LAST week, I found myself in a German bierkeller, which came as a surprise as I’d only driven to Leeds. Yet there we were, bockwurst in a bun in one hand and plastic glass of wheat beer in the other, crammed in on narrow wooden benches with our personal space seriously invaded by strangers.
The wooden hall had seemed little more than a door surrounded by stalls selling dumplings, stewed cabbage and gingerbread Christmas trees, but, like the wardrobe to Narnia or Doctor Who’s Tardis, it opened into a vast space.
Inside, from a balcony festooned in glittery fabric, fake reindeer looked enviously down upon the rows of drinkers below.
Lights twinkled festively above the bar, where a man with a belly you could rest a pint glass on heaved on a pump to eject amber-coloured liquid into two-pint steins.
If you arrived early enough, or were simply lucky with timing, you could share a booth with friends (cosy) or other random drinkers (uncomfortably odd).
By the time we left, at barely 6pm, the entrance queue snaked round the back of the bierkeller, through the stalls of snow globes, glass ducks and candyfloss to the streets of Leeds city centre behind.
We walked to the bus stop past a shopping centre that had been rebranded but apparently not washed since my university days – the place so familiar yet so far in my past.
At one time, the drive along the M62, past the oxbow farm, the vast reservoir and the highest motorway point in the country had been symbolic of the future – the journey to student life, independence and possibility.
Now it is a trip to a previous life.
We place such emphasis on the places in our lives, the homes we once lived in, the parks we strolled through, the streets we walked down on our way to get somewhere else that bears a significance now that we no longer go there.
A friend I used to live in a shared house with came to stay last week, and I apologised for being distracted and taking him on a roundabout route to meet other friends for lunch in the pub.
Instead of a picturesque parkland shortcut, we wandered along roads that could be tidier and passed shops that could do with a lick of paint.
But, to him, the closed-down bar was the spot where he’d read the Sunday papers over a full English fry-up, a common bus stop the one he used to wait at before heading into work as an enthusiastic new reporter, the cracked kerb a marker that it was just a few more steps to the house where we spent our free time in constant disarray.
It was interesting to take a look at Liverpool through his eyes because, while you’re still living in a place, you’re less likely to view it with hindsight.
Often, we’re so busy rushing along to take in the blur that’s whistling past us. It’s only when we move away that we realise how special times were.
When I think of Leeds, it’s as a city where I learned as much about myself and my own take on the world as I did about the subjects I was studying.
Certain pubs remind me of old friends and conversations, rows of red brick back-to-back terraces of books I studied and music I listened to.
Maybe one day I will step inside a real bierkeller somewhere in the Black Forest and it will take me back to a pleasant afternoon spent with my sister in a flat pack wooden chalet in the centre of Leeds.
READ more of Laura’s columns at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/lauradavis
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