'I'm from Hertfordshire Darling'

My first post of the new year, 20 days in. This poor blog's been neglected for 3 whole weeks. Sorry about that. My friends were back from university for Christmas and I got quite excited. There’s been a lot of catching up to be done. Now they’ve all returned to studying and my to-do list once again reads something like:

 - Find a job

 - No, seriously, find a job

 - Any job

 - Sort out banking and tax forms

 - Start getting up before 11

Of course now it’s snowing all serious plans are on hold, but once the weather clears up I will stop writing rude words outside with sticks and taking pictures of frosty spiderwebs, and get back to sorting my life out. Well ‘get back to’ may be slightly over-optimistic wording. ‘Start sorting my life out’ may be more accurate. I haven’t been in St Albans that much at all these last few weeks. Considering there’s not that much to entertain or distract me here, it’s strange that this fact depresses me slightly.

I went to Scotland last weekend. It was lovely. I met up with my best friend from childhood (and from, like, ever) and celebrated her turning 21 in beautiful, rowdy, drinky, teary style. Getting off the train at Waverley always makes me feel excited and nostalgic, and whenever I go back to Edinburgh, I always find myself wondering why anyone would leave. After spending all of 5 seconds in the capital, the crash of rain and the sound of piping hits my eardrums, and my mindset completely reverts into ‘local’ mode; 5 minutes walking down Princes Street and a brash Scottish twang that I never really had even when I lived there injects itself into my accent, and I’m complaining about tramlines, Lothian bus fares and tourists with everyone else.

This time, despite being overjoyed and excited and completely ready to blend seamlessly in to the post-hogmanay birthday celebrations, I found myself not quite so brash. I didn’t encounter anything as drastic or conscious as feeling out of place, or like a foreigner (which, in fairness, with my accent and dislike of irn-bru WKD, would have been easy to do in the circumstances). But in hindsight, I think after having been away in the States, I arrived with a slightly reinforced southern identity. Going for walks round St Albans on Google street view was easy to explain away as simple home-sickness when done from New York. Now though, I found myself in Edinburgh, my second home, still talking about pub closures, and the accordion man, and the field I had to take a piss in once. I think I may have become an official, proud Home Counties resident.

Not, I hasten to add, that I have become some kind of League of Gentlemen style ‘local’. It doesn’t mean that I’ve somehow suddenly accepted everything I used to hate about living in a £4 a pint Tory safe seat where the shops are shut by half four and people wear suits to the pub. I’ve not started baking cupcakes or taken up knitting, I’ve not joined the town council and I’ve still never bought anything from Liberties, Boohoo or Waitrose (apart from gingerbread). But I think there might be something deeper to be gleaned from that fact that throughout my weekend in Scotland, home of whisky and Tennents and Brewdog, I stayed markedly sober, playing only the less popular (and much less interesting spectator sport) ‘water-pong’. Ditching the cava around 2am, and getting into my pajamas, I reasoned to my friends and fellow revelers that ‘where I come from, the pubs shut three hours ago.’

Maybe it’s just living at home, and not frequently being around so many people my age. Maybe it’s not being at university. Or maybe it’s something more. Maybe it’s what 8 years of St Albans residency has done to me. Maybe it’s having spent most Friday nights since I was 17 in the same two pubs that put disco lights on after 9pm and host dodgy middle-aged cover bands; the strange purgatory to which teenagers living in English towns are seemingly committed until they move to London. Maybe it’s, despite having grown up there, not being from the city. Maybe it’s not being used to ‘Hive ‘til Five’, or having ever heard of a ‘jager-train’. Maybe it’s that during the compulsory pre-party drinking games, after a few rounds of ‘never have I ever been fingerblasted in St Andrew’s Square’, and ‘never have I ever got my foof out on a Lothian bus’, I hadn’t drunk a drop, and felt the intense need to stand up in the middle of the circle and declare (in slight deviation from the standard game format) ‘I’m from Hertfordshire! Drink if you’ve ever realised mid-way through sex that you’re doing it to the Radio 4 shipping forecast!’ before downing the rest of my G&T. Level the playing field. Cultural difference, innit.

For those of you who don't know, this is the accordion man. He really deserves a shout out.