My Aunty's favourite city is, and always has been, Edinburgh. She travelled there in 1976, two years before I was born, and I have been raised with this constant understanding that of all the places she went, it was this city that most stole her heart.
And a little piece of family love, and feeling close to someone like my Aunty Libby, was exactly what I needed when I arrived in Edinburgh. And in a crazy frantic way, exactly what I found.
I left Manchester for Edinburgh on this day, and it was not an easy day. Oddly I think my (hideously severe) hangover helped... (I woke up with my shoes still laced up, if that gives you some idea!). But some days being a lil numbed down to a level where simple tasks take your full attention can help. Some days there is no room for thought or reflection. Some days you've just got to get up, breathe, and put one foot in front of the other until the sun sets.
I was moving to Edinburgh very spontaneously, after my living situation in Manchester capitulated somewhat. In fact, I nearly went Home home, but I just kinda couldn't do it - not without my summer of music festivals, and not without seeing Edinburgh. No, more than that. Not without knowing Edinburgh.
Through my wonderful 'dam family I came to meet a beautiful young sloe-eyed girl named Storm, and her student dorm room was to be my soft place to land. Storm is possibly the only person I have ever met who talks more than me, so us living together in a dorm about the size of a broom cupboard could easily have spelled disaster...
Well, it didn't. From the moment I got there, this beautiful and incredibly generous soul just kept repeating to me - "we just fit". And fit we did, in the tinest of dormrooms, in the most unlikely of situations, for the most perfect time.
This particular Tuesday, I bid a crisp, sunny Manchester a teary goodbye on the station platform at Piccadilly Station... I heaved my hangover and my endless kilos of crap North, through breathtaking rolling hills... and I found just enough space, and so much love, in a tiny dormroom in Warrender Park Road.
OK OK so in the spirit of the season, here's a lil Christmas nostalgia...
Last Christmas (after I gave you my heart) was layers of whipped cream and champagne and that feeling where hungover and sleep-deprived and not a lil tipsy converge. I was, of course, in Amsterdam... safe in the soft warm walls of that hostel called Home, The Flying Pig.
It was my second Flying Pig Christmas in as many years, only this time I had popped back for the occasion from my current 'home' in Manchester, and the year before I had been living in The 'Dam. Many original 'dam family members remained, and our lil posse had swelled impressively with new faces too... and so we came together, to celebrate this good day.
I started the day out of the hostel, waking heavy and hungover at my Dutch Angel Ines' house to find Santa had come!! My parents had arranged for In to buy me gifts!?! Heaven... then into the debauchery of the Pig, where I found my friends on cleaning shift were already well into their Christmas bonus champers. Well, what was I to do but join the fray!?
There were whipped cream fights, constant sparking of Amsterdam's finest, bottles popped ceremoniously over the Room 17 balcony into the Vondelpark below... there were great friends, constant laughter and there wasn't much effective cleaning done, unsurprisingly enough ;-)
Since the staff are supposed to cook all the guests their dinner, this utter lack of sobriety (before lunchtime, little own dinner!) was something of an issue... to this day I have no idea how we turned packet mix mashed potato, soggy brussel sprouts and some kind of Dutch supermarket meat product into a meal for 50, especially given that the majority of the kitchen help were seeing sideways at the time, but we did.
My dear friend Action (nickname, not noun) did lose a chunk of his finger sharpening a knife, but on the scale of how it might have gone?? Methinks we done pretty 'dam good.
I miss those crazy cats this Chrissy. Well, I miss some of them - two of my 'dam family closest are upstairs asleep in my parent's spare room and I have just finished wrapping their gifts with my mumma. Ahh... long live a world so small and safe. Long live the 'dam family.
