My Second Home

As mentioned in previous posts, I am currently undergoing the riot of fun and excitement that is University applications. This being the case, I wanted to revisit my top choices for Unis to make sure I had the right choices for first and insurance in mind. If you aren't aware of the British University system, it's unnecessarily complicated, but the basics are that you apply to five universities and if (in an ideal world) they all accept you, you pick two -- a first choice, where you really want to go, and an insurance choice, where you'll go if you don't get the grades for your first choice. I decided on my first choice many months ago, and a visit day last month simply reconfirmed that it is the place I want to be. Having said that, on Wednesday I was up in Lancaster - theoretically my insurance choice - to have another poke around the Uni, take a shifty at the course and just generally gauge the atmosphere of the place. And whilst I really enjoyed the open day, what the trip really did was reignite my love of Lancashire.

Lancashire is kind of a second home to me -- though I was born in Yorkshire and raised in Derbyshire, my mum is Lancastrian, and my Grandma lived there up until a couple of years ago, meaning that it's where I spent most of my half terms throughout my childhood. Because we don't visit it as often anymore, I always forget how much I love it, and how at home I feel there. I know my mum feels similarly -- though she hasn't lived in Lancashire for nearly twenty years, she always relaxes back into it (her accent slips a bit too -- 'tour' ends up being pronounced 'too-ur' rather than 'tor' and 'look' gets elongated into a proper 'oooo' sound).

Anyway, on the way home we needed to stop somewhere for tea, and my mum chose a pub that used to be her 'local', before I was born. The pub was something that's become increasingly rare in England -- it still had that old-world, wooden-beams and open-fireplace feel, but it wasn't full of chavvy football hooligans knocking pints down to their apparently indestructible livers. Largely it was occupied by friendly old codgers -- the kind of men who wear tweed and smoke pipes and say 'aye' a lot.

But it's not just the regulars -- everybody there just has so much time for you, and it would be weird for you to have left a pub without talking to a stranger. My mum once told me how shocked she was the first time she got on a London tube, because nobody was speaking to each other. They just sat there, heads down, noses in books, phones out and warily keeping themselves to themselves. Even in my own experience of trains around South Yorkshire/North Derbyshire, it's not unusual to end up chatting on a train but it's not a given either. But in Lancashire, it would have been a weird train journey if the old lady on your left hadn't discussed her sister's best friend's hip replacement.

And it makes you feel so welcome. At every pub I've ever been to at home it's been an stick-to-your-own kind arrangement, but not in Lancashire. As soon as I walked in, the barman came over, leant over my shoulder and talked me through the deals on offer tonight - whilst we were eating he came back about six times to check we were okay, and asked if we were regulars, where were we from, what were we up for, had I liked the University. Granted, my mum thinks he was flirting with me, but I sure as hell wasn't complaining...

But even then, we got chatting to two waitresses, somebody else who'd been to the open day, a couple of the old regulars and a remarkably drunk woman who repeatedly told my mum how young she looked (Mother Dearest wasn't complaining, either). All over one meal, in one night, at one pub. I've never encountered another place where that happens, and it never fails to make me feel at home. And it doesn't matter wherever I end up in the world, I know I'll never not love Lancashire.