I've been thinking recently about all the places that I've ever had attachments to in my life. There are a lot of them, scattered about here there and everywhere...not just in England, but also in Scotland (seen in my much documented love affair with Glasgow) and also in the USA with my grandmother's house in Florida that I remember going to with my family when I was a kid. I've not been there in years, not since I was 12 but I will forever remember the way it looked in the afternoon sunlight glimmering on the water in the swimming pool, the colour of the condominium complex; a hideous florescent mint green. Everytime I see it in my mind, all these memories come flooding back of the time when I lived in Florida when I was five...my mum teaching me how to tie my shoelaces although I was more interested in watching Teddy Ruxpin on TV, my dad taking me to the local swimming pool and my swimming lessons with my best friend Andrea with me having to be coaxed into the water because I was deadly scared...sitting on the windowsill of my front room and watching the most amazing Florida storm out of the window...the same storm later on the next morning blowing the electric in my house whilst me and my brother were watching "Scooby Doo." Silly things that remind me of being a kid and lead me to sometimes wonder if they really hapenned at all or were just the product of a rather overactive imagination. In Manchester, there always used to be places that I would go to so as to sit and think about things, drink coffee and laugh lots with friends who would look over my A-Level English Lit texts and add their own annotations so that in the exam I would look at that really important part in Richard 3rd and see where my friend Martin had wrote "Innit tho?" next to a speech by Elizabeth/Queen Anne/Add Shakesperean woman character here, they all bloody sound the same in that play. I miss Manchester at timess so much that it aches...and if you knew me, you would know how silly that is. The thing with me is that I don't get homesick. I miss things, people, places...but not so much that I want to grab a train ticket and run back to them asap which is the feeling I've been getting over the past few days. It's not just that I miss my family...I miss really silly feelings and emotions, like getting out of college on a Wednesday afternoon, meeting friends in Cafe Pop and going record shopping or catching a film at the Cornerhouse...or the Northern Quarter on a Sunny day, with everyone sat on the pavement drinking and chatting and LOUD music blaring from all the assorted shops. Maybe this is a feeling which has eminated from being a student, maybe just from being away from the familiar for so long that the novelty of the new place has started to wear off (I doubt that the novelty of London will ever completely wear off for me, its more that it's sheen has tarnished). At first, going back home to Manchester to visit felt like such a chore. I hated it when I went back there to visit during my first reading week. All these old faces I'd attempted to eradicate by moving hundreds of miles away from them all at my door bringing back the things I'd left behind so that I may forget them. Even at Christmas to some extent it still felt that way. Then, a few weeks ago I found out that my dad was seriously ill and I couldn't get home fast enough. It was such solace, so warm and welcoming...I was with the people who understood me and needed me and so Manchester was as comforting as warm arms wrapped around me. Coming back to my other home was such a wrench. I didn't want to leave those who needed me more than London did. London needs me too. My dad is still ill and he will be for a long time to come, but London shields me from the pain of homesickness. It makes me laugh, it makes me forget, it makes me sit in a cafe with friends and look out over rivers at the skyline and realise that I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. My parents are coming to visit me soon and I want to show them that I'm doing the right thing being here and I'm still accessible to all the people who need me and who I need to be there for me too. It's my nomadic existence realising itself. Neither Manchester or London is truly home, but we all have an agreement, they're different things, like the different sides of me and they appeal to that. An old friend, a new lover...with each place bringing back waves of memories like the words of old love letters, and the smell of biscuits on rainy dawns. Anyway, another week, another Cay epic about her life...apart from the small fact that nothing really has hapenned this week, apart from a shedload of essays and the EndlessCityLights coming second in some Oxford Battle of the Bands thing (out of three bands...but at least we weren't last! Even if one of the judges was very publicly and VERY loudly bitching about us during our set which put me off no end). The band which came in first everyone knew were going to win anyway as they knew all the judges, the judges loved them and one of the guys in the band was something pretty major in the University society putting on the show...bias anyone? But, as the lovely Mr. Carsmile Steve told me afterwards, "It's not the winning that counts, it's the bitching about the band that did win!" (They were shoegazing, schizophrenic, monotone pap by the way..and we were much prettier!) Oh, and RIGHT ON NEIL!!!! for his wonderful post on the Matador list about the bands tour in America/Canada. Even in Britain it's a lot of money to pay to see B&S, but I really don't mind. After all, there's enough of them in the bloody band that my ticket wouldn't even give them enough for a square meal each. And now I've got a wonderful new job as an usher for sixth form History conferences (ok, not so wonderful when you think of all the rampaging hormonal discrepancies...but it's MONEY!) I can buy a ticket to see them in London too! *Woo-hoo!* Someone also mentioned Oxford Interviews-when I had mine, not only did the chair eat me (very hilarious for the people watching...not so for me being eaten...), but I was caught hanging out of the window of my room having a crafty fag by a tutor who was not amused at seeing some mad young eyeliner clad-and-not-much-else-woman hanging out the window of a historical building and sending it into disrepute:- HIM-"Young lady, what do you think you're doing?" ME:- "What does it look like? I'm having a cigarette!" Upon closer deliberation, maybe that combined with my rampant drunkeness and causing a riot being drunk and dragging another drunk person along with me and making lots of noise when letting myself into the college at 3am was the reason I didn't get in....hmmm.... Oh look, it's sunny outside...let's play hopscotch Love and Marlboro lights, Cay Cola-Cube xXx P.S. The ever lovely Archel talked of how perhaps she should have given up ellipses for Lent...you and me both my girl! There are a frankly disgusting amount of them in this post. Nice to see that A in A-Level English Lit going to use then. "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your Revolution..." -Emma Goldman +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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