a south-westerly direction. It may be hard to resist that call for long.