Can Harry and Meghan escape from the need to feel consequential?

In the latest in his series of reflections about place and pathway, Will Gore finds comfort in communion with his surroundings

A simple brick wall helped a young Will find joy in life’s minutiae (iStock)

I suppose there are times when we all feel a bit isolated. Not lonely, necessarily, although of course the two can go hand in hand. Indeed, a sense of remoteness doesn’t always require an absence of physical proximity to other people. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the present royal rumble, perhaps that is how Harry and Meghan feel right now.

When I was a little boy, maybe five or six, shyness occasionally begat detachment. I don’t recall ever feeling particularly sad about it, but I certainly remember periods when I spent playground breaks largely on my own. To occupy myself I would make slow circuits, just looking at the minutiae of the place.

The school was not large – it only housed three year groups, so probably there were 160 pupils or so in all. School buildings bordered two sides of the playground; on another was a flint wall, over which was the graveyard of the next-door church; and along the last side was a wall of weathered red brick, which demarked the boundary of a neighbouring home.