Disorientation

I read with interest the letter from Kate Firks [ FT410:74-75].

She described an occasion where, for a time, she felt very different upon arriving home from a familiar walk (but with a slight detour). I remember having a similar experience: I had lived in my previous home for a few weeks and hadn’t completely explored the area, though it was only a couple of miles from where I had lived for the previous three years. I went for a walk in the countryside in a direction I hadn’t been before, and on returning to the house I felt completely different; as though it was the first time I had been there. The new context of the wider area around my home altered the feeling of the place, but only for a short time, as Kate described.

Ian Arkley

Bronwydd Arms, Carmarthenshire

Kate Firks writes about being able to “take myself ‘out’ of a place so as to feel complete detachment from my surroundings”. I can attest to having that ability and feeling when I was a child; it was quite easy just to stop and let everything fade into the distance. Voices and noises would fade into the background and I would have a kind of out-of-body feeling that was quite calming and not unpleasant. I don’t remember exactly when this ability left me, but it was probably when I was eight or nine.

I also remember at that age waking in the morning and looking around my bedroom and feeling an unfamiliarity sometimes as if the ‘scene’ wasn’t quite right. I recall at least one time looking at my bedroom door, a classic 1970s old knotted pine thing painted over in various shades of gloss, and seeing the keyhole swoop down into view like a last-minute cosmic re-set.

Carl Saville

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