moving hame

three years ago I moved from the place where I grew up, made friends, went to school, and had family, Glasgow, to a new city in a new country Newcastle. This decision was made at seventeen and at the time feelings of needing to escape, experience somewhere new, and being independent were driving forces in my decision to relocate.

That was three years ago and although the factors I have described definitely were present then, being away from home created new feelings of separation, dislocation, and identity that then made me ready at twenty years old and after finishing my degree, to move back to Glasgow and live at home.

I had a need to return somewhere I felt safe, and somewhere where my identity felt secure. It is only when your identity is in some way foreign that I believe you really appreciate it. Although Newcastle was only over the border in England just three hours away, in terms of identity I was not so secure.

So this blog will detail my life back in Glasgow, back living at home, but still studying (just moving up the academic latter slightly to an MRes in Human Geography). It will aim to be anecdotal, funny, insightful but will most importantly give my views on current affairs and the Geography I am studying.

This links me back to moving home, my Geography is one which explores place, space, politics, development, identity, culture, gender, economics, race, colonialism, feminism. I am interested in what it is like to belong and how we create identity in a particular place. Furthermore the different spaces we should look at, how people represent place, and what happens when there are multiple identities on a particular place which clash.

I hope this blog will be funny, interesting and enlightening.