A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It

Host:
The old train station sat like a relic on the edge of a sleeping town — its bricks cracked, its windows dusted with the fingerprints of time. The air carried the faint scent of rust and wildflowers, that strange marriage of decay and renewal. Beyond the platform, the tracks curved into the horizon, swallowed by a mist that made the world look unfinished, like a memory halfway between dream and day.

Jack stood beneath the rusted clock, hands tucked in his coat pockets. His eyes, those steel-grey mirrors of pragmatism and loss, scanned the horizon where the tracks disappeared. His breath fogged in the cool morning air, and for a moment he looked like a man standing not in space, but in time — stranded between what was and what refused to let go.

Jeeny sat on one of the weathered benches nearby, a notebook open across her knees. Her hair, slightly tangled by the wind, fell over her face, softening the sharp glow of her eyes. She was sketching, though the lines on the paper looked more like memories than drawings — fleeting, imperfect, but alive.

The silence between them wasn’t empty; it was dense, like the air after a confession.

Jeeny:
(Softly, without looking up)
Richard Eyre once said, “A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination.”

(She glances up, smiling faintly)
You ever feel that, Jack? Like some places live inside you longer than people do?

Jack:
(Smiling thinly)
Sure. Every place I’ve left still hums in the back of my head. Some louder than others.

Jeeny:
That hum — that’s what he meant. The place doesn’t die when you leave it. It waits inside you, reshaping everything you create.

Jack:
(Quietly)
Or haunting everything you can’t.

Jeeny:
(Laughing softly)
You always find the shadow in the sunlight.

Jack:
Some memories burn brighter in the dark.

Host:
The wind swept through the station, stirring the dust into a soft, swirling dance. A distant train horn echoed through the valley — long, mournful, like a voice calling to something that would never return.

Jeeny looked up from her notebook, her gaze drifting toward the sound.

Jeeny:
When I was a kid, there was a tree at the edge of our town. Huge. You could see the whole valley from its branches. I used to sit there for hours, making up stories about the world — who I’d be, what I’d do. I think that tree still lives somewhere in my mind.

Jack:
(Watching her)
And what does it say to you now?

Jeeny:
It says, “You became what you dreamed — but you forgot how to dream.”

Jack:
(Softly)
That’s cruel.

Jeeny:
No. It’s true. Childhood isn’t cruel. It’s just honest.

Host:
Her words settled into the quiet like pebbles sinking into water — small, but deep enough to ripple the soul. Jack’s gaze drifted toward the far end of the tracks, his expression shifting, softening.

Jack:
There was a field behind my grandfather’s house — wild grass, tall enough to hide in. I’d spend hours lying there, staring up at the clouds. I thought the sky was endless. Thought life was too.

Jeeny:
And now?

Jack:
Now the sky’s just distance. Something to measure, not to marvel at.

Jeeny:
(Smiling sadly)
You see? That’s what places do. They teach us wonder — and then spend the rest of our lives asking us to remember it.

Jack:
(Sighing)
Maybe that’s why we travel. To find the pieces of our old selves scattered across maps.

Jeeny:
Exactly. Not to escape, but to return — to the part of us that believed everything mattered.

Host:
The sunlight pushed through the clouds, spilling across the platform. Dust glimmered in the light like tiny constellations. Jeeny closed her notebook, tucking a dried leaf between its pages.

Jack noticed the gesture.

Jack:
(Softly)
You always keep little pieces of places, don’t you?

Jeeny:
Always. A leaf, a stone, a train ticket — things that remind me life’s worth collecting.

Jack:
And what do you do with them all?

Jeeny:
I keep them in a box under my bed. A time capsule of all the selves I’ve been.

Jack:
(Smiling)
You think you’ll ever open it again?

Jeeny:
I already do, every time I create something. Every story I write is just another place remembered.

Jack:
So imagination is memory disguised as invention.

Jeeny:
Yes — and memory is the heart’s way of saying, “I’m not finished there yet.”

Host:
The train horn sounded again, closer this time. A low vibration rippled through the ground, through the wooden planks beneath their feet.

Jeeny stood, brushing the dust from her coat, while Jack remained seated, eyes distant, thoughts unraveling like smoke.

Jack:
You ever wonder, Jeeny, if we outgrow places?

Jeeny:
No. I think they outgrow us — and we keep chasing their ghosts.

Jack:
(Softly)
I came back here today because I thought it would feel smaller. But it doesn’t. It feels exactly the same.

Jeeny:
That’s because it’s not the place that changed — it’s you.

Jack:
And yet… standing here, I feel twelve again. Like I could step on that train and go anywhere.

Jeeny:
(Smiling)
Then maybe the child in you isn’t gone. Maybe he’s just been waiting for the whistle.

Jack:
(Quietly)
And what if I missed the train?

Jeeny:
Then build another one — in your mind. Imagination is how we revisit the places life won’t take us back to.

Host:
The wind rose again, carrying the scent of rain and rust. The air shimmered faintly with the sound of the approaching train — steel and memory, thunder and nostalgia.

Jack stood finally, his silhouette long against the light.

Jack:
You think that’s why artists are always haunted by childhood?

Jeeny:
Of course. Childhood is where imagination first took root — and every artist spends the rest of their life watering that same soil.

Jack:
Even when it’s barren?

Jeeny:
Especially then. Because that’s when you realize the miracle — that even the dry ground remembers rain.

Jack:
(Softly)
You make remembering sound holy.

Jeeny:
It is. To remember is to reinhabit. Every memory is a small resurrection.

Host:
The train pulled into the station with a sigh of steam. Its silver sides glowed in the evening light, reflecting the faces of strangers stepping into or out of the moment. The doors slid open.

Neither of them moved.

The silence returned, deeper now, carrying the heartbeat of something unspoken — understanding.

Jack:
Maybe he was right, you know. About places fertilising imagination. Maybe that’s why we never forget them — they planted something inside us.

Jeeny:
(Softly)
Yes. And imagination is how we keep tending it.

Jack:
So every dream is rooted somewhere real.

Jeeny:
And every place you’ve ever loved is still dreaming through you.

Jack:
(Smiling faintly)
You always make it sound like nothing’s ever truly lost.

Jeeny:
Maybe nothing ever is — it just transforms. Like rain into river. Like memory into story.

Host:
The train whistled once more, then began to move, slipping down the tracks into the gathering dusk.

The two of them stood together in its wake, the echo of its departure blending with the breath of the wind.

Host:
And as the twilight deepened, they both understood what Richard Eyre had meant:

That the landscapes of youth do not fade — they evolve within us.
That the cities, the trees, the streets that shaped us become the soil of our imagination,
feeding every thought, every creation, every ache of nostalgia.

That to return to those places — in person or in memory —
is not to revisit the past, but to touch the roots of wonder that still grow quietly beneath the surface of who we are.

Host:
The station fell silent again.
The stars began to appear above the mist.
And beneath that endless sky,
Jack and Jeeny stood in the echo of remembered places —
their hearts blooming, once more,
in the fertile soil of memory.