I’m from Sheffield, South Yorkshire. It’s lovelier than Leeds, not as fun as Manchester and less racist than Liverpool. It’s built on seven hills and five rivers. It’s named after the River Sheaf. According to a local interest board on the sidings covering the demolished Castle Market, in the Domesday book, what is now Sheffield is referred to as “Sheaf Field”. Literally, the field by the Sheaf.
It’s half rural, half industrial. There are hills, valleys, woods, rivers, farms - but also quarries, mills, mines, collieries, industrial estates, old factories, workhouses and asylums. Some are no longer in use - we don’t have workhouses in the UK anymore, or call psychiatric facilities “asylums”. But many of the buildings still stand, or have been turned into luxury apartments, and it’s still an active industrial town.
I love where I’m from and I never want to live there again. I think about it all the time and I hardly ever go back. I speak of it fondly and I can’t relax when I’m there.
A visit starts with three hours of euphoria to be back on home soil, tramping hills, breathing clean air and drinking soft water; rapidly followed by crushing despair. It’s like being haunted by the ghost of Christmas Past. Most of my good memories of Sheffield have been sizzled from my brain by the bad ones.
But here is an attempt to capture the mixed blessings of the Steel City:
My mother.
My aunties.
Leaving the house with no phone and not being worried about it.
Walking everywhere.
Playing out after school and in the summer holidays, only coming home for dinner time.
Playing knock-a-door, run.
Getting up early to listen to local radio, waiting to see if my school is announced as closed for a snow day.
The pride of being from Sheffield when The Arctic Monkeys were in the charts.
There was a line in Armando Ianucci’s TV show, The Thick of It, where Glen says about a colleague going through a political crisis, “She looks so glum. She looks like I feel when I visit Sheffield”. I remember watching that episode in a time before streaming and doing a spit take - the mingled indignation (how dare they!) mixed with local pride to be recognised on the BBC.
Gorgeous pastel sunsets over industrial estates.
The Tinsley cooling towers.
Ladybower reservoir.
Woodcraft Folk.
Lockerbrook.
The Crooked Spire at Chesterfield, telling you you’re 20 minutes away from home.
White colleagues using the n-word and earnestly fighting back with the “reverse racism” argument when you ask them not to.
The beautiful train journey between Sheffield and Manchester.
Drunk day-trippers getting off the last slow train at Marple and Reddish North.
Train tracks running past the back yards of terraced houses.
Seeing your friend’s Mum or your Mum’s friend out on the street and stopping for a chat.
Your friend/ Mum knowing that you saw their Mum/friend before you even get home.
Visiting your family and the first thing they tell you is that you’ve either lost weight or put it on.
Visiting your family and the second thing they tell you is that you’ve lost your accent and talk too posh now.
Riding your bike all day with your friends because there’s nothing else to do.
Moderately tanned white girls at school, after their summer holidays, saying that they are “as dark as” me.
Kids at infant school seeing how many pencils and sharpeners they can poke into my afro without me noticing.
The anxiety of having your name read out loud by a new teacher.
Drinking Caribbean Twist and Glen’s Vodka with friends in the park.
Peeing outside.
Spontaneous hang outs and phone calls.
School trips to Castleton (village); Eyam (plague village), Kelham Island (disused steel factory) and Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet (steel museum).
The sponge pit at Steel City Gym.
The neighbours asking how your mum is doing.
Everything is so beautifully bleak and grey: the sky, the road, the pavement, the redbrick houses. Even the grass is greyish green. It’s like looking at everything through a veil.
Bleak. 
But sometimes there are precious days with dazzling greens. Saying hi to strangers on the street.
Everyone's “love” or “duck” or “pal” or “mate”.
Saying "would I fuck" instead of no.
Save the trees.
Trudging up and down hills that are a 12-20% gradient.
Walking down long, glossy hospital corridors to see loved ones that you really can’t do without, in wards that stink of shit and hot food at the same time.
Trying to identify every wildflower and shrub I see: bluebells and goosegrass, buttercups, dandelions, forget-me-nots, elderflower, wild garlic, little yellow flowers that look like trumpets, nettles, dock leaves.
When I walk 5 miles to the top of a hill, look down into the valley bottom and wonder what's on the other side, I think that it’s easy to be a dreamer and a creative person in the North. With the exception of Manchester, the buildings are generally low rise and there is so much sky. You can see the horizon on all sides. It makes you wonder what’s out there. It’s hard to imagine anything when you live somewhere where you can’t see further than two streets over, you can’t see the stars, and the twinkling in the night sky is, most likely, aeroplane navigation lights.
The rising skill level of buskers on The Moor as a gentrification indicator.
Walking down the middle of the road on Christmas Day and not seeing a single car.
Walking down the middle of the road during Lockdown and not seeing a single car.
Walking in the park during Lockdown and being followed by police on horses. I am scared of horses.
Me and my oldest friend talk about Sheffield often:
