I am not religious. You probably know this; I am extremely vocal about this fact, and it means, of course, that at Easter time I'm only in it for the chocolate. Except, this year, I was less about the chocolate* and more about that 18.55 flight out of Cologne, destination England after three month absence. I was so excited I fidgeted and bounced around in my seat for the entire flight and fairly flattened old ladies in my attempts to get through the Manchester arrivals gate first to throw myself on my waiting parents.
To say I hadn't been in Nottingham for a while, I didn't really hang around. We got back fairly late on the Thursday night, leaving little time for anything other than a quick cuppa before I took an almighty running jump onto my beautiful, soft, squidgy, comfortable mattress. As for Friday, I spent a day catching up with my cousin and my adorable little second-cousin and partaking in a nice meal for my grandma's birthday (a night ever cemented in my mind as the night my eighty-three-year-old grandmother downed a flaming sambucca) before hitting the road for a weekend in Edinburgh early Saturday morning.
Edinburgh is a city that does know how to blow my mind. I love it there; the buildings, the culture, the abundance of Scottish people.** Katie and myself arrived mid-afternoon which gave us plenty of time to drop our stuff at the hostel (where we were deeply disappointed that we didn't get put in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles room), grab a meal and wander up the Royal Mile in search of a drink before Charlie rocked up around 11, hyper and over-tired from 13 hours of flying. We tried a bit of a night out, but the club, to coin a popular phrase I believe the kids are using nowadays, blew the big time and we gave it up as a bad job. The next day we sauntered around the sunny streets, lunched in one of mine and Charlie's favourite cafe-discoveries from last summer and caught some rays in the park. Sounds nice enough all by itself, no? Yeah, well, it gets better.
You see, I didn't decide just to take a trip to Scotland purely to swan about and drink coffee (as much as I enjoy this pastime). Me and Katie had an ultra-awesome reason for being in the 'Burgh that weekend, and that reason was a chap named Tim Minchin. I had been nothing short of gutted that I had missed all his more local dates before Christmas (you guessed it, I was in Germany), especially as this new tour saw Tim sporting a full orchestra and a host of new and remastered songs. I'd been just able to cope with missing hosts of gigs from my other favourite musicians and comedians, but I decided this was one too many, and when I found out that his Scotland dates coincided with my Easter holidays I thought "bugger it" and booked. The fact that Katie came with me only proves her great commitment to comedy. So, we left Charlie (who had already seen Tim's tour) to go and route out a Chinese takeaway and an obscure poetry reading, and went for a night at the theatre. It. Was. Incredible! Minchin was on fantastic form, his old songs sounding unbelievably good in orchestral score and his new material making me laugh until tears rolled down my cheeks. One for my top ten comedy gigs, certainly. Once Tim had performed his second encore (White Wine In The Sun - I cried) and we had purchased our Rock 'N Roll Nerd mugs, we went to meet up with Charlie again, catching a bit of light folk music at Sandy Bell's before turning in. Monday saw yet more coffee and wanderings and also the bizarre occurrence of someone throwing an egg at me our of a car window. It didn't smash, fortunately, but rather bounced off my thigh with some force and cracked when it hit the road. But seriously, a drive by egging? Who does that? After this ridiculous event, me and Katie dropped Charlie at the station for her journey onwards to St Andrews and went and spent silly amounts of money on dresses. Whoops. Then there was just time for a quick baked potato (enormous, it was) before jumping on the train back down south. See you in August, Edinburgh.
The next few days were indeed Nottingham time. I caught up with Bex and Ruth over lunch on the Tuesday, before Bex dragged us round 'most every shop in town before letting us have a breather in Starbucks. We had a healthy dinner of chicken salad and curled up in Bex's bed to watch Harry Potter. The next few days were devoted family time; my mum and me took a trip to Market Harborough to see our cousin, we went shopping and on Easter Sunday we had a good ol' fashioned slap-up family lunch. Saying that, on the Thursday night I absented myself from relative shindigs to hit up the Rebel and Bar 11 launch night with Becky. There was wine and excellent music and a good time was had by all. I think.
With my holidays ticking away, it was time to hit my favourite city of the them all, my uni-town, my place: SHEFFIELD, BABY! I tell you, it felt so good to be back after such a long absence. Speshy met me at the station on Monday night and we dragged all my bags up the hill to the house that will be mine in less than two months. We had long over-due tea and chats which went on far too late considering we had to get up super-early the next day and travel to Manchester. Spesh had somehow managed to get herself conned into booking a fancy photo-shoot and we had to go and partake in order to get her deposit back. With a pact to buy no photos in place, we enjoyed having our hair and make-up done and stocking up on free snacks before being be shepherded into the studio where we were ordered to pose in various positions that made us look like wanky twats. When it came to the photo viewing, the girl was very much on the hard-sell and we struggled to stick to our pact just because of all the pressure. However, then we remembered that they wanted to charge SEVENTY POUNDS PER PRINT, stuck to our guns and legged it.
Back in Sheffield, I picked up my stuff and headed down the hill again to Rosie's where I was stopping the next two nights with Charlie. There was time for a quick cup of tea and a catch up before we headed out for the Folk Train. If you live in Sheffield and you've never been on the Folk Train, then I heartily recommend it. The last Tuesday of every month, lovers of folk board the 7.14 from Sheffield to Edale to enjoy three hours of beautiful music and scenery. The band play on the train, in the pub upon arrival at Edale and all the way on the train back again. A different band every month, April's was Happy Red Tractors and they were superb, playing a mix of traditional English, Greek and Russian folk. As the train arrived back into Sheffield just after 10, we considered the night to be still young and nipped into the Lescar on Sharrowvale Road for a cider. We got slightly more tipsy than we intended, danced New York, New York all the way back to Rosie's after last orders and when me, Charlie and Katie all tried to cram into Richie's already very broken bed we made it collapse and had to drunkenly try and piece it back together again.
Wednesday was a celebration of my second year haunts. First, Katie in tow, I went and got my hair cut and picked up my new Ucard (I can get into the IC again - hooray?) and then went and met Rosie, Charlie and Louise in town. We took a slow stroll down Division Street visiting all the little boutiques before grabbing lunch from Zooby's (the fairtrade cafe in the Winter Gardens), dodging the snooker commentators as we went. The afternoon saw sunbathing in the Peace Gardens and coffee at Bungalows and Bears, the evening dinner at the Old House and cocktails at the Wick At Both Ends and I spent the whole time wishing I was back for good already instead of having to wait another six or seven weeks.
I hit the road home on Thursday afternoon for one last evening with my parents, an evening which seem to flash by, and all too soon I was pulling my suitcase through the arrivals gate at Cologne airport. Three and a half hours of frustrating train journeys later I was pulling that same case through my front door in Duisburg. It's hard to believe that I've come back for my final four weeks. In some ways my wonderful Easter trip to the UK has made me long to be back there more than ever; I miss my life in Sheffield, and even these few short weeks seem to be too long to wait before I can get back to it. I miss my family and my friends, and would once again like to thank them for being so brilliant and for giving me yet another wonderful holiday to remember. That said, I've have such a fantastic time here that I'm not sure I can quite face the idea of it being over so soon. But it's not over quite yet; I've got exactly one month to tear up Germany and make the end of my year abroad as epic as the preceding seven or so months. There's Berlin. There's Eurovision. There's (hopefully) Prague. So all in all, it looks set to be a bit of a corker. And, as always, I'll be sure to let you know all about it.
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* Not least because my mother has now decided that after the age of eighteen all Easter gifts should come in the form of nightwear; this year, a dressing gown.
** That accent. Hommanaah.
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