The End

As of today I’ve got two weeks to get my sorry backside into gear and sort out pretty much everything for going away. I finished work last Friday; a strange feeling after three and a half years of seeing the same people for 7 hours a day. 

We went out after work - it went a bit like this: 

I roared like a lion on the way out of the office. I drank. I ate noodles. I spilled noodle juice on my shirt. I drank some more. I argued over a pool table with a big fat hairy student. I lost the argument. I drank more. I walked nose-first into the plate glass door of a bar. I spent 20 seconds stunned – kind of like when a bird hits a window at full pelt. I drank more to recover. I walked home from town. I stopped at a petrol station. I bought and ate 3 Pepperamis (extra spicy). I got home and went to bed. I rampaged downstairs at 2am, convinced someone was breaking in. They weren’t. It was just Andy, my housemate. I stomped back up to bed.

My nose is still bruised and sore; although the Doctor in A&E this morning didn't think it was broken. I told him how I’d done it and I could see he thought I was wasting his time. I felt like an adolescent drunken waste of space. I’d put it down as an automatic response to the disapproval of an authority figure – but the doctor wasn’t much older than me. And he looked like Louis Theroux. So it was probably just straightforward ‘should know better at my age’ embarrassment.

Nevertheless, putting all that aside, here are a few facts:

I’m going to be in South America in two weeks time
I'm leaving Sheffield, my home for most of the last 10 years, probably for good
I don't have to go to work again for over a year
I'm going to miss my family, friends and all other things English
I’m going to see some strange and wonderful things

None of these facts yet seem real.

But they will.