A Weekend with My Parents in Durham
If you follow me on Instagram (@jujupage1), you will know that a couple of weekends ago, my parents came to visit me at university. My parents were meant to come during my first term at university but they thought that it would be best to let me settle down first. This was probably a good idea because Michaelmas term (the name for autumn/winter term at Durham) was kind of a baptism of fire for me, in the sense that I had my moments of high stress and I was still trying to figure everything out. Having my parents visit me then, would not have been an enjoyable experience for me or for my parents during that time so Epiphany term (spring term at Durham), was definitely the time to visit. It was not necessarily the most exciting or stimulating visit. Durham is a small, picturesque, medieval town that is located in the north of England. Although I appreciate the beauty of Durham with it’s castle, cathedral, and river, it’s not necessarily the most vibrant of places in terms of entertainment. However, I think that’s deep down the experience that my parents wanted to have on their visit and that I probably wanted to have too when they were here. Despite getting into a little bit more of a routine in Epiphany term, I’m still in the process of writing my summative essays and although I’m dealing with the stress a lot better, it was still nice to have a calm weekend, doing something a little bit different. All-in-all, it was a very enjoyable experience and here is what we got up to!
My parents arrived sometime in the afternoon on Friday and came to visit me in my flat. That week, I had video called my mum to ask her if she could bring over the jam and the marmalade that she had made when she was at home. Sure enough, when she arrived that day, she came with a basket of jam and marmalade, alongside a packet of unfinished Jaffa Cakes that she and my dad had a nibble on in the car so I think it was fair to say that I was very happy! I then showed my parents into the kitchen to offer them a drink. I think I am very fortunate to live in a student flat with people who are quite considerate so I wasn’t really worried about it being too messy. However, I have seen the kitchen get cluttered with dishes from time to time and I hadn’t properly checked to see if the kitchen was in a decent condition before my parents arrived. Yet, as I prized open the door in anticipation to see what lay behind it, I was pleasantly surprised to see the kitchen in a good condition! My mum even commented on the state of the kitchen saying it was clean and surprising to see a student kitchen with no bottles of alcohol on the sides. I laughed but in my head I was also like, “The fuck, we may be between the ages of 18 and 20 but we’re not alcoholics!” Then my parents began to talk about seeing my flatmates with a type of enthusiasm that could only mean that they wanted to have some sort of embarrassing conversation with them, the type that I would probably never recover from! My flatmates can be quite reclusive at certain points in the day due to work and other activities they are involved in so my mind was filled with dread, hoping that they would never walk into that kitchen in that moment. Thankfully, my parents left soon after and said that they would meet me at the bar, so I was soon spared a certain level of torture.
That evening, I met up with my parents for a drink at a pub that was 5 minutes away from my flat. I felt quite fancy for once as a student because my mum got me a glass of Prosecco, which meant that I didn’t have to get a cheap, indiscernible drink. I now call those types of drinks “Whatever the fuck this is, drink,” because you never seem to drink it for it’s contents, you drink it because it makes you and your bank account feel much better. However, that night I could finally enjoy something a little bit different and it was very much appreciated! I felt like that I evening I was also giving the full low-down of my life as a history student talking about my lectures, my seminars, and my summative essays. I thought that I may be boring my parents a little bit when discussing the topics that I’m studying for history but they both said that they quite enjoyed hearing about my life at Durham whilst actually being in Durham too! Honestly, it felt really nice to just talk about it. I always think that I don’t have much to say about things until I sit down to have a discussion about something interesting and then I find that I can just talk endlessly about it. It’s probably good that my parents were there for that weekend too specifically because it was a fairly stressful point in the term and I just needed to let off some steam. We finished off the evening having dinner at a nice restaurant, where I had steak and chips and also tried my first Irish coffee. I make fun of my life a lot (in case you couldn’t tell already) and that includes my parent’s visit to Durham. However, I really did have a good evening and that Irish coffee was the icing on the cake for me. The smell of hot coffee and whisky with the cream on top was a chef’s kiss! A big smile began to form on my face and I went home a very happy person.
The next day though, I really wasn’t such a happy “chappy.” If anything, I had a big puffy face because I slept so badly. Maybe it was the Irish coffee but one would assume that adding hot whisky into the mix, alongside all the alcohol that I already had, would be the thing that would send me to sleep. Whatever it was that made me not want to fall asleep, one thing was for certain, when my head hit the pillow, I could not get myself to sleep with all the will in the world! It was the type of sleep where I felt like getting into a fight with my pillow because I was so frustrated. As such, trying to get through the next day turned into struggle central but somehow I managed. We didn’t get up to much that day. We had lunch at this Turkish place where we ordered a salad and it was really nice. Then my parents took me to Aldi to do a food shop for me and to finish off the day, we went out for fish and chips as dinner for the evening. I felt a bit bad because I hadn’t really done anything exciting with my parents that day but they reassured me and said that this was the kind of weekend that they were both looking for. My mum even said to me that she was looking to just get out of the village for the weekend to spend some time with me. To be honest, if you’ve seen the type of people that live in my village at home, you’ll probably understand why my mum wanted to get out for a bit! She also looked very happy filling the shopping basket with everything that I needed and then paying for it all at the end. I understand that not everyone is lucky enough to have the same experiences as I have with my parents. That’s why I appreciated and savoured the nice food I had received when I cooked my dinners that week!
The next day was Sunday, the day that my parents were going to be driving back home. Before they went, we decided to have breakfast at the Vennels Café, where we got ourselves Eggs Benedict and salmon on toast. The Vennels is a family run business since 1992 and all the food is handmade. This was probably the best café that I’ve been to so far in Durham because the food was amazing. However, at breakfast, I ended up having the strangest yet funniest conversation with my parents. Lets just say, don’t ask how we got onto this topic. I don’t know how we got onto this subject but we ended up getting into a discussion about psychopaths after my dad was saying how he heard on the news that a young girl was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a teenager. My mum and I were both saying how awful that must have been for the parents of the girl to deal with, seeing as though she grew up in a normal house and had a good and normal life. Just to get it straight, that must have been an awful situation. However, my mum said something in good grace that I don’t think came out the way she intended it to. She said something along the lines of “Gosh that must have been so awful as a mother. Imagine being a good person and then giving birth to 6,6,6!” At first, I thought my mum said something that made sense but then the whole “6, 6, 6” thing played in my head and then me and my dad both started laughing! This was funny because a few days prior, I had a conversation with one of my flatmates about my parents coming to visit for the weekend. He responded by saying that his parents were trying to visit him too but he was trying to stop them from doing so. After the whole 6, 6, 6 scenario, I think I can understand why he wanted to delay their visit as long as possible! All jokes aside, I had a really nice weekend with my parents and it was really nice to show them around Durham where I study. Now, whenever I get stressed, I just play out what my mum said at the Vennels Café in my head and that usually solves the issue!
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s blog post. Let me know in the comments below if you’ve ever been to Durham before, and I’ll be sure to reply to them. I love hearing what you have to say!
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See you next week,
Bye,
XOX, Juliette