Off the straight and narra'

I managed to get down to Glasgow last Saturday; a whistle stop affair to catch up with some friends at a party.

It was the first time I've been out for drinks with friends for three months and the first time out of the Black Isle since getting back from Turkey. Stepping off the train in Glasgow, I felt like someone taking their first steps after being cryogenically frozen for the last twenty-five years. I had to relearn how to walk in a crowd. I didn't know where to look. I felt like a rookie surrounded by people well-versed in the art of city-life.

I suppose that even at work the strangers I see aren't really that strange as most of them will hang around and chat for bit every time they're in.

And at the party, for the first time in my life, I was slightly nervous walking into a living room full of people I (mostly) didn't know. And that was weird, as those are the situations I'd normally find entirely exciting- room full of conversations and music. But, again, since being back at home, sometimes even the living room can start feel a bit too crowded if both cats happen to walk in at the same time.

It was also strange being a non-student in a room of students. "So, what do you study?" they'd ask "butchery... haha, no, not really, but I do spend most of my days pushing meat through a grinder...", "ah right", "yeah, so...".

The next day, on the train heading North, I caught a glimpse of myself in the blacked out windows. I was hunched up over two chairs with my jacket serving as a make-shift blanket and looking not too clever. The dude on the next lot of chairs over, left of me in the reflection, was about my age, dressed well and typing away on his laptop, perhaps getting a head start on his work for tomorrow.

"Look at the state of me", I thought, "maybe if I, too, get a head start on work tomorrow, it'll make me feel better about my current state of affairs", so I flexed my fingers out several times and shook them around; ready to scoop up that diced steak in the morning.