Growing up in Grenoside in the early 2000s, one of the more northern parts of Sheffield, I always felt I’d lived slightly ‘out of the way’. Anything ‘interesting’ was at least a 30-minute drive away, as I’d grown up in a relatively small, quiet village with one corner shop, a few pubs, a butcher’s and a woodland – quite separate from the city centre.
Many of my childhood memories were spent in Grenoside woods, on long Sunday afternoon walks and bike rides with my family, or sledging down Top Side hills in winter, when the snow in Grenoside felt like a scene straight out of Narnia.
Between the ages of about eight and 13 (2012–17), there was one place in the city that, for some reason, felt like the greatest place on earth – Meadowhall. A Saturday afternoon there with friends (after being dropped off by someone’s mum, or braving the first parent-less tram journey), buying matching necklaces at Claire’s, smelly gel pens that would definitely not last, Lush bath bombs with aromas so pungent they felt like a straight-up nostril punch, and eating far too many American candies pretty much sums up the nostalgia of my ‘tweenage’ years in Sheffield.
One of my best friends growing up lived in Wincobank, within walking distance of Meadowhall, and I had never envied a human more than I did aged 13, aching to have what felt like a metropolis of random tat at my fingertips.
I resented where I was from for a long time, particularly when I started Notre Dame High School. Probably as posh as you can get without being private, much of the school’s population came from surrounding areas like Fulwood, Millhouses and Ecclesall. There were probably about ten people from Grenoside, a demographic mostly made up of myself and my siblings.
For people like me who didn’t live near school, we had the privilege of boarding bright green buses for an hour-long journey ending in Chapeltown. It felt like about 80% of my secondary school memories involved the journey to or from school – water fights in summer, hours spent sharing headphones, awkwardness over unspoken seating plans, and the sheer terror of making eye contact with a Year 11 on the back seat.
I hated being so far away from what I perceived at the time to be the ‘good parts’ of Sheffield – the massive parks, the gentrified coffee shops, the houses that casually had balconies attached to their bedrooms. When it came time to choose a university, I wasn’t fussy but had one condition – anywhere but home.
I’d grown sick of being a minimum of half an hour away from anything interesting or ‘nice’ and eventually just got sick of the city itself. I never understood why people loved it so much. ‘There’s nothing here,’ I’d tell myself repeatedly, before deciding to move to Newcastle for uni, thinking something ‘bigger and better’ would give me what I’d always been missing.
I lived there for two years and rarely found myself missing home. After deciding to do a placement year before finishing my degree, I applied to hundreds of positions in London – somewhere I deemed even bigger, and therefore even better.
After what felt like an infinite amount of rejection, I landed an internship at home in Sheffield. The idea of moving back dramatically felt like some kind of prison sentence, especially after two years of independence and university fun.
At the same time, my best friend was moving back after changing her mind about university in London. A part of me thought she was completely insane for choosing Sheffield over London. She’s always loved everything about Sheffield, and I never quite understood why – until this past year.
Moving back to Grenoside after two busy years in Newcastle, I finally appreciated being ‘out of the way’. Being near-ish to the city centre, but not right in the middle of it, and being able to have quiet walks in the woods the day after a rather heavy night out, helped me love home again.
Coming back at the same time as my friend, she – without necessarily meaning to – taught me to love the city I was born in, to the point where now I can’t believe I ever used to think ‘there’s just nothing here’. Music, art, food, drink, culture – it’s all here, I just didn’t want to look hard enough.
Now preparing to go back to Newcastle for my final year, I find myself not wanting to leave. Being a student is strange in that sense – you have two homes, and neither feels quite completely like home, because as soon as you’re in one, you miss the other. And I’ll miss my home here more than I’d like to admit.
