home sweet home

The university I attend has two major problems: the Greggs is too small and the library doesn’t have enough toilets. Other than that, it is perfect. And so I was thinking: What if we make the Greggs bigger and put more toilets in the library?

         The other issue is that the holidays are too long. And as I return home for the cold, dreary, lazy festive season I only have to think about one of my university’s three major issues. That’s lucky.

         I’m very lucky to return to a home filled with those I love, but my routine is of the past, as is everything else. For three weeks at least. Every time I return home, it feels a bit less like home. Someone, at some point, said that once you leave home you will never again feel like you belong there. I took that at face-value, but have unfortunately found them to be right. In my case at least. My mother drove us round the roundabout in the centre of my town in the final minute of our five-hour journey home. This roundabout used to be named after the tile shop that had operated there for my entire life. It had a cabinet they called a Tile Museum. A friend from school used to work there. Sold tiles to our Drama teacher. It closed about a year ago now. Speculation over its replacement was immediately rife. It has ended up as a Farm shop, a Morrison’s Daily, and a barbers run by a boy I went to school with. Mum points out each of these shops during the few seconds it takes us to take the first exit, as well as the café that has replaced the wine shop that used to be next door. The roundabout continues to be referred to as it always has. By the name of the tile shop. Won’t be soon, though.

         A business park(?) is being erected on the rubble heap next to my estate.

         I don’t want it to be.

         I want to stay here forever so that it can be mine again.

         I can keep it if I want.

         But I probably won’t in the way I want to.

         It has, so quickly, become a place I visit.

         Maybe one day, I will live here permanently again.

         But it breaks my heart a little that I don’t want to.

Post-Script because I have unfinished business.

Okay, fine, there’s other things wrong. When you walk into the atrium and you realise it’s perfect, except there are nowhere near enough plants for the fucking environment centre. And someone tells you there was cum on the tap in one of the too few toilets and this tracks but also that’s ridiculous and you don’t believe them. Oh, and that it’s far too small, so you know everyone and that’s wonderful and everyone knows each other, but also it’s far too small so you know everyone and why are there people everywhere?