Durham is a great place to work, in fact it's a
privilege working in such a beautiful place. I
never tire of walking up and down the hills, over
the bridges, in and out of the pubs. It's great,
I especially like it when the students are in town
and the small city centre is buzzing with
activity. You can tell when the new students are
in town as they're wandering around with give-away
gifts like pens and balloons in their hand and
sweaters detailing their college of choice. All
of them look lost, even the ones that live here.
For many, it's their first time away from home,
sharing accommodation with others and you find
them initialing the fish fingers in Safeway before
they take them to the cashier. They're walking
around wearing strange hair cuts and clothes their
mothers have picked out for them, and
they're all so young. I swear they get
younger every year. It doesn't last for long,
this innocence thing. A couple of weeks and
they're sitting on corridor floors in torn jeans,
with ripped course books trying to juggle their
life between lectures and bars, and trying not to
fall asleep in seminars. You hear them in the
corridors complaining about their heavy work load
"It's like, man, I have like 3 classes next
Wednesday man, and my head like, is just gonna
explode, I may just have to spend more time in the
bar to get my head around this man". Don't get me
wrong, I like students and I appreciate the fact
that some of them are this country's future, it's
just that they're everywhere in Durham, you can't
escape them. You can't get in the pub on a
Saturday night, you can't book a
table in a restaurant, you can't get a seat in the
cinema (yup, it's that small!). But, having
students in Durham does make it jump. Durham
isn't exactly the hottest place to come to for
socialising, although it does have a certain
charm. Now that the students are back in town the
place is very busy. None of the shop owners (or
the pubs!) are complaining and who I am to
complain either? But if get nutted on the head by
one more yellow balloon this week by someone
wearing a college sweater,
asking for directions to the union bar, wearing a
silly haircut and last year's trousers, I swear I
will simply scream.
Glenda Young is also the authoress of the
weekly Coronation
Street Update on the net, and can be contacted at:
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