How I Found Out People Are More Important Than Experiences.

In my last year of sixth form I was excited to finally go out into a world. I’ve always been independent, but my first summer as an adult meant I could do so much more. Or really it just meant I could do it all whilst having a pint in my hand.

Instead of this spontaneous and fun summer, I got COVID and two years of lockdowns.

You could say I more than made up for it this year. I think I’ve made that teenage girl - who woke up at 3am to work at Sainsbury’s every day in lockdown - very proud.

Screaming our Hearts out to Fix You by Coldplay

Surprisingly, my mum was the person to kick start the lifestyle I was trying to get back. After a tough year, my mum was finally able to have some fun experiences for herself. This led us to go to Truck festival for the weekend. As you might assume, a festival with your mum is a very different experience to when you’re with friends. But by no means was it any less fun. A highlight of my weekend was my mum smelling weed whilst we were watching Bombay Bicycle Club and her being convinced it had got her high. “Aaliyah I can feel it, I’m definitely high”.

For my 21st birthday my mum took me to see Coldplay live. The music, the lights and the atmosphere were all amazing but the thing that has stuck with me is the emotion I was consumed by when hearing the songs, I had grown up with. ‘Fix you’ was our song ever since I was little. Every night before I went to bed, we would scream our hearts out for the entire four minutes. Seeing the band live and experiencing that with my mum was very special

Drunkenly Speaking French to Strangers and Near-Death Experience

Next thing I got to tick off my bucket list this summer was going to Paris. I didn’t have the typical tourist experience on the Eiffel Tower. It was summer and it was Paris, so it was thirty degrees, and I was in a dress. We had decided that it would be smart to take the stairs instead of the lift. A week full of eating cured meats and drinking wine, it was the least we could do for our bodies. After gazing at the view from the second floor I noticed a dark cloud. I didn’t think much of it, and we headed back down the stairs. One flight down and I hear a roaring clap of thunder. We were suddenly standing in a storm getting pushed down the stairs by the wind tunnel and heavy hail. Clinging on to the railing for dear life, we finally made it to the first floor. They let us use the lift to get to the ground floor where we were trapped for half an hour. “It’s too unsafe to leave” one of the security men shouted. Although, I felt it would have been safer to brave the storm than stay in that building where the lights were leaking water and the flooding covered our feet. Plus, I’m British. It was scary when we were thousands of feet up in the air but, on the ground, well that’s a Tuesday in Sheffield isn’t it?

Drag Queens Dragging Me

Normally, I get an extreme case of the holiday blues after going abroad. After Paris, there was no time to be sad. I landed in Gatwick early hours on a Friday morning and got the underground straight to my uncles flat. I napped for one hour bringing my total amount of sleep to six hours in two days. Then it was time to go out for lunch with both of my uncles. Lunch sounds wholesome and manageable when you’re that exhausted. What I didn’t consider is that to my family this means going out for a couple of drinks. Which, of course, turns into shots and then before you know it, you’re watching a drag race through a crowded street at Greenwich pride until 4am. I’m sure I’ve never slept better than after that night. However, this brought me to the dreaded morning and not only did my head hurt, but I had to go back to the chaotic club from the night before because my uncle had left his bag there. This probably doesn’t seem like a huge task, but context is important here. The bag was in the cloakroom and at the end of the night. When my uncle tried to get his bag he was dragged away by the bouncers. This led him to behave slightly inappropriately, and he started banging on the door. As someone who works in a bar full of drunk idiots, I understand the frustration of the bouncers and the workers. But I will tell you this was not as aggressive as it sounds. So, when we went back the next day you can probably guess the impression, they had of us. I was the most innocent party in this, so I was sent in to retrieve the bag. I was greeted by a Cruella-Deville looking drag queen tutting her lips at me. She scoured at me and said: “you were violently rude and aggressive last night”. This was an exaggeration. She, of course, didn’t forget to mention that “the short, gay’ Irish one was very confrontational.” I had to endure this lecture for fifteen minutes before I got the bag back.

Honourable Mentions

There were few other things I got up to, that were all fun but don’t have any funny or dramatic stories to go with them.

I went to Crete for a week with my best friend, Freya. This was amazing we went on a boat trip; we did water sports; we went clubbing; and we got amazing tans from reading books on sunbeds. I went to Leeds festival for a day and snuck into my friend’s posh VIP campsite. Of course, the highlight of Leeds was the music. Artic Monkeys, Fontaines DC and Wolf Alice all performed there. For the most part of my summer though, I was in Sheffield. On the heat wave days, we would go to Crookes Valley Park with beers and inflatables to go in the lake with. It was an extraordinary summer and one I was grateful to have. I don’t think COVID made me miss out at all. I think it just made me wait to meet the right people to experience it all with.

By Aaliyah Dublin