With my move to Leeds getting ever closer, I decided now would be the time to make final memories with friends and say proper goodbyes. Saycon Pittsburgh was the first to go, moving to Germany for a year after landing a job looking after children there. After a hop, skip, leaving party and final supper meal later, she was gone.
“Going, going...gone. It’s like one by one we’re all leaving...and things will never be the same.” I told Madeline over another one of our famous lunches, which involved very little lunch and a lot of cocktails.
Our conversation led us to adulthood. “I was talking to Danny, Skye and Aidan the other week and I was just like, how old are we? We were talking about bills, rent, and insurance. We’re adults now. I have a bank, with a big, BIG, overdraught!”
“It’s scary isn’t it?” She replied, knowing exactly what I was talking about.
There comes a time of year in Newcastle when you can feel the seasons change, almost as if it were clockwork. It was several mornings later, on my way to meet Madeline for breakfast at the Stateside Diner, that I felt this change. It was 8.55am and the air was crisp, no longer soft. I walked from Central Station to the Stateside Diner and noticed that, although the leaves were not necessarily orange, they were no longer green. I couldn’t help but think that I was in the middle of change.
Over breakfast, Madeline and I discussed change, our friends and lives. After my stack of pancakes and her mushroom omelette, we went shopping. We wandered, without aim, around the city, in what I thought of as my farewell tour of the city I love and know: Newcastle. We stopped at the Monument, and I looked around. This was my home. But a crisp breeze reminded me of changes – the change in Seasons, and the change I’m making in my life.
Although I knew that I’d be back, saying goodbye to Madeline made things feel final. We wished each other luck, hugged goodbye, and I took my final metro journey home.
“I can’t believe this is goodbye,” I thought to myself, while crossing a bridge that overlooked the Quayside. But this was, essentially, the end.
The next morning I packed up my car and set off for Leeds. It had taken days of packing, deliberating what to take, and saying goodbye to my friends and family, but I had done it. My place looked bare and empty, but it was clear that new memories for new people would be made just as I would make new memories in Leeds. The next chapter...well that’s still unwritten.
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