Going Back

February is the month where spring is incoming and the remnants of winter cling on. It’s also the month that I journey ‘up north’ every year without fail, my wonderful Nan has her birthday in February and since we moved to Norfolk we make the trip every year and spend a week indulging in the most amazing home cooking and immersing in my roots.

My Nan, is the most amazing woman, having grown up during World War Two, bringing up two very successful sons and a brood of diverse grandchildren, she turned ninety this year and is by far the most independent woman I know. I am fiercely independent and she gives me a run for my money. I love this lady. I mean, she organised a Ceilidh, with a full band for her celebration… legend!

Going back to Manchester is always bitter sweet, I love the city but I love Norfolk more. The looming architecture of the city centre, the often grey skies and the Northern cheer make this city special but I do not look at the same way now, I’m not quite sure how much of that is my creative mind changing and how much of it lifestyle based. It’s very hard to compare the rural life by the sea to the fast pace of a city, but still something has changed.

When we first moved I longed, no actually pined, to be back to north to be amongst all that felt inspirational. I couldn’t pick up my camera for a long time, and that pained me. Yes, I know I live in a very beautiful place and this makes me sound a little spoilt but in the simplest of explanations it is beautiful and it doesn’t need any perspective from me to enhance that. Creating beauty from the urban and decaying is a more artistically fulfilling than not having to work to get that. So what’s the real issue here? The fear of making something less beautiful through my lens. For real? Oh my! Now that has taken me a few years to realise.