in a steeltown

as far as english cities go, there's no other place that can make me feel nostalgic in the same way that Sheffield does. i arrived in October 1989, fresh-faced and naive moving away from Liverpool for the first and last time, on the back of a sometimes-humiliating year of A-level resits. i wasn't sure that i wanted to go to university when i first took my exams (and it soon became a moot point when my outrageously bad results were posted for everyone to see), but after a year of seeing my friends live together and do whatever-the-hell-they-please in Manchester i soon realised that i needed to go somewhere else and do something different.

Sheffield was a perfect location; not too close so that it was easy to get home - not too far that i couldn't scrounge a lift or afford the coach-fare home. the first time i visited i managed to take a good look around (conveniently managing to strike the sight of the delapidate and frankly disgusting old bus-station from my mind) and thought to myself "yes i can live here".

and live there i did for four wonderful years (straddling a year spent on placement in Oldham), meeting a lot of people who i still see to this day, and crucially - somewhat cliched i know - finding myself and deciding to become the person i wanted to be.

i also took writing my poetry seriously (often at the expense of my coursework), and it's the period of 1989 - 1994 that i'm sure accounts for the bulk of my work. it was hard to reconcile my enjoyment of reading and writing with the necessity of completing a degree course (in applied statistics and systems modelling), so i suppose i led some kind of double-life, a life that i'm still living to some extent this day.

anyway there's another snowy theme to today's poem, and reading it over again (possibly for the first time in 10 years) takes me back to drinking in The Pomona and The Nursery Tavern and playing football in Endcliffe Park. Memories that always remain indeed.

Whatever The Weather

Let the sun always shine
On this fairest of towns -
For I'll always remember
The bright summer days,

But the best winter scene
And the snow falling down,
Are the fondest of memories
That always remain.


January 1993

let it snow

listening to five live yesterday and today, you'd think that the whole country was 6feet under a heavy blanket of snow. this may be true for some parts of the country (well not 6feet, but 6inches), but up here in York it's been a bit of an anti-climax. my promises to the kids about their first snow in nearly two years (we thankfully spent last winter in new zealand) were ill-advised as nothing was to be seen first thing this morning.

then, at about 11am we finally had a flurry followed by something a bit heavier, rounded off my a whole load of nothing more, the snow soon to disappear. lucky then that i had my camera with me to record the excitement...

not very snowy york

all this gives me yet another excuse to air a related poem from the distant past (in this case 1992) and wonderful memories of my lazy student days in Sheffield.

December Again

December again,
And everyone waits
As the sky turns grey.
Where did the nights go to?

Well on the way -
Afternoons in the dark.
Underneath naked trees
The river stood still.

But all I could think of
Was the mountain-high hill
Where we tumbled and played
In the snow, thick and white

Again and again...
Slipping away from me now.

I hope that it comes
In thick sheets of snow.
December again.


November 1992

that year i was treated - at the age of 22 - to my first experience of 'bin-bagging' on the slopes of endcliffe park. far from being the perverse practice it sounds like, it in fact involved sitting on/in a blag bin-bag and hurtling down a hill as fast as possible. luckily the tree stump halted my descent as the ice-laden river waited expectantly mere inches away...