The year I turned 18: It was 1990 and the news was full of riots. But I was dreaming of love and the life to come

It’s 36 years since I came of age in the English seaside. What’s become of my friends and the boy I adored? And could I somehow reconnect with that long-ago me? I headed back to my home town to find out

The house in which I turned 18 was full of clocks. Dark wooden things with aged faces. Every room ticked. If you stood in certain doorways, you could hear all the misaligned second hands racing. I could not understand why anyone would want to count away life like that or decorate their living quarters with so many symbols of mortality.

There was no escaping time. Shortly before each hour, a mechanical whir heralded the first chime. We lived in a retirement town with an elderly and conservative population, which amplified the ticking. Worthing, on the south coast of England, was known as “God’s waiting room”. Death was there in our wide, slow roads and low bungalows, the grey sea mists and blue rinses.

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