Home is.

There is a house built out of stone
Wooden floors, walls and window sills
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust
This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place where I feel at home

Cause I built a home
for you
for me

Until it disappeared
from me
from you

And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust ...

-- Cinematic Orchestra


Glasgow, 21 January 2004

Nine years ago this morning, the flat that I lived in, the flat that I was asleep in, burned down in the early hours. It was about 4am. I didn't wake to the firemen hammering on the door, it was my flatmate who far too politely (given the circumstances) woke me, tapping lightly on my bedroom door. The whole room was thick with smoke. I grabbed my boots, my keys, and we ran.

I was the last person out by the stairs. We found the firemen halfway down, they had thought no one was home. Some of my neighbours had to come out of the windows. I've never been so scared.

After that, everything changed.

My immediate neighbour died. I think about her often, she was about the same age when she died as I am now. And I miss her, even though I never really knew her. I didn't know that was possible.

It's been nine years but, in many ways, it feels like yesterday. I spent a long time feeling guilty for surviving, I thought she was probably more deserving, and I felt lucky and blessed and selfish and angry and thankful too. These feelings haven't really faded with time.

Afterwards, they demolished the whole four storey building from the top down. I had to go and collect what little had been salvaged. I remember that when I arrived the workmen respectfully stopped what they were doing. I could see that they were standing at the top, in my bedroom. There was no roof and the walls were little more than an outline of old rooms and hallways. I couldn't understand where the air had come from to fill the gaps where the bricks and the floors and the furniture and the people used to be. How could it just be gone? I was shown in to a metal cabin of burnt and tattered belongings. There wasn't much worth saving, and everything was wet and coated with smoke and ash. I came across a pile of her photos and I pleaded with the man in the yellow vest to keep them safe because her fiance wouldn't be up to collecting them yet. I don't know what on earth I thought he was going to do with them.

The keys in the photo above are from the flat.
I keep them in a round silver box which sits inside several others of increasing sizes, like a Russian Doll.
These boxes live in the bottom corner of a cupboard.
Occasionally, I open them up.
I hold the keys.
I try to remember what they were each for.
But the fact is that I never went back up those stairs again, the keys have no purpose because the doors they once opened are no longer there.

For some reason though, I just can't throw them away.