Home Sweet Home

Firstly I feel I need to say a huge thank you to my wonderful friend Caroline for creating this beautiful blog for me. As yet I do not really no how to use it and not sure what to write so please forgive the written ramblings of my very bizarre mind and the inevitable spelling/grammatical errors that come from growing up in the North! After being bullied for over six years now for being ‘Northern’, when I am actually from the Midlands, I can look back and see it was God’s preparation for me so I would never get too comfortable in the South. 

After an unexpected public display of uncontrollable emotion, I departed Norwich permanently yesterday with my car crammed full (driving vision not impaired though) with the rubbish I have accumulated over the years. Without the help of Calli, Ruth and Sarah it would have literally been impossible as I was unable to pack things sensibly and completely underestimated the volume of my Corsa in comparison to the bags and boxes I need to get in it! Miraculously it fitted and is now safely situated in the conservatory at my mums house until I can bear the idea of sorting it out, probably a job I should have done in Norwich. Upon arriving home there was a pan full of homemade stew on the hob and a cup of Charlie waiting - ahhh it’s good to be home. After a cup of tea at my aunties house this afternoon with all the relatives I feel like I have never been away and can even sing along with the ‘King Carpets’ radio advert which is still exactly the same after all these years!

You often hear people saying ‘Home is where the heart is’ and I really can’t agree more. I call here my home and Norwich has been my home for the last six and a bit years and I’m sure in time Manchester will also become home. It’s hard to imagine Norwich not being a big part of my life when so much of it is still there and most of the people I hold very dear. As my leaving date has been creeping up on me it became increasingly more difficult to pretend it wasn’t happening which all came to a head when in the creative writing session I used to do at work we were exploring emotions and I wrote a “poem” (not really sure what you would call it) about Love. I got thinking about Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

After some analysis and reflection upon this it really got me thinking about all I would be leaving behind. Shakespeare is saying true love always perseveres despite obstacles that arise and that it remains constant even though people and circumstances change. Love never dies, even when someone tries to destroy it. Rather than being something that comes and goes, love is eternal and unchanging – so much so that Shakespeare compares it to the North Star, which never moves in the sky and guides lost ships home. He even stakes his own reputation on this definition, boldly claiming that if anyone can prove him wrong, he’ll eat his words. That is to say, if this idea of love turns out to be wrong, then he’ll take back everything he wrote and it’ll be as though it never existed. Furthermore, if this specific portrayal of love is somehow proved to be the wrong one, then nobody, as far as the he is concerned, has ever loved at all.

Thanks to the amazing works of Jane Austin (a wonder I share passionately with Anna Caffell) this Sonnet has always been close to my heart but I never really understood it. I have always heard it used in a romantic sense, which I love, but I feel I can confidently say I have and will continue to share this kind of love with many of my friends in Norwich. You guys have supported, loved and softened me through many highs and lows and I can never thank you enough. At this time in my life I find it hard to think I will ever find friends I love, trust, admire, and can be completely myself with anywhere else. I trust that God has great plans for me ‘up North’ and it is exactly where he wants me for now (I still strangely desire to live in Exeter for some reason and am waiting for Matt Kettle to plant a church there as he too once said he would like to live there). For all the friends I leave in Norwich and it’s surroundings please know you can not and will not be replaced and I hope you know how much you mean to me.

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangements of things, the greater part of life is sunshine." - Thomas Jefferson (given to me by Emma Colthup).