I might not identify with any specific religious tendencies,
but I’m pretty happy to use Easter as an excuse to have a break, and in my case
after a two month holiday from uni, a break from a long break. So, finding myself
in a protracted state of breaking I figured it was a good time to go home for
the weekend to visit the fam and also drop in on a certain best friend’s 21st
birthday. But after booking my tickets I was really reluctant to go back to
Norwich as I don’t really have much time and I’ve got work to be doing and the
idea of a 15 hour bus journey wasn’t really doing it for me. So after
intentionally missing my bus home I decided to stay in Bonn. Until the next day
when I booked myself onto the first Eurostar back to England. Queue second
impulsive decision of the week (first being skipping my bus).
I’m usually the most awful impulsive decision maker ever –
taking the fringe as a prime example – and at first this trip was literally turning
out to be a nightmare; I sat at 7am and booked myself on a 10am Eurostar after
convincing myself that it was okay to spend so much on a train and that I could
make it to the station in three hours. I was feeling as if I had made a good
call. Until I realised that my 10am train actually left from Brussels, not
Cologne. And there is no way of getting to Brussels from Bonn in three hours.
Especially when you haven’t packed. And my ticket was non-amendable. It was
literally one of those moments where I couldn’t believe how incompetent at life
I am; the train journey was meant to be two hours, and I even thought to myself
whilst booking that it must be a pretty quick train to get there that fast all
the way from Cologne, but somehow the obvious impossibility of this surpassed
me. So after realising I got this wrong, I rang Eurostar to amend said non-amendable
ticket. Which to my surprise was in fact possible (the man on the phone that
morning is one of the most beautiful people EVER). Really regret not asking his
name actually and writing to his boss to tell him/her what an absolute babe he
was.
But anyway, digressing aside, I ended up having a train
ticket that I could make in time for that evening. After almost missing my
train to Brussels (which I didn’t thanks to a convenient delay) I figured
everything was cool and I’d be home in a few hours. That was until Eurostar was
monumentally delayed and 14 trains were cancelled and I was stuck in Brussels
for ages. I did eventually get onto a train and ended up in London. Later than
the last train to Norwich. Eurostar were pretty good about it and offered to
pay for all stuck passengers to get a hotel (and apparently there were 10,000 of
them). Considering I was only coming home for two days this was really annoying
as it meant I would get to Norwich a day later. But there was nothing to be
done about the situation, so I was just like yeah okay and asked the manager to
book a hotel for me. And then I randomly bumped into a group of people from
Sprowston. The world is so small, and at this point in time it was the most
fortunate coincidence ever. So since there were five of us from Norwich, we
convinced Eurostar it would be cheaper to get us a taxi to Norwich than pay for
us all to stay in hotels, which they agreed to. The taxi was literally £500,
but it wasn’t out of my pocket and it got me home by around 4am so I didn’t
lose out on half a day to more travelling. I genuinely have never been so happy
to get into bed in my life.
Getting to the actual point of this blog post, when I finallllly
got home, I realised that my life is genuinely amazing and the people in it are
the best. I had always had the sneaking suspicion that this might be the case,
but this weekend really confirmed it. And as I get older I start to like
Norwich more and more actually. And here’s why…
So when I first got home I went to the beach with the whole
family (which actually sounds less impressive when there are only six of us),
but it was the first time in ages that we have all gone out together. Pretty
sure it has literally been years. While my initial plan of dragging everyone to
the beach seemed like a total fail as the tide was right up to the sea wall (so
no beach to walk on), further down the coast was alright so we went for an
amble along the beach. And it was really cute and genuinely lovely to see
everyone hang out together. There are a number of things that mean that my
family aren’t perhaps as tight as others, but I think this is becoming
increasingly untrue, and it’s so nice. And I love the beach too, it’s like the
feeling of knowing your home and safe and comfortable, whilst at the same time
you know there is a whole world out there and you’re just on the edge of a tiny
part of it. Even if it’s cold and raining it is still amazing, and if you ever
see a storm at the sea side you realise how uncontrollable and unpredictable
the natural world is. Literally have so much time for the beach (excluding Sherringham,
pebbles are pants). I plan to spend approximately 80% of my summer at the beach
this year given my current state of being unemployed for the first summer in so
many years. While this is totally plausible for me (spending my summer at the
beach), I realised that there are people who never go to the beach. And I feel
like they are sorely deprived individuals. Even if they say they don’t really
like beaches, I don’t believe them. They just tell themselves that to cope with
the tragic reality of their situation. It is one thing I have missed since
going to Germany; the Rhine is lovely, but it’s got nothing on Cart Gap. Or
Happisburgh – the geographer in me loves looking at how the houses are falling off
the cliffs, which is admittedly tragic for the people that live there, but
still an awesome show of coastal erosion. Queue nerd-out. So essentially, home
is awesome because the family are here and Norfolk is genuinely beautiful. I feel
like it gets a bad reputation – which I have probably promoted at times – but there
is something so awesome about it. I maintain that when I’m older I am going to
live near a coastline somewhere, though maybe not in England.
And that was just where the weekend started. Saturday was
designated as Abee’s birthday (though it’s actually Monday). She didn’t know I was going to be there and
it was AWESOME. Was so nice to see her and literally all the best people in
Norfolk came out for it (plus a few extras from various places in England). It
takes coming back after being away to realise who is important and who is worth
making an effort with, which is actually a really big thing on a year abroad because
it’s too hard to hold onto everyone. But everyone I saw on Saturday, including
the new faces, were genuinely lovely. I genuinely am convinced that people are
fundamentally good. Or maybe I just pick friends because I see this in them.
Either way, I couldn’t have asked for a better set of people to have spent an
evening with.
Initially it started as a ‘I’ll just stay for predrinks as
my bus leaves at 4am’ kind of night, and turned into a ‘impulsive decision
three night’ where I decided to miss my bus (again) and go out with to the
waterfront instead and go back to Bonn a day later. I don’t think I have ever
really made such a good call. It was just a perfect evening and everyone was so
happy and I fricking LOVE the Waterfront. It is like the grimiest place ever
and they play rock music and all the emo/punk-rock tunes from our teenage years and there
are like a billion bearded men there – it is basically heaven on earth. And
nobody is grope-y and girls aren’t objectified due to their possession of a vagina.
It’s great. It is also the kind of place where you see like a billion people
you know, which is sometimes awkward, but more often than not amazing. I keep a
token bottle of Hooch in my room to remind of the good times when I’m away from
Norwich (Hooch being my drink of choice in the WF). And it is also a place
where awful dancing goes, so I am definitely in my area of expertise (as I told
my friends today, what I lack in skill I make up for with enthusiasm). Definitely
danced off the calories I drank in alcohol.
So really what I realised this Easter is that my life is
just filled with really, really lovely people and awesome places and it is
perhaps as close to perfect as it could be. And I am so lucky to be able to do
things like pop home for a weekend just to go out with friends and take a trip
to the beach with my family. And live in Bonn too. And plan trips to Budapest. And
just being able to fill my life with different and amazing things all the time.
For a long time I don’t think I realised this was the case. But now I
definitely have, and I plan on making the most of it. Starting tomorrow,
because right now I really, seriously need to sleep off my hangover. And I am feeling a bit squishy on the inside, which is not an emotion I am accustomed to so I feel the need to stop writing. Sorry if that was a bit boring, as it doesn't really engage with any wider ideas or questions, but I'm just in a happy place and feel like it's always good to share the love a bit.
True to form, here’s some music (perhaps not of the
waterfront variety though):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NPxqXMZq7o
You can thank my friend David for that one.
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