Happy Friday, everyone! And Happy St Patrick’s Day, to those of you so inclined!
I’ve always enjoyed St Patrick’s Day for one reason or another. One, it’s one of the biggest drinking holidays in the calendar, excluding Christmas and New Year, and I do like a pint with (or without) my friends every now and again. The other is, being an Irish dancer means plenty of opportunities for showing off your footwork (expended on more in a previous post). I think this year is going to be the first in about four years that I’ve not been doing some performance or another for St Patrick’s Day. Unless I get reeeeally drunk tonight, at which point all bets are off.
But, I’m still spending it in Sheffield, which kinda makes it all worth it.
I spent five years in Sheffield; my undergrad years, and then two years after that. I got off the train this morning and felt like I’d never left. I’ve always felt very at home in Sheffield, and I never realised until I went for a walk around it this afternoon just how much I’d missed it. (And the bus prices. Oh hell yeah, the bus prices). It’s not just the big things, like the poem above Sheaf Square or the Winter Gardens, or the Clock Tower on the City Hall. I went from Crookes around the Student Union, down through town and out towards Kelham Island and Hillsborough, and it’s funny how many tiny memories get activated just by revisiting some of these places after a long time. So many long minutes spent waiting at the lights at the Millsands roundabout on my bicycle – and avoiding all the tramlines on Infirmary Road (occasionally unsuccessfully). Wondering if I had the courage to go into the sex shop on Division Street (I never did haha). Salads from New Leaf. The office where I used to work. The best spot to cross the road on Crookes Road (which is a bitch, by the way). My old run route. The little spots on the pavement which mean nothing to anyone else and everything to you. All the tiny moments that make a life, not just an experience.
It’s funny, sometimes, how you don’t appreciate something until you’ve been away from it for a while. There were times, living in Sheffield, I felt like I was living in a straightjacket. It’s such a small city, and so centralised as well, which means that I spent so much time in certain times in certain areas they got too familiar. I don’t know. It was fun going around most of my old stomping grounds again though. Some things have changed – a coat of paint here, a resurfaced road there – but most things are still the same. Including the rain. But hey, it’s the north of England, if it isn’t raining something’s wrong. If you’re ever seen that British meme about Northerners ‘needing your big coat,’ they’re not wrong.
I wish I’d been able to take some pictures, but my phone died and I didn’t take my camera with me, so sorry; pictorial evidence will have to wait for some other time – not to mention it was pissing with rain.
I suppose the point is, you can be born somewhere, but it’s what you do with your everyday that makes your life. I was born in East Essex, and did nothing but schoolwork and horses. I was made in Sheffield, and did so much more than that. I call myself a Girl of Steel, not because I’m from Sheffield by birth, but I feel like I began there – that’s where the person who is me was born. It took a long time for me to start allowing myself to love myself, and it all started in Sheffield.
Two big decisions need to be made – every single day. What to do with your days, and who to come home to at night. Life is what happens in between those times. Tonight, for me, it’s ceilidh-time and then my best friend, who’s putting up with me – sorry, putting me up – for the weekend. Tomorrow, I have no idea. I’m planning for violins and oaty shit to be involved. More life moments.
Stay awesome, everyone.
Cerebral Scrapbooking 