View from Jonic’s window. I haven’t officially posted pictures yet because I don’t have time to tag.
Saturday morning: up early, and so tired after a long and draining week; a few gins to the wind last night and a Starbucks under my belt before I even reach the train.
Winter has come to these fields without question and a light, icing-sugar dusting of groundfront hides the earthy tones of hibernation from the passing train. The East Coast Mainline is my favourite stretch of railway; particularly the point just before Dunbar when, mind wandering as you gaze out of the window, you realise that what you thought was the sky behind interchangeable fields is actually sea. I tend to catch this view in the summer, on the way to London or to Berwick for mine and K’s joint birthday celebrations, but it’s in the winter that the landscape really comes into its own: bare branches, the grey of the ocean and a slate sky tinged with pink go some way to sate the wanderlust in my heart. I decide against digging out my camera, because I don’t want to miss a second.
Sunday morning: walking back into York from Jonic’s mate Dave’s house, where we had crashed out for the night after a few more gins and despite the entertaining presence of Paul Anthony Kealey, the most awesome cat in the northern hemisphere. We could see our breath in the air and smell the chocolate from the nearby Nestle factory, and I remember saying something to Jonic like “you get to live here all the time!” and grinning. It’s strange that all of the things I found irritating about the city on my last visit, some two and a half years ago, utterly beguiled me this time around: the ramshackle, narrow buildings with the staircases I was terrified I’d plummet down, and the streets with names like Shambles and Nether Hornpot Lane. It couldn’t have taken me any longer than about an hour to fall halfway in love with the place, although the volume of alcohol consumed over the course of this weekend puts that last disgraceful weekend to shame.
It was not, however, supposed to be thus. While this weekend was always planned more as a long-overdue reunion with my dear Web Hedgehog than a traipse down the tourist trail, I had planned at least to have a wander around the markets and take a couple of pretty photos. While I managed the latter, the sheer volume of people in the city in the run-up to Christmas made the former as good as impossible – which was a shame, as I would have loved the chance to observe the art of crepe-artistry first-hand. “Fuck this,” said Jonic, as I stood on tiptoes for a better view of some of the most spectacularly tacky lavender-based gifts I had ever seen, “pub?”
There were actually several pubs, each with its own set of charms. There was The Snickleway, overcrowded even for a Saturday afternoon with its talkative punters and walls covered in plaques and comedy signs and mementos. I can’t remember what Jonic and I were talking about when this barfly leaned over and started ranting about getting ripped off on eBay because something he’d bought hadn’t arrived yet. “Where’s Port Talbot?” he shouted over to his mate when I tried to establish where the seller lived. “Is that a pub?” came the reply. I loved it, and I loved the Biltmore where there were posh cocktails and I kept falling off my barstool and the kid behind the bar, who couldn’t have been any more than about nineteen, said I could have an extra raspberry even though he thought Jonic was my boyfriend. I loved Buzz, even if the rest of the customers could have done without us discussing a certain notorious shock-porn site over dinner of noodles and warm sake, and where I pocketed a Bombay Sapphire-branded cocktail stirrer when the barman wasn’t looking even though Jonic said they wouldn’t care since they probably threw them out after one use anyway.
But best of all I loved The Habit, where we ended up that night and which was like all good pubs should be: cosy, crowded and stocked with Kopparberg (and gin); full of good people and good music and with just enough space to dance. We watched Dave Keegan and, was it Simon something, play the entire contents of my iPod with wit and skill including a jaw-droppingly awesome version of “Shot in the Arm” which gave way to “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and which was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen, even better than Jeff Tweedy himself. And there were all of these amazing people there because Jonic seems to know like every single person in York and they’re all either fantastically talented musicians or just amazingly cool people, and called either Rob or Dave (including Dave McLean, with his fantastic beard, who we’d seen busking earlier and who stopped for long enough to tell us about this chip shop in Drumtocher and its Italian proprietress who supplied the salt and vineeegarrr). And I danced with these lovely girls who asked about my tattoo, and they seemed genuinely interested so I didn’t mind telling them, and I thought about how long it had been since I’d had a genuinely great, spontaneous night (or as spontaneous as it gets when it cost you three and a half hours and seventy quid to get there), and how much more sense singing and dancing and drinking and laughing and talking makes compared to the craziness of Monday mornings and power-dressing I can’t quite get the hang of, and how I really didn’t want it to end.
And there were other things too; but I hate when people write blog posts consisting of private jokes and stuff that will only make sense to one other person but there’s enough of that to keep Jonic and I in stupid laughs until at least he comes up to Glasgow where you can at least buy Irn Bru inna can for your hangover at less than £1.29 per 500ml. I got to see Kieran briefly too, and talk albums of the year, and meet Rachel properly rather than just as another face at a party I didn’t know anybody else at either, which was an added bonus. Right now I’m going to throw something at this headache and try to get a decent night’s sleep before the week’s bloody treadmill kicks off again.
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