We spent our holiday in North Yorkshire.  This is a region I had driven past or travelled through on journeys further north, but never before stopped in or explored.  We discovered an utterly beautiful combination of dramatic coastline and glorious moorland.  Each way we turned, a new vista revealed itself.  And so, another part of my personal map of the UK was coloured in.

Since this imaginary map has taken a lifetime, so far, to collate, it can create strange juxtapositions.  We were north of York, where the memorable visit occurred in 1981, hoping for a ‘back up’ offer, should my brazen, daring application to the University of Cambridge be rejected.  “Yes, I want to come to York. No I don’t really want to come to York.  I only want to come to York if I don’t get in at Cambridge… but please offer me a place anyway…” churning through my head as I walk out  to the university in Heslington, in the endless dark, for my first ever university interview, unsure about buses, the idea of a taxi completely alien, having misjudged the distance so that I arrive with only minutes to spare, footsore and wet. 

Decades clash against each other.  What would happen if they met, this nervous, hard-working, bookish 18 year-old, dressed in her brand new ‘interview suit’, some moderate chain store best (probably Marks and Spencers, which was posh in our family), making her first independent journeys? Whose distinguishing characteristic really was the love of reading and going to the theatre, determined to seek out frankly scary institutions where she might be allowed to learn more?  How shocked, disappointed or disillusioned might she be to meet the grey-haired, unremarkable 56 year old, in unflattering shorts and hiking boots, also a little foot-sore and peering at a map for reassurance.  Well, for a start, they would recognise each other.  Because I now look like my mother and my daughter looks a little like me.   We would see the generations in each other.  And we would find things to talk about:  we could compare the 1981 RSC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Bridge production I saw recently.   I could reassure myself that Jane Austen would continue to delight, that TS Eliot’s poetry was indeed a life-long love, that music and singing would be a source of pleasure, solace and society throughout my life.

Would I try to change anything?  Yes, perhaps.  I’d try to encourage myself to be a little braver.  A little more daring, a little more centre stage – not in any one else’s life, merely taking part in one’s own.  I’d suggest that my background has engendered something I’d caricature as a ‘northern sense of lack of entitlement’ (‘eh, lass, that’s not for the likes of us…’), has created a fear of over-reaching, makes me assume that I’ve already had more than I deserved and perhaps, therefore, leads me to settle for less.

But I’d also suggest to my younger self that the same feeling helps me to appreciate what I have, and that I will have much;  I’d tell myself that my young instincts are right and studying the subject I love will give great pleasure and fulfilment, will shape and enrich the rest of my life;  I’d encourage myself to have confidence in my intellectual ability; I’d share that one of my school friends becomes a life-long friend and that relationships begun at university will last through the decades; I’d tell myself to rejoice in my youth and health and energy.

Of course, I would tell myself not to worry.

I’d tell myself that there is always more to learn, to read, to discover, and that at 56 (now 57) I haven’t finished yet.

And I’d tell myself that I was going to see some astonishingly great theatre.