This is going to be odd, because the home I’d go back to was only a home for a year, and it wasn’t even in this country. My brother and I were going to a private school for the first time, and it was a very prestigious school (and even more so now, if you can believe it).
But the thing I remember most fondly is riding my bike to school every morning. I had bought my bike from the factory up North, and I learned how to ride like the natives. Weaving in and out of traffic, past the double decker busses, and riding down the High Street, past centuries-old buildings.
I learned to push my bike in that insoucient way, with my hand on the saddle, turning by leaning, ever so slightly, in the direction I wanted the bike to go. Playing rugby, cricket and field hockey, but not football (soccer) because that was beneath us. All the boys played football in the yard at lunch time, but that was unofficial.
A maths master nicknamed fag (he smoked a lot) and a french master who used his tie as a belt and forever had food stains on his shirt, but who taught us the meaning of existentialism with a live demonstration. He also took us on a long train ride across Europe to behind the Iron Curtain, in the days when that was a scary thing to do.
It was the most influential year of my life, and it’s the only one I can imagine wanting to go back to.