Home Number Two

Isn't there a song entitled "wherever I lay my hat that's my home?".....well it sounds bloody daft to me! Having said this when we left Sheffield in 2005 (two dogs, two cats, two of us and tons of luggage all crammed inside a Volkswagen Polo)..my life effectively was transported back to Wales and home was relocated in just that 2 hour drive.
I loved my old house in Sheffield, it was a large Victorian terrace with a sweet partly walled garden.We shared a ginnel (alley) with next door (Bel-Ami) and the sun always seemed to shine through the windows of the dining room which always looked as though it has been designed in the 1930s.
However when we left the house, "home" went with us in that Polo, and that was effectively and very simply....well....that!
Having said this I always consider myself as having two homes in some ways.....Our Welsh home at Bwthyn-y-llan and my affectionate "home" and that is the city of Sheffield.
Today, after a year (yes that long) I will drive over the Pennines and catch up with the city (John Lewis department store- oh be still my beating heart!;.....the art deco City Hall, the Peace Gardens (pic)etc.....but more importantly I will be catching up with the people that we left behind and I guess it is people and relationships that really make a home feel like home.
So...I will catch up with Joy (a friend and colleague from my Spinal Injury days) then have a long overdue catch up with Jane ( an ex girlfriend!) before meeting up with best mate Mike (yes he who is crap at keeping in touch) his wife Bev, Kathryn, Vince, Julie and of course Jonney H (who will be swishing into All Bar One, fashionably late, no doubt wearing something figure hugging and expensive from Zara!
Nuala will be meeting us there after catching the fast train up from London to complete the group (she left Sheffield in the early 1990's) and for one night only, I can look smart, not smell of chicken shit and catch up with old friends