From Above

So as I indicated I’m leaving my current home. I’ve been here 6 years: 4 as a student and 2 as an employee of the University.

Tonight I had my work leaving do – which I didn’t really want, but felt obliged to have – and was slightly odd because I don’t actually leave until Friday! It was really lovely, and actually was what I wanted in the evening – a few drinks, some good conversations, a nice meal and not too many goodbyes (yet!)

On the way home, I walked to the station with a couple of my colleagues and they suggested that there was no way I could leave without going on the wheel that’s been set up in the city centre. When it was put up I (amongst other people) thought it a slightly odd place to put the wheel – essentially in the bottom of a valley, and I couldn’t believe that you could get a particularly good view of anything from there. However, I agreed that it was probably something that I should go on, so we paid our money and got on.

Now during my time here I’ve lived in a number of high up places – my halls of residence was a 12 floor tower and I lived on the 11th floor, my second student house was on top of one of the seven hills, my current lodgings is on the hill side of another hill – so I’ve seen this city from up above many times, but this was amazing. You could see for miles and miles, I could see places that I’ve known for ever in a completely different light. In some ways being so high up and moving at the same time was quite disorienting and I was often getting mistaken with exactly what we were looking at but my colleagues corrected me and pointed out things I’d never even spotted before. It certainly was a great way to see this place before I left it.

Sadly I had no camera but I’ll try to see if I can get some pictures of the wheel up here at some point!