As a society we like labels. They help us categorise and make sense of the general chaos that is life. Lately, I've been thinking about them a lot. A little over three weeks ago, I was a City lawyer with all of the (misplaced) connotations of glamour and importance that phrase conveys. Two weeks ago, I was a Londoner with all of the anonymity and excitement that suggests. In six weeks, I start a PGCE course. Then, I'll be, in turn, a mature student, a trainee teacher and, simply, 'Miss'.
Even now, in my transitional state I have labels: I'm a daughter and a sister. Labels whose meanings have intensified now that I'm back in Northern Ireland and living in close quarters with my immediate family. Indeed, in a small place like Northern Ireland those labels have a further dimension; to some people I'm not quite a person in my own right: I'm so-and-so's daughter/neice/sister/cousin. As my return is recent, I'm largely anonymous when going about my business by myself, but recognisable and waved at and spoken to when accompanied by a parent or my brother. I haven't quite decided whether this is preferable to the anonymity to which I was accustomed in London...
My new home is my childhood home, about a mile and a half outside a large village. The sort of place with two streets which has grown rapidly over the last thirty years as its appeal for commuters was discovered and seized upon. The sort of place where families (like mine) have lived for generations and where anyone still a first or even a second generation resident is considered a 'blow-in' and regarded with vague suspicion. There are a dizzying array of developments encircling the village (inhabited by these blow-ins), where, I imagine, it is possible to live a life of relative anonymity. In the more rural area where I live, without pavements but with cattle-grids, I can name the families living in all but a few houses along the surrounding roads. In London, when an ambulance raced past with its sirens blaring, it was barely noticed as it fought with the general cacophony of city noises. When a siren is heard here, you find yourself listening to see if you can tell where it goes and wonder who it might be for...
Moving back home has stirred up a range of emotions, and I'm still getting used to the rural mentality where people comment on who they saw in the doctor's waiting room and where I receive text messages from aunts which begin "Tell your mum 'X' is dead."
Perhaps London has changed me more than I had realised and my labels don't fit quite so comfortably as they did before...
