There's no place like...

After a night with my back line at HQ, I made the plunge earlier today.  Saddled up and ready to take the ever-shifting road system on, I took the Dawes out to cycle down to the armpit of the midlands.  You will never a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...than Derby!

That's right.  Urbs Natalis is once again Urbs Currens.  The bastards couldn't kill me, not when I have THIS to return to.  There's something vaguely comforting about almost being mown down by bright yellow taxis, the 01332 area code, the tacky pubs and clubs...I could go on.  The surrounding countryside knocks a lot of the rest of this country into a cocked hat, what with stunning vistas and thrilling valleys, quaint villages with their churches and so on and so forth.  At some point I will even venture out to the aforementioned tacky locales, populated as they are by the fleshpots of Derby...Ugh.  But you know, it's good to be back.  I mean, really good.

As we reached the end of the academic year, I rather began to run out of chutzpah.  Unsatisfactory housing, lack of food and a lot of upset, mostly emotional, do not agree with people of my delicate temperament.  Oh, best mark that down on your calendars or something, because I'm not going to refer to myself as delicate very often.  Capisce?  Anyway.  I think I got a bit cabin feverish towards the last few days, it still hasn't quite left me.  The cycling helps, as concentrating on the road leaves little room for anything else, and I get a break from the unbearable lightness of being, especially after the last week.  Those who know, know.  Some things...just never go my way.  

As far away from Norfolk as I am, I still have a lot left to do before I can really rest up.  I have to salvage my housing situation, which is bloody complicated to say the least.  Watch this space, eh?  I need to get in touch with several relevant parties and basically break to bad news, which won't be pretty.  I need to arrange the tour as well, and hopefully it will take me even further away from the East Anglian part of England, in a geographical sense anyway.  I almost don't want to go back at all now.  I really really don't.  This year has been one of the hardest I've had the fortune to survive, and I can quite comfortably say I don't relish the idea of any more like it, especially if next year will follow the same pattern.  I've never been so ill in all my life!  I genuinely thought I was going to die when a Ginsters Deep Fill Chicken & Bacon sandwich gave me food poisoning, the malicious bastard, and let's not forget my very own dalliance with the Swine Flu.  The upset, the failures, the backstabbing, the junior handshake clubs and financial ruin have taken an almost fatal toll on me.  Why would I want to put myself back into that situation?  Why do I have to?

But I will.  The time will come in September when we pack me up again and shift me across the country to Norwich, to see off the final year, the last hurrah.  And it really will be the last as well.  I plan to move up North and find my fortune not on stage, but as a Layclerk, hopefully with some sort of archive/library job on the side.  London would chew my up and spit me out, I don't have the wherewithal to cope with the Bog Smoke just yet, but one day I will.  It's just that I'm going to take my time over it.  

There are many people I don't want to leave behind from Norwich, and indeed Norfolk.  The people and places, on the whole (with some notable exceptions) are fine.  The situations I find myself in though, are deplorable.  Unfamiliarity breeds contempt, and I would rather soak up the radiation from the free wi-fi outside the Big Blue Coffee Shop than anywhere Norwich has to offer.  This is my home, as much as my mother has abandoned Derby for "Skeg Vegas", this is still my place.  You could accuse me of being small minded and having no ambition, but seeing as I have a desire to escape Norfolk I urge you to reconsider.  At a push, there are even people I would want to bring back here...both to add to the back line but also to stand at the forefront with me...but I'm getting ahead of myself.  

I'm glad I'm back.  Almost happy...(more on that story later)  The tour continues.  It's just nice to be able to have a rest again.