My Weekend
Jun. 30th, 2003 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaI caught a train up to Sheffield after work on Friday and, shiny new Virgin rolling stock not withstanding, was delayed. I sent a text message to my friends saying that I'd get a taxi, they needn't bother coming to pick me up. I got a message back: "Ian says we'll pick you up tomorrow, Gernie says you can walk, Jean says it's next weekend anyway, but I've stayed sober so you're bloody getting a lift". And suddenly I remebered that I was going to spend the weekend with great friends, and I laughed out loud in my train carriage. And I got my lift, and I got to Mel's house, and then it's check your liver at the door and give as good as you get in the piss-taking. Ten bottles of red wine and half a tonne of roasted Valencia almonds later, we went to bed.
Mel's house is exactly the kind of house I'd always imagined I'd buy once I had a proper job - omitting to notice that such things don't really exist in Oxford. Two-up-two-down stone terrace house, a narrow back garden, and a front door for decorative purposes only; friendly neighbours, open fireplaces and stairs like the north face of Ben Nevis.
And on Saturday morning I woke up and looked out of the attic bedroom window at the hills, and the sprawl of Sheffield's varigated architecture. I love living in Oxford, I like the city, my friends are there, my job's (nearly) there and I'm fond of being close to London. But Oxford will never be "home". Sheffield, a city I've never lived in, feels like home because the whole of the North is my country.
Breakfast, and despite last night's excesses we've upended Mel's sofa and cleared enough space in the front room so that we can start our rapper practice by 10 o'clock. And the day passes practising, dancing at a school fete, dancing on a pub crawl and eating Italian food at a table between two staggeringly noisy hen-nights. The fete was grim, but they paid us lots of money, and I even managed to buy myself a bread crock for £1.50 from a junk stall. The hens deserved a good slap, being of the opinion that it was fine for them to make increasingly crude comments to the waiters, but that they were entitled to take serious offence as soon as one of them answered back. The high-light of the pub crawl was the Frog & Parrot, a friendly pub which serves Roger and Out, which claims to be the world's strongest beer. 16%, and it comes in dinky little 1/3 pint glasses. Gorgeous stuff, but unwise when you've got to wield rappers near other people's heads in the near future.
Back to Mel's, where we alternated Irish set dancing and Jenga until bed-time. Did you know you can get a mean domino rally going with Jenga bricks ?
And then Sunday. Sunday didn't go quite according to plan. The plan said: practice, eat, go and visit aunt in Darnall (the other side of Sheffield). The early morning sms told me that aunt was in hospital. The phone call my parents had got from the hospital had suggested they might want to visit, though contained no real indication of urgency. So I revised the plan to go to North General after lunch and see her there - and my aunt died by herself, while I was 20 minutes away, learning clog steps.
I met my parents at Aunty Eileen's house in Darnall, and we started on the long and dreary business of working out who needed to be informed officially and who of her friends we could get hold of to tell, what needed to be cancelled, and where all necessary documents were. Beginning to sort through her possessions was necessary, but seemed wrong - not only intrusive, but strangely vulture-like. Worst of all, it makes the death of someone you've known all your life into a series of tedious and complicated chores to be got through. Morbid as it might sound, it has made me determined to write out a set of "in the event of my death..." instructions to prevent people from having to try and figure out my finances, and locate my friends with only a first name to go on.
As ever, the oddest things seem sad. Her friends and other relatives were mostly unsurprised, although her death was sudden she'd been ill for sometime. None of their reactions seemed as real as Chester - the nextdoor neighbours' black cat who sat on the window sill all day waiting for Aunty Eileen to come out and give him his mid-morning treat.
And now I'm sitting at her dining room table with my laptop, doing a little bit of work and fielding phone calls while my Mum deals with the hospital and solicitors. The house feels as strange without her as it does without the big, slow-ticking clock which was replaced with a small battery-powered one when she could no longer wind it up easily. Despite age, and failing health (a legacy of over seventy years' chain-smoking), she never turned into an old lady. Her wardrobes are full of smart clothes; I never saw her without her make-up on. Her front room is stylish, with a shiny wide-screen TV squatting in one corner. She was witty, subversive, and eminently likely to tell you not to be so bloody silly if you needed to be told. Any minute now, I'll stop expecting to hear her laughing in the other room.
Accordingly, this week's designation of heroism is awarded jointly to Steve and Linda, Aunty Eileen's next door neighbours. I'd guess they're a few years older than me, and no relation. They've kept a vague eye on her for a few years now, and more recently they've driven her about, done her shopping, kept her company, mended things that broke, fetched, carried, and generally done all the things my parents couldn't do when they were two hours up the A1. Steve is currently acting as my mum's taxi round Sheffield, having taken the day off work.
Mel's house is exactly the kind of house I'd always imagined I'd buy once I had a proper job - omitting to notice that such things don't really exist in Oxford. Two-up-two-down stone terrace house, a narrow back garden, and a front door for decorative purposes only; friendly neighbours, open fireplaces and stairs like the north face of Ben Nevis.
And on Saturday morning I woke up and looked out of the attic bedroom window at the hills, and the sprawl of Sheffield's varigated architecture. I love living in Oxford, I like the city, my friends are there, my job's (nearly) there and I'm fond of being close to London. But Oxford will never be "home". Sheffield, a city I've never lived in, feels like home because the whole of the North is my country.
Breakfast, and despite last night's excesses we've upended Mel's sofa and cleared enough space in the front room so that we can start our rapper practice by 10 o'clock. And the day passes practising, dancing at a school fete, dancing on a pub crawl and eating Italian food at a table between two staggeringly noisy hen-nights. The fete was grim, but they paid us lots of money, and I even managed to buy myself a bread crock for £1.50 from a junk stall. The hens deserved a good slap, being of the opinion that it was fine for them to make increasingly crude comments to the waiters, but that they were entitled to take serious offence as soon as one of them answered back. The high-light of the pub crawl was the Frog & Parrot, a friendly pub which serves Roger and Out, which claims to be the world's strongest beer. 16%, and it comes in dinky little 1/3 pint glasses. Gorgeous stuff, but unwise when you've got to wield rappers near other people's heads in the near future.
Back to Mel's, where we alternated Irish set dancing and Jenga until bed-time. Did you know you can get a mean domino rally going with Jenga bricks ?
And then Sunday. Sunday didn't go quite according to plan. The plan said: practice, eat, go and visit aunt in Darnall (the other side of Sheffield). The early morning sms told me that aunt was in hospital. The phone call my parents had got from the hospital had suggested they might want to visit, though contained no real indication of urgency. So I revised the plan to go to North General after lunch and see her there - and my aunt died by herself, while I was 20 minutes away, learning clog steps.
I met my parents at Aunty Eileen's house in Darnall, and we started on the long and dreary business of working out who needed to be informed officially and who of her friends we could get hold of to tell, what needed to be cancelled, and where all necessary documents were. Beginning to sort through her possessions was necessary, but seemed wrong - not only intrusive, but strangely vulture-like. Worst of all, it makes the death of someone you've known all your life into a series of tedious and complicated chores to be got through. Morbid as it might sound, it has made me determined to write out a set of "in the event of my death..." instructions to prevent people from having to try and figure out my finances, and locate my friends with only a first name to go on.
As ever, the oddest things seem sad. Her friends and other relatives were mostly unsurprised, although her death was sudden she'd been ill for sometime. None of their reactions seemed as real as Chester - the nextdoor neighbours' black cat who sat on the window sill all day waiting for Aunty Eileen to come out and give him his mid-morning treat.
And now I'm sitting at her dining room table with my laptop, doing a little bit of work and fielding phone calls while my Mum deals with the hospital and solicitors. The house feels as strange without her as it does without the big, slow-ticking clock which was replaced with a small battery-powered one when she could no longer wind it up easily. Despite age, and failing health (a legacy of over seventy years' chain-smoking), she never turned into an old lady. Her wardrobes are full of smart clothes; I never saw her without her make-up on. Her front room is stylish, with a shiny wide-screen TV squatting in one corner. She was witty, subversive, and eminently likely to tell you not to be so bloody silly if you needed to be told. Any minute now, I'll stop expecting to hear her laughing in the other room.
Accordingly, this week's designation of heroism is awarded jointly to Steve and Linda, Aunty Eileen's next door neighbours. I'd guess they're a few years older than me, and no relation. They've kept a vague eye on her for a few years now, and more recently they've driven her about, done her shopping, kept her company, mended things that broke, fetched, carried, and generally done all the things my parents couldn't do when they were two hours up the A1. Steve is currently acting as my mum's taxi round Sheffield, having taken the day off work.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-30 06:15 am (UTC)Yes ! We spent almost an entire Games Night doing that once and almost got to the point of inventing rules for it, but the world was saved by Wadham's porter chucking us all out.