After six weeks at home - which was originally going to be three before the weather got crazy - Glasgow seems a mile off. It's so funny how quickly I can settle back into life at my mum's. My bedroom still messy, covered in clothes and photos from sixth year. The reclining sofas, the Sky TV, the always-full fridge....and I love, love, love the fact that my Mum’s there to pass comment on America’s Next Top Model – a commentary that I find I miss.

When I step out the house, though, everything else is like parts of someone else’s life. I drove past school (DURING THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!) and I actually ducked behind the wheel in case my old headteacher saw me.  Why?! What could she do, give me an icy stare as I zoomed past at 30 miles an hour? (It’s fair to say that we burned our bridges, ironically with water bombs, on our last day of school – which was a perfectly reasonable response, I feel, to a year of suppressed creativity). My boyfriend’s little brother is in sixth year now and looking at photos of their – our – common room it’s not even the same place any more.

There’s always that dread as well of ‘the awkward reunion’. Everyone has the person or people that you were really good friends with at school, the ones that you put as your ‘other half’ on bebo and took photos on your phone of at lunch time. This sounds awful, but it’s never the ones that went to university, Strathclyde or not. They ended up going to college ‘to take time out’ which turned into two years or they got a full-time job and you haven’t really spoken since that time you had too much coursework to do or since they couldn’t come out cause they had work in the morning. You promised that things wouldn’t change but the truth is that no matter how far away from Strathclyde you come, it’s usually right in between you and the people you used to know.

So in Ayr there’s this club called Madisons, it’s usually a bit grab-a-granny but on a Wednesday night it’s amazing. Retro night consists of cheap drinks and chee-say tunes from the 80s and 90s. I  went with two of my friends from school – both of whom are at uni in Glasgow – and judging from the number of sweaty, pouting photos on my facebook I was a little worse for wear. Anyway, I was standing at the DJ booth waiting to request Vengaboys and singing along to B*witched when I clocked this girl from school. I never really liked this girl, only from the point of view that she could make anything, even our prom, seem like a funeral – though I wouldn’t have said I left school with a problem between us. Turns out she did. My initial reaction to her obviously bitching about me to her friend was ‘Well f you sweetheart!’ but then I thought why? I live in a city that never sleeps (unless it has a hangover), I get to learn about stuff I love every day and I’m never short of someone to go to the pub with. She still lives in the same place with the same, stale problems and I don’t think much else.

Six weeks was long enough to remind me why I moved away.