Reflections on a year in Sheffield

Reflections

Home is a particular feeling I think. 

I'd been travelling so long I'd forgotten what it was like to make a new place your home and all the little intricacies that come with it. Spend enough time by your cosy desk staring out the window (when you should be studying) at the street below, and it becomes your street.

Sheffield is known in England as an industrial city, an idea which, until recently, would be completely accurate. Sheffield Steel, they make good knives. That was all I knew about this place; a name on a map, somewhere in South Yorkshire. But of course, home makes it so much more than that. All the tiny details that make up your life in that place, the things you learn that are unique to it, it is these things which turn a place from strange to familiar. 

Sheffield is one of the eight largest cities in England, it's known as the steel city, the largest village in England, and it was heavily bombed in World War II. None of these facts make it stand out, but perhaps they help to explain the gritty realness of this city. It is solid, it endures. And it does so with grim, northern cheer. The centre has little personality beyond the city hall, one of my favorite views in the city.

It is lacking green spaces in the centre, but possibly makes up for this with parks on the outskirts, and of course, backing onto the beautiful Peak District. It has hipster neighborhoods, Crooksmore (fondly known as Crooks to all the students who live there - though don't mention Conduit road, the worst hill to walk up in all of Sheffield) and Kelham Island, an up-and-coming neighborhood full of 18th century factories, urban decay and the beginning of the reuse of these spaces for quirky cafes and the infamous pub the Fat Cat (it's becoming gentrified). This is my favourite neighborhood, home to cafes like The Depot, and the Daily Grind.

























Or if it's a stronger drink your after, Kelham Island wine bar is lovely though pricey, and my all time favourite place, the Stew and Oyster is just down the road.

The funny thing about Sheffield, is that the locals are damn proud of their city. All these little factors add up, and give this place character (and there's always something likable about the underdog) until one day you find yourself defending the place; "I know it doesn't look like much, but..."

Reflecting back upon my first day, on my way to my flat, I saw a homeless person dead with seemingly unconcerned medics standing around. It wasn't an auspicious start to my stay, but in a way, that's Sheffield. Maybe you wouldn't call it exactly nice, but it grows on you.
There are lots of homeless, my experience of them was that they were pretty harmless, but there is a big a drug problem. Their local haunt in front of the cathedral became a norm for me as I saw some of them there every day (they seemed to have big congregations and discussions here every Sunday - for their weekly committee meeting, we used to joke). 

At the beginning every street looks the same, and I relied on Google Maps almost constantly, except to get to the Tesco express, a four minute walk away (not three, not five, but exactly four. I took so many trips there over the year I knew every step).

The first time I recognized somewhere, and realized I'd been there before, back before I knew this place. A connection made. The short cuts home, cutting down an alleyway by the cathedral.
Slowly I discovered the city, and grew to love the places and all their idiosyncrasies.



















The cathedral square, the pavement littered with gravestones people never bother to pause and read

The Red Deer, a pub taken over by all the archaeologists, from undergrads to professors (that's what happens when the pub is a two minute walk from the faculty). If there are two general rules about archaeologists, it would be these: they have no dress sense, and they are all functioning alcoholics (along with the geologists). I suppose if you go on enough archaeological digs with no pay offered (but free wine provided) its happens!

The Frog and Parrot, one of my favourite places for hanging out, with a good soundtrack and cheap bubbly

Tamper, the tiny NZ cafe that made the best coffee in Sheffield, and sold L&P.















The man that wandered down my street some weeknights (always at dusk) playing the harmonica and bellowing out piano man happily to himself.
How every Thursday evening the cathedral bells toll non stop for hours, to the point where I would wander into the kitchen, hear them, and instantly say 'oh it's Thursday!'  Once they tolled on a Monday and I spent an hour thinking it was Thursday.

These are the tiny fragments that made this place home. But now I'll backtrack, to before I knew all this, when I was still fresh and new to this place, and all the noteworthy events that came after.