Home is where the iPhone is

My last days of University life were crystallized this weekend when I moved out of Leeds for the last time. With the bins full, the rooms empty and my hands still stinging from excessive bleach use, I set the alarm, locked the door and walked away from my last ever student home.

I’ve moved out of houses in Leeds before as inevitably students will lay their hat in more than one location during their time at university, even if it is only a few streets away. People come and go, circumstances change and a brand new year in a brand new house with a brand new dynamic is refreshing. But this time the move was dark with the air of finality. There was no new house to look forward to next year. No coming adventures to be shared through the seasons. This was it. This was the end. I was leaving the city that has been my home for four years and I had no plans, or even excuse, ever to return.

At the other end of the country was the chaotic and unsubtle unloading of books, clothes, pictures, and, well, crap into a house that my parents have only recently moved into. It is not the house I grew up in, nor an area I even remotely know, so my feelings about spending the summer in isolation are not appealing. No summer job at the old pub, no nostalgic school stomping grounds, no familiar childhood room to fill the gap that a bohemian student lifestyle has left. Just miles of unchartered territory, strange sounding locals and the “spare room” so small that my possessions are eventually to be stored in the loft encased in plastic, air tight coffins.

Now this may all sound very childish but understand that when I left for University my parents almost immediately sold the house I grew up in. Leeds was my home now. Everywhere else would forever be “where my parents lived” or “where I was staying”.

All my peers at this stage do one of two things. Either they have found a job and move into their own place, imaginations fuelled with the new disposable income, fresh bars and a vastly more varied demographic to socially exploit and swim neck deep in, or they haven’t found a job and move back home. I seem to have ended up with neither. I feel like I’m on tour and even the sprawling of all my worldly possessions on the new magnolia walls like a domestic dwelling virus, it still wouldn’t hide the fact I was with a tribute band. It was a fake home, and I need to grow up quick and find my own cave. I want my clothes, which have been folded a certain way to fit in my draws for years, to fit naturally in new ones. But they don’t. It’s like trying to wrap a banana in pineapple skin. Both are fruit, but they just don’t fit.

And this brought me round to a new way of thinking, for social survival if nothing else. What exactly is home? I’ve mentioned material possessions but what I’m actually going along here is familiarity. All those things you do regularly without thinking that make a place a home. The walk to University paced out every day with autopilot on and safe road crossing off. It’s the sound of your street and the way the bell rings when you walk into the newsagents. It’s knowing the bouncers on the door and the tenders behind the bar. The way doors feel when you open them and the once annoying jingle of the key in the lock that is now a second nature but still stumps visitors. It’s a particular side to a street, or a shortcut into town. It’s a ritual, not a routine, but a regular event that you’ve carved out yourself, on your own accord, a city wide arse manoeuvre to fit more comfortably into your sofa. It’s those roughed up worn out patches. That’s home. And most importantly, more important than the colour of the sofa, the style of the cushions or even which direction it’s facing, it’s about the friends that filled all those spaces and places. They’re the ones that bring it to life.

So if I can’t have that, what can I have? Well friends are important. And in the end they are what you want the most. You need them to be at your fingertips just like they always were and, to be honest, all the crap can be boiled down into a few injections of nostalgia. The right playlist, a couple of snap shots and the ramblings over a cold beer like we always had will teleport you back home. A virtual home conjured up in the senses and expanded in the mind.

In fact, come to think of it, all of that can fit on my iPhone. I’ve got plenty of photos and videos, all the music I used to listen to, instant calling and even a social network access to steal everyone else’s too.

So in the end, it’s not about cramming all your worldly belongings into a room two sizes too small. No, you have to wake up and realise it’s about the links, friends and floaty feelings that will live in no matter what inhospitable climate you find yourself in. Maybe home is where the iPhone is?