Bright Lights, Big City
And so, I leave home!
I moved to Bristol, to go to university and study law. Weeks before leaving the Cotswolds I had so many people I knew well telling me I was ridiculous to study law, and that I was bound to be a chef. I laughed at them; I knew best. Or did I?
Leaving behind my beloved animals, (truly that was the worst part of Uni life) mum delivered me to halls. They were pretty awful. Not the google search I had imagined, balloon fiestas, suspension bridge and docks…. No! A fourteen-story dilapidated building divided up in to flats of 6. The kitchen was rubbish, the bed was like a camp bed my nanna used to have, it was a shock to the system. It was also not on campus, as I had chosen to live in the city centre. Having come from the idyllic Cotswolds, suddenly I was embroiled in the sound of sirens, drunks on the street, the beeping of an incessant pedestrian crossing, and the busses air brakes. What was I doing!?!?!?
My housemates were a mixed variety. 3 of them I never really got to know, they were Chinese and very much bonded as a three. Then there was Jess and Luke! I met them the day my mum dropped me off, and they ended up as my best friends at Uni. They made our life at Nelson House bearable. We had so much fun, I started not to notice the originally unbearable city sounds, the fact that our beds vibrated after 10pm became part of the joy of being the floor directly above a nightclub, friendships were growing.
One night I had said I would cook for the flat. They said yes, but as long as I did not cook any of my posh shit. We settled on pasta with pesto. I made the pesto of course, tossed it through the pasta, added some lightly toasted pine nuts, some of my mum’s homegrown tomatoes, fresh rocket, and parmesan shavings. Well, I will never forget how we laughed over the pasta, the pure disbelief that me a skint student had just served up pimped pasta and pesto.
The three of us had made friends with a few people on different floors, after all there were three flats on each of the fourteen floors. The last week before Christmas holidays, I hosted Christmas. I did the whole thing, turkey, and every trimming you could dream of. We had crackers, Christmas music, plenty of wine the whole shebang. Meanwhile of course I was studying too, but every day I found space in my day for food, for my passion.