As much as I like the fact that I have clean hair and a cup of tea in my favourite leopard print mug in front of me, I frankly don't have the energy to get excited about such small pleasures when I have such post-holiday blues. Only I don't see my yearly visits to Spain as holidays anymore. I have a house there, I have friends there and I know the area better than I know Salford. It's not just the sunshine that brings me back time and time again, or even the Tinto de Verano that I'm currently having withdrawal symptoms from. It's the culture. It's the fact that everyone greets each other with kisses, not brushing your hair is considered a good thing and people openly drink and drive everywhere around, or get stoned in bars knowing full well that the bar staff are even more fucked than they are. I'm not advocating drink driving but it's this laid back attitude of 'let's stay up all night being crazy Spanish people' that beats hands down the shitty club culture of the UK, where the clubs are full of students that refuse to mingle with anyone outside their friendship group and you have to change your entire style based on which club you go to and on which night you go to it.
I have a friend in Spain, Daniel, who much prefers England. He raves about the beautiful architecture and all there is to see and do here. I'll agree that London is a beautiful city, and so is Manchester. You can do pretty much anything here in Manchester. Watch artsy films with pizza on your knee, go to burlesque shows, stumble upon unsigned bands that will be international superstars in a few years, spend hours in vintage shops and vegan cafes...pretty much anything. However, fantastic though the Northern Quarter may be, it's full of the pretensions that it's pretending so hard not to have. Everybody is so 'random and happy' and everybody pretends to be poor and bohemian before spending five pounds on a coffee and everybody thinks they're so original with their upside down crucifixes and Jesus bracelets. It's not original. It's not even cool. It's forced and it's so tiring having to put so much thought into everything when all I want to do is be reading a book in the sun with a fucking beer.
I feel so trapped at university. Everybody says your uni days are the freest of your lives but not for me. Sure i can drink and I don't HAVE to get a job in order to be able to have money in my pocket, and sure I'm living in one of those big town houses that all students live in but I'm stuck here in Manchester for two years, doing the same thing, going to the same clubs, drinking the same two litre bottles of wine for three pound and not minding that it tastes of piss.
All I want to do is go and work in a bar or cafe somewhere, anywhere in Europe, and wear my hair in the way that I want to without being judged as being a fucking weirdo or hipster, and meet genuine people with the same kinds of beliefs and values as me. I wanna live in a place where the majority of people are wearing tie-dye pants and selling handmade bracelets to make a living. I wanna sit and play cards at midnight on the beach rather than be judged by trendy boys and girls in Fifth.
As soon as I finish uni I'm gone. May 2014 can't come soon enough.
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