Today I risked my life by going to Nottingham with Matt. I'd pretty much accepted the fact that I was going to be killed, or at the very least, shanked. But believe or not, I'm not writing this from "beyond the grave". I wasn't brutally murdered. I wasn't even mugged. In fact, the most threatening thing we encountered was a flock of low flying pigeons, which Matt bravely protected me from.
Obviously, I didn't just wake up one morning and think, "Oh, might go to Nottingham, y'know!" No. This had a similar purpose to mine and Vicky's trip to Manchester (read about it here). As such, our first stop was the University campus! I've never actually seen a university campus outside of OH SO REAL American sitcoms and films. In the cities I've visited (and, indeed, the one I live in) the university buildings and the dorm rooms have been scattered across the city carelessly, leaving poor students to trek half way across the city to go to different lecture hall places and sleep dorm thingies. Technical terms. Matt's brother, Andrew, who we got the train with (and who is better than Matt at "I spy"), kindly showed us around the campus area, helpfully pointing out important things like which halls the "RAH"s stayed in and where the best food was served. I imagine I would've been more impressed if the temperature in Nottingham hadn't been around 20 degrees colder than EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. As it was, we could've flocked to the Arctic for a summer break.
We scaled "Mount Doom", an infamous 'hill', that daunts many who try to cross it. Naturally, us Sheffielders were not afraid of a slight incline. Andrew left us after that, in search of his lunch, and Matt and I wandered towards the bus stop, threatening to push each other in to the lake we were walking beside. After watching two buses crawl past us, we finally got on the Indigo (Ahh!) bus to Broadmarsh. As the temperature increased, so did my appreciation of Little Nottingham Town. Sure, it wasn't as big as Manchester. No, it didn't have as many people bustling about. Yeah, there was the constant threat of being mugged. But it had it's own little quirks, none more fascinating than the ridiculous number of £1/99p shops that littered the Broadmarsh centre. Naturally, we went in them all.
We both found our desired lunching venues (Matt's Subway and my Pret). I even managed to have a coffee without spilling too much of it, although that was mostly thanks to Matt and his hands. We stood in Waterstones for a while, reading The Gruffalo. We visited the Victoria Centre to buy Vicky a present, from a shop whose tag line was "...All the things you didn't know existed!" I dragged Matt in to the bra section of Marks and Spencers, and he dragged me back out of it. We wandered past a stall selling bowls of fruit (most notably LEMONS) for £1. We did this twice, each time Matt pausing to seriously consider purchasing said fruit, until on the third, we actually did. Yeah. We bought a bowl of lemons. And what? After/Before/Meanwhile, Matt bought me a present that I obviously don't know about, and I bought him one that he obviously doesn't know about. We're good with secrets.
Basically, we aimlessly wandered around for hours, but it was FUN. Nottingham is even PLEASANT in parts! I know, I was as surprised as you. I could definitely handle living there during my student years, even if there isn't a Selfridges.
After a final trip to a pound type shop for Matt's bar of chocolate, we hunted down the train station. We dithered outside the ticket gates for a while, deciding whether to go for the train that left in 5 minutes, or staying for an unknown length of the time until the next one. We ended up settling for the first one - probably a good idea, seeing as it was pretty dark by then, and we'd already been lucky to escape being shanked for that long. Matt had a minor heart attack when he thought I'd lost my train ticket (I had to calmly explain that I hadn't lost it at all and it was just in one of many pockets), not that the train conductor man cared. We planned the baking of a lemon cake. Stole each other's phone. Willingly gave up our phones for lulz. Made far too many innuendo jokes based around Matt and his juicy lemons. Until, what could only have been 10 minutes later, the train driver was declaring we were in Sheffield and everyone needed to get the hell off his train. I paraphrased, but that was basically the gist of what he was saying.
Matt's mum came to pick us up and - after I made sure Matt's coat was securely zipped up - we skipped towards her. Literally. Alas, the bag that Matt was holding our juicy lemons in split, leaving him to scramble back for them in panic. I just stared after him in vague confusion. What else can you do when your lemons are rolling away from you at speed?
Lol.
Don't worry yourselves though, Matt managed to rescue 2 out of 3 escaped lemons, and we were left with 4 for our lemon cake. DISASTER AVERTED, PEOPLE.
Jasm x
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