Happy Anniversary to Us!
That’s right, my lovely adoring Your Local Link fan base – it’s our anniversary! One year of me taking the piss out of you and your silly Yorkshire ways. But the truth is (and if you weren’t already clued up then you’re not really paying attention), I love this place. I love your quirky twists of the English language, your tilty medieval structures, and most of all, I love your gin. I mean, I really, really love your gin. You guys do good gin. Sure, you’re so much more than gin… but are you?
Okay, yes, you are. And once again, I’m going to tell you off for not knowing it. In a year, I’ve ranted at you about your (crappy) accessibility, about your inability to embrace cool new innovations (Spark) and even about brown sauce (seriously though, brown sauce?), but one of my favourite rants was about your walls, and how many of you had never even bothered to walk along them. So, has that changed? Have you stood above the people, among the kings and queens of tourism, to take in new views of the Minster?
You have? Great. Not good enough.
Seriously. Have you looked at anything else with the awed eyes of a newcomer? Or have you run off to distant lands only to come back and moan about how much nicer it is on the other side of the sea?
I grew up in a family of explorers. Not the kind that came to Canada 200 years ago and nearly wiped out an entire culture — ohoh, I see some eyes going glassy. Not the time or place from my British colonisation rant? That’s okay, I’ll make you uncomfortable about the Empire some other time. Let’s just stick with one genre of guilt this month, shall we? So, explorers. My family travelled across the huge expanse of Canada every summer, by car, by plane, by canoe. (And please note, it’s just a canoe. There’s no such thing as a Canadian canoe. It’s a canoe, or a kayak.) We hiked mountains, we went shopping in metropolitan Montreal, and we even flew over to England a few times to visit family. Despite all the travelling, I’ve only lived in two cities; Winnipeg and York. And they’re both my home now.
Which is why it really riles me up when people go away on holiday, and come back all pouty about being in “boring old York”. Oh, how I loved Paris! The buildings! The culture! Magnifique! I could live there. I mean, yes, duh. It’s Paris. It’s amazing. But when I come back here, I look around at all the green spaces (did you notice, Mme Magnifique, how all of Paris’ “parks” are gravelled?), I smell flowers instead of urine, and when I try to speak the local language, (keeping in mind that, as a Canadian, I am actually fully fluent.) I’m not treated with that world-renowned French disdain.
Look, I’m not saying you can’t travel, and that you can’t love where you go. You should fall in love with a new culture. You should engage with the museums, buildings, people and wares. We recently spent four days in Amsterdam, and we loved it. I found myself caught up in the world of all the books I’ve read that feature the canalled city, trying to imagine the path a character might have taken on their way to the market. I looked up, I looked in, I looked out. I absorbed as much of the city as I could. We travelled into the countryside and saw tulips and windmills. I touristed my ass off.
And then we came home to York. And I fell in love with it again. Wandering down Goodramgate to Church Street and onto Parliament Street, we found that it was set up for another weekend fair, or market, or celebration of some kind. I don’t even know what it was, but it reminded me of our first weekend here in York, back in 2014, when we stumbled into the same square, lost and overwhelmed by the beauty of the city. It was September, and Parliament Street was alive with the Food Festival. The street was crowded, vibrant; alive with food and culture. And now, Parliament Street will forever be, in my mind, the heart of York. Ever changing, ever drawing in crowds who then disperse throughout the rest of the city’s culture – to the museums and gardens, street festivals and food vendors.
I have experienced York as a stranger. I can remember my first time walking over Lendal Bridge, the Minster looming in the distance. That overwhelming sense of newness, of simultaneous loneliness and possibility, may have given me a different perspective from someone who’s lived here their whole life. But the fact is that falling in love with a city that you’re “just visiting” isn’t true love. It’s a summer fling. You pour your hard-earned cash into their cultural opportunities, and you don’t have to worry about deadlines or school, or even cooking supper (sorry, tea). When was the last time you poured that same hard-earned money into a museum in York? Or bought some local gin? Or sent a postcard from York, abroad? Maybe it’s because I lived here as a tourist first, that I can also stop and imagine fictional characters of history walking down these streets, hurrying towards the walls or down a little-used snickleway.
Tell you what, falling in love with a city can be as joyful and heartbreaking as falling in love with a person. I’ve been in York for nearly five years now, and whether I choose to stay here or move back to Canada some day, I will never feel entirely at home ever again. Part of me will always miss the city I’m not in. But I’m okay with that. I’m happy to split my heart in two for York.
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