Manchester Musings
From 30th December:
As my father’s child I love life up North, the grim grey rain on the filthy canals, working class humour and hospitality, walking up Rivington Pike on Boxing Day, pints of Boddington, Affleck’s Palace, housing estates and football stadiums, hikes across stone walls and pine needles and moors, buttie shops and scrappy scallies, uni students and Morrissey songs. Deepest darkest Manchester indeed. Its one of the few places I have visited that I think I could live in for a while, I want more than just to pass through, take a few pix and send a few postcards. It feels like it could be a home for me, at least for a while.
Home. I haven’t been away that long at all, yet the idea of going back to Sydney is strange, the way it always is I suppose. My friends are there, my work is there, my gigs are there and my family is there but I can’t remember my place in it. Part of this is not having a guaranteed place to live when I return, so that ‘home’ is harder to visualise, and not knowing who I will be living with makes me slightly uneasy too. Share-houses are all well and good, and I have had mostly positive experiences in them, but the idea of having to go through the whole getting-to-your-housemates thing exhausts me just to think of it. New routines, new bin night, new washing up roster, new smoking rules, new noise levels, new stress levels, new worm farm regulations and new boyfriends and girlfriends and parties and smells and artworks happening around me. Have got to thinking that when I return to Aus I might stay with my parents in the burbs for a wee while, until I sort out somewhere new to lay my hat. I want to be cosy and safe, I want to watch the Bill on a Tuesday night and go shopping at the local mall and eating cereal all day and be around families with paddle pools in their backyards and cricket on their TVs, where the heat is all the harsher for the lack of sea breeze and the electric fans run all night and I can rest peacefully amongst the familiar sounds of the suburbs.
As my father’s child I love life up North, the grim grey rain on the filthy canals, working class humour and hospitality, walking up Rivington Pike on Boxing Day, pints of Boddington, Affleck’s Palace, housing estates and football stadiums, hikes across stone walls and pine needles and moors, buttie shops and scrappy scallies, uni students and Morrissey songs. Deepest darkest Manchester indeed. Its one of the few places I have visited that I think I could live in for a while, I want more than just to pass through, take a few pix and send a few postcards. It feels like it could be a home for me, at least for a while.
Home. I haven’t been away that long at all, yet the idea of going back to Sydney is strange, the way it always is I suppose. My friends are there, my work is there, my gigs are there and my family is there but I can’t remember my place in it. Part of this is not having a guaranteed place to live when I return, so that ‘home’ is harder to visualise, and not knowing who I will be living with makes me slightly uneasy too. Share-houses are all well and good, and I have had mostly positive experiences in them, but the idea of having to go through the whole getting-to-your-housemates thing exhausts me just to think of it. New routines, new bin night, new washing up roster, new smoking rules, new noise levels, new stress levels, new worm farm regulations and new boyfriends and girlfriends and parties and smells and artworks happening around me. Have got to thinking that when I return to Aus I might stay with my parents in the burbs for a wee while, until I sort out somewhere new to lay my hat. I want to be cosy and safe, I want to watch the Bill on a Tuesday night and go shopping at the local mall and eating cereal all day and be around families with paddle pools in their backyards and cricket on their TVs, where the heat is all the harsher for the lack of sea breeze and the electric fans run all night and I can rest peacefully amongst the familiar sounds of the suburbs.
posted by Zoo at 4:58 am
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