Tag: winchester

#oneaday Day 516: Away Game

Spending a weekend in markedly different surroundings to the place where you spend most of the rest of your week is an eminently worthwhile experience, particularly if you spend most of your week chained to a desk — whether that’s in a working-from-home sort of situation or the daily grind at an office. Over the last few weeks (and probably months) I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to spend some time away from the environment I spend the working week in, and it’s a healthy, positive experience.

The only frustrating thing about the whole shebang is the fact that most places I go away to are inevitably attached somehow to either my awesome girlfriend Andie, who currently lives 150 miles away from me; or to friends I left behind back in the Southampton area (about 120 miles away) when I was forced to depart last September.

In some senses, this is good, though, as it means I get completely out of the daily “grind”, as it were, by going somewhere markedly different from the places I see every day. Even if I do go out while I’m back at home, it’s inevitably to the same old places time after time — local shop, local supermarket, post office, local coffee house. And while I know Southampton and Winchester pretty well having spent the best part of 10 years living and working in the area, the fact I don’t live there now is enough to keep them feeling fresh, pleasant and not “new” as such, but places I feel I can rediscover each time I visit.

Now, granted, Southampton’s a bit of a shithole and if you want to do something on a Saturday night that isn’t getting pissed (and, by extension, into a fight) or going to the cinema, there’s actually really not a great deal to do — not in the town centre at least. But as I’ve said on several occasions in the past, it’s a place in which I lay down some “roots” and even if I end up never moving back there to live — which is looking increasingly likely — it will always be if not a “home” then certainly a home away from home.

Winchester, on the other hand, is a place I’d return to in a flash given the opportunity. My favourite place I’ve ever lived was in Winchester. It was a gorgeous big fully-furnished flat with a dishwasher, heated towel rails and a dressing room off the main bedroom. The furniture provided was good quality, not the usual hand-me-down shite, and while I was there, even though I was working a soul-crushingly awful job in the secondary music classrooms of Hampshire, it was a haven I could return to of an evening and feel like I had come “home”. Of course, as Sod’s Law tends to go, this dream-come-true of accommodation was snatched up by the landlord, who rather inconsiderately wanted to give it to their daughter, so we ended up living in a nice-ish cottage that was unfortunately afflicted with a great deal of damp and mould, and smelled disconcertingly of gas in the living room.

I often wonder where I’m going to end up next. I hope it’s somewhere good that I can lay down some roots once again and start afresh. For now, there are weekend escapes like the one I’m on now with Andie, and right this second, that’s the best life has to offer, so I’m damn well going to enjoy it.

#oneaday, Day 279: Saturday Drivers

I don’t know why anyone bothers to try and do anything on a Saturday, particularly if doing said thing involves riding in a car for any length of time.

“Why’s that?” I hear you ask.

“Well,” I say, “it’s to do with traffic.”

When asked to elaborate, I elaborate on the fact that traffic gets bloody everywhere on a Saturday, but particularly in the various town centres of the UK. Everyone decides that Saturday is “shopping day”, which makes a certain amount of sense, given that normal people (i.e. not unemployed scrotes like me) are normally working throughout the course of the week. But to this I respond “why not Sunday? What’s wrong with Sunday?”

It’s a fair question, I feel. Although the opening hours of most shops are shorter on Sundays, opening later and closing earlier, there is, these days, otherwise nothing to distinguish the experience of shopping on a Sunday in a town centre to shopping on a Saturday. Sure, there may be more people coming and going from church. If you happen to be passing by a church, of course. Which, let’s face it, shopping centres aren’t known for being built in close proximity to.

The net result of all this trafficky nonsense on a Saturday, of course, is that any time you actually want to get something done that involves passing through (or even near) a town centre on a Saturday, you had better budget at least twice as much time as you think you need. Because a good 50% of your journey will be spent staring at another car’s arse wondering if you’ll ever see your home again. I experienced the joy of this today, with a trip into Eastleigh town centre earlier in the day (Eastleigh being a town remarkable for featuring a road layout designed by someone who has no idea how big a car is) and later a trip to Southampton (jammed solid) to pick up my friend Tom in order to give him a lift to my other friend Sam’s in Winchester. Oddly enough, Winchester, which is usually a traffic-infested hellhole thanks to being a medieval city that wasn’t really designed with cars in mind, and features a Gowalla spot for the traffic jam which occurs every day like clockwork between 5 and 7pm, was pretty clear. Result.

The above isn’t just limited to town centres, either. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of driving on the crown jewel of Britain’s road system, the M25, will be well familiar with this feeling. Except on the M25 you don’t even have any interesting towny sights to enjoy while you’re stuck behind a million other cars that stretch off to the horizon with no obvious reason for stopping dead on a road designed for driving at 70mph. No, you have concrete, and other cars. And trucks. And that’s about it. Not fun. At all. Better hope there’s something good on the radio, or at least that you have some entertaining content on your iPod.

So basically, my advice to you? If it’s Saturday, then just stay in. You don’t need to go out. Just stay in. Catch up on TV. Watch a DVD. Play a lengthy video game. Listen to some music. Read a book.

Anything. Anything but go for a drive.