Old Familiar Places

Do you ever feel the loss of a place?

When somewhere that was once as familiar as your own mind becomes new or different or gone. That perfect atmosphere at that perfect time, sliding from reality into memory. Your old familiar places, gone.

Wherever I go I find ‘my’ places. My cafes. My bookshop. My cinema. My supermarket. My park. Places that become a sanctuary, a haven, a home from home.

My cinema in Arlington, Virginia, reclined in leather chairs with one of my closest friends in the world – I’m sent back there by a line of dialogue in a film, the smell of popcorn.

My cafe in Ixelles, Brussels. That specific taste of tea and ginger, the opening chord of that song on repeat, the rain on the pavement outside.

A Cafe of One’s Own – Top 5 Features of the Perfect Writing Cafe

A woman must have…a room of her own if she is to write fiction ~ Virginia Woolf

Everyone has an environment in which they are best able to work.

Whether you’re writing fiction, studying for a degree, learning Spanish vocabulary, or working on a project for your company, you will have an ideal environment. Maybe you work best in a library, with silence but for the sounds of typing and pages turning. Perhaps you need a private office, a space where you are alone. Or you might prefer having dozens of people around you in an open-plan room. Do you need your own specific space, or do you feel chained down by it? Can you work at home, or do you need to be elsewhere?

For me, the best place to work is a cafe. But not every cafe will do! There are five features a cafe needs to have to be the perfect writing cafe for me.

A Goodbye to Glasgow; Or, Nine Things I Learnt This Year

Prior to moving to Glasgow, I believe I had spent a cumulative three days there over my whole life. Odd for a Scot, you may think, but it’s just that bit too far away from my hometown of Aberdeen for a day trip, but too close to justify a hotel room. And of course, with  no relatives in Scotland, my family tended to venture further afield for holidays and long weekends.

Quite honestly, I didn’t expect to like Glasgow all that much. Growing up, the image I got of the city from the media was sectarianism, drunken violence, and post-industrial poverty. I moved there, knowing no one, for a specific Masters course, assuming I’d leave with few regrets once my year was up.

Reader, I was wrong.

Me, at the minute: new city, new uni, new me

As I moved into my new flat last weekend, I realised that in the past year and a half I have lived at 6 addresses in 3 countries. My younger self would be immensely pleased: sometimes youthful dreams and plans really do work out. I would, however, caution my younger self that moving is a lot less exciting, and a lot more stressful, than it sounds when you’re 14. Such a realisation is, I think, at the core of ‘growing up’.

Anyhow, I am now happily ensconced in Glasgow about to start a MSc in Political Communication. Tomorrow, my return to academia begins with a three hour statistics lecture – and believe it or not, I’m kind of looking forward to it?

sadly, the Politics building is less Hogwarts-esque and more brutalist

During induction last week there was a lot of talk of people being nervous, and that being completely normal. Everyone feels that way! And sure enough, everyone seemed to echo the statement, and say how glad they were that it wasn’t just them.

It’s weird – I don’t feel nervous at all.