On arrival

Oxford from the top of St. Mary’s, during a storm of tropical proportions in Nov 2014 (Note: this photograph is still my desktop background…)

Today marks four years since returning home to Singapore, longer now than the time I spent abroad.

I still remember the first letter that arrived, specifying that I was to be in Singapore by 2nd July 2017, at the latest. Then the second, with instructions to present myself in Kranji Camp II on Monday morning, 4th July, to complete the remainder of my National Service. In the time between the two letters, I’d booked myself the last possible return flight, scheduled to arrive in the wee hours of the 2nd – hardly expecting that I would be re-enlisted less than 48 hours later.

Of course, I wasn’t prepared to come home, not in the least. When June came round, I dusted off my suitcases and took some items to the charity store, mostly pieces of warm clothing that I couldn’t possibly use in sunny Singapore. But the bulk of the packing was left till the night of my departure, or more precisely between two and six in the morning, which is when I made it to High Street and, with minutes to spare, heaved the overweight baggage of my life in the UK onto a bus bound for Heathrow.

The evening before, I’d taken a train out into the Malvern Hills, to read at the opening of the Ledbury Poetry Festival alongside Fiona Sampson, Richard Osmond, Mary Anne Clark, and some brilliant high school students – still one of the most enjoyable poetry events I’ve ever attended. Enthralled by the perfect summer evening, my friend and I boarded the wrong train and found ourselves in Gloucester, with no good connections back to Oxford: all less than twelve hours before I was due to fly.

Somehow, it never really occurred to me to worry, even as we resigned ourselves to an overpriced dinner at the Gloucester station café, that I might not make it back. Then again, it still hadn’t really occurred to me that this was the end.

My earlier version of the first paragraph above read, “…home to Singapore, longer now than the time I spent abroad at university…”. But that seemed an unsatisfactory way to describe those years overseas, or all the years it took to come to terms with myself and the city I was in, build and lose friendships, and put down roots – however shallow – in a place of my own. I’ve written elsewhere about grappling with the questions of what it takes to claim a place; from the politics of voting as a Commonwealth citizen (before I could ever vote in Singapore), to the pang of losing landscapes that were always at the back of my mind.

But it comes down to this: some of my favourite hours in that little city on the Thames were those spent poring over detailed Ordinance Survey maps of the surrounding countryside, smoothing out the creases as if knowing every square inch of those fields and hills would make them mine.

Even now, home in Singapore, there’s something about maps of the city I’m in that stays the eye, reminding me that however well I think I’ve come to know a place, there are always more streets to walk, more names to learn, more hills to climb. More ways, I suppose, to learn to love what I once left behind.