Having recently accepted the inevitable and become a suburban dad, we made the obligatory half-term trip westward to visit grandparents last month. As our eldest child had enjoyed learning about the Stone Age in primary school, we decided to stop-off at Stonehenge along the way. 

You begin to sense the inevitable surrender to mediocrity

I know the site well, because I grew up not too far away from it. The view of the stones from the rear window of a car driving along the A303 is very familiar to me from childhood, as indeed are other megalithic sites, like Silbury Hill and Avebury Stone Circle, Waylands Smithy and Glastonbury Tor. 

In my late teens, I became very interested in these places after finding a moth-eaten copy of the 1970s classic Mysterious Britain by Janet and Colin Bord on my parents’ bookshelf. I then visited lots of these sites again as a young adult. At that time I also read anything I could get my hands on which might tell me what these places meant or signified. Looking back, I suspect they haunted my dreams as I was becoming an adult simply because of the childhood memories associated with them, rather than their mysterious profundity invoking some ancestral power within. 

As you become an adult, your options narrow. The oceanic, unexplored horizon which envelopes you as a child recedes out of sight. You realise that achieving anything will involve drudgery and hard work. You learn that making mistakes can have permanent consequences. No-one will come to the rescue anymore. You begin to sense the inevitable surrender to mediocrity. Soon you’ll be hemmed-in by needing a steady income, somewhere half-decent to live, food on the table, with just some Saturday afternoon recreational pursuits to keep you sane. A bit like what J. G. Ballard called “the suburbanisation of the soul”.

Maybe those haunting old sites promised to be an antidote to the suburbanisation of my soul. Their unexplained character is suggestive of that unexplored horizon of childhood. For me, they really were places of childhood memories: sunny Sunday afternoon picnics aside a vast megalith in the village of Avebury, cackling with laughter as my sister and I rolled at breathtaking speed down the steep sides of Silbury Hill, or camping out on the Somerset plains with the vast, misty silhouette of the Tor shimmering in and out of sight at dusk.

My last visit to Stonehenge was in my very early twenties on the Summer Solstice in June 2002. The changes to the site since then are immense. There is now a visitor’s centre constructed of the chrome, steel, glass and the dark grey slate flooring I recognise from developments like More London, Westside, the new Wembley complex — the sort that characterises hundreds of other 21st century regenerations in cities and towns across England. 

You also have to pay to visit now — £24.00 for adults and £14.40 for kids, making our family pitstop come in at over 50 quid. After choosing from the not very standard lunch options in the café (chicken caesar wrap, vegan pastries etc), I decided not to part with more hard-earned cash to see the stones yet again, and left the family to get the shuttle bus up to the Henge from the carpark. I’ve sat on the stones as the sun rises at the summer solstice. I hardly need to see them again from new metal walkways and viewing platforms constructed by English Heritage. I could potter around with our youngest strapped to my chest in a soydad baby carrier instead. 

The gift shop seemed a good place to while away the wait. It had most of the usual tourist tat one would expect. Hoodies with “Stone Henge Est. 3000BC”, coasters with pictures of the Queen and/or King Charles III, mini black cabs and red phone boxes for the kids. There was some hippy cringe — black t-shirts with pictures of the stones at dawn, some scented candles. I was more looking forward to the books, expecting just lavish coffee-table books of predictable photos and standard guide books to flick through. 

Pagan cod-spirituality is increasingly a feature of British suburban life

Instead I was surprised at the number of recently published books on paganism on the shelves. There was Liz Williams’ Miracles of Our Own Making, which charts the history of pagan religiosity and includes an Appendix “Short Guide to Magical Tools and Ritual” for putting it into practice. Various other “Paganism for Beginners” type books were on offer, with a few more specialised on “Earth-centred religions”. It was also curious to see so many books on British ethnic identity around, like Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British and Alistair Moffat’s Britain’s DNA Journey. Given contemporary neuroses around race, it’s curious that these popular science books are obviously having their moment. The prevailing impression I got during my hour and half in the new buildings was one of overwhelming mediocrity. I could have been anywhere. 

I’m no new age hippie. I was only joking around for the wife’s benefit when I complained to a ticket attendant about the car-park and visitor’s centre representing the incursion of “Babylon, controlling our minds, man”. I fully appreciate the reasons why it is necessary to generate funds for the upkeep of a precious heritage site, and to have it managed in such a way that the surrounding land isn’t damaged beyond repair by incessant footfall. It would be an unacceptable cliché to say you preferred it when you could pull up alongside the A303 and walk across a field to the stones with no fuss or bother. It’d be like an adult yearning for the innocence of childhood. There’s no going back.

This made it all the stranger to be reminded that pagan cod-spirituality is increasingly a feature of British suburban life. You see it most obviously when people speak of “the Universe” as some sentient thing, or uncritically assign personal significance to chance encounters, or find the nearest they get to the Highest Good is a beautiful sunset or sunrise, or think that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or that the summit of human meaning is that we “Live, Laugh and Love”, or that sex is only animalistic and intrinsically exclusive over human dignity, or that funerals are primarily celebrations of the deceased’s earthly life, or that self-fulfilment is an end in itself.

You also see it when science is put to strangely magical use — paganism imbues material reality with a magical malleability in accordance with will, with desire. It won’t be a surprise to learn that many of those books on genetics tell very palatable post-2020 histories about how diversity has been our strength since settlers first arrived after the Ice-Age. 

It therefore suited me quite well to accept the inevitable suburbanisation, and potter around feeling bored and unfulfilled, hoping the baby would sleep before needing another nappy change. Oceanic horizons of possibility recede when real things start happening. Achieving anything does involve drudgery and hard work. Mistakes can have permanent consequences. Resisting the suburbanisation of the soul might seem magically promising, but genuine potency never abides in sheer potentiality. If this fact is neglected, gift shop clichés masquerade as the summit of meaning.