I left Sheffield in July 1978 after I finally finished my final teaching practice, and felt that my life was over. Little did I know that it was only just beginning, but I was sad, bereft, and dreading the future.

What I really wanted was another gap year, to find myself as they say, but I was going back to London, with the expectation I would be a grown up and find a job. Which I did. And a husband.

But that’s by the bye. I was leaving the city I loved, the city that had embraced me and let me embrace all that could be embraced at the time. Lots of frogs. Some princes. Mostly disasters. But from the age of 19 to 24 the motto: five new people a day, carried me through.

And then I left. And didn’t come back for about six years. I took my husband for the day. He was very polite but couldn’t see what the fuss was about. And then I didn’t go back for another 20 years, more or less.

My youngest daughter had been persuaded to come to Sheffield for a university open day. Mainly because I wanted to show her some of my old haunts. And we went for a long and nostalgic walk. It was great and interesting but everything had massively changed. The whole city had been updated. Old landmarks gone. (No more Hole in the Road.)

Then three years ago I came for another weekend on account of my eldest daughter’s hen party. I took my best friend for a reflective walk along my old haunts. Not surprisingly, even more changes.

So yesterday I was prepared – sort of- for yet more tweaks to my beloved city.

I met my daughter at the station and we went walking. Somehow I had forgotten how hilly Sheffield is. Always uphill.

I had booked a fairly grotty hotel, but it was near where I wanted to show Kasia, and so I huffed and puffed my way to the places I had lived in as a student.

I lived here for two years. First in one of the bedsits and then in the attic. The first few months I was the only student. My fellow lodgers were Alice Hall, an ancient and sad crone who never washed, and lived mainly off bacon sandwiches and a pint of stout at the local pub. (Gone. We checked.) She would spend her days travelling on the buses; they were warm and free!

In the room opposite there were also George and his wife Rosie, who were very pleasant and fairly feckless. Jobless, anyway. But I came home from uni one day ( we didn’t call it that – it was always the University) to find that all my jewellery and a lot of my clothes had been stolen. How did I know it was them? I can’t remember exactly, but I know that after my landlord threw them out – and changed the locks on the front door, I then met George in the street. I asked him for my stuff back. He said he couldn’t give it back, but could I give him some clothes for Rosie. She needed to look nice. ( for the punters, it was understood) Did I mention that this house was in the reddest of the red light areas at the time? Anyway, I gave him some clothes and some money and thankfully never came across them again. I still didn’t have a lock on my bedroom door. It wasn’t really a thing in those days.

Alice died and then John moved in. A nice young man. A bit older than me. Obviously troubled in some way. We used to talk late into the night. I’m a good listener. I even took him to church with me sometimes. But he omitted to tell me one fact of his unusual life. He was on licence from prison having murdered his wife in the previous year. How did I find out? From his social workers whom I met at a party. When they found out where I lived they were a bit concerned. I’m not sure whether for me or for him. But they were running a big social experiment in that part of Sheffield and somehow I was caught up in it. I told my landlord who then put a lock on my door and evicted him.

Then he started renting rooms to students. They seemed to be a safer bet somehow. Lots of my friends moved in. We had great fun as we all had a tiny cooker each in the rooms. And a tiny basin. So we had dinner parties where we cooked different dishes in each of the rooms.

What the house didn’t have though was a bathroom. No. I lie. There was an actual bathroom, very pink, as they’d got a grant to put one in. What they hadn’t done was to connect it to any hot water. So never used! I used to go to the students union for a bath.

In my final year I had the use of the attic, which was very big. I asked Bill, the landlord, to paint it before I moved in. It had lovely original beams. He unfortunately painted them a delightful shade of pale blue.

Ah well. He meant well.

Then when I came back to Sheffield to do my PGCE I went up in the world and had a tiny flat in the back of 27 Beech Hill Road. We crept round to have a look yesterday and it too was completely transformed. Where 95 Brunswick Street had been converted into seven independent flats, this little corner, which was basically a kitchen with a bed in it and a bathroom attached had now become a gorgeous bijou two bedroom flat. By chance the present occupants noticed us lurkingoutside, so I explained how I had lived there 46 years ago. I told them that I had had only one room but there were two big cellars behind it. We worked out that the two cellars had now become proper bedrooms. The little yard outside, which used to have an old orange Jensen abandoned there (which I used as a greenhouse for my herbs and tomatoes) had now become a delightful little walled garden cum rockery.

It was quite magical and I was enchanted to see it again.

We walked around the area. So clean now. So tidy. And some of the place names seem to have changed. (No Havelock Square any more. Why?)

But the local stone architecture is as beautiful as ever. There was a church from 1905 which certainly never registered when I was a student

I must have passed it every day

But yesterday and today it was just lovely to walk around and reminisce.

Thank you Kasia for such a nice weekend.