The End of an Era

Thus far the pictures I've shown you tell the story from my first couple of years at university. For those of you that are interested/bothered I started by doing an English Literature degree and then in my second year, I decided that English wasn't as fun as it had been, and my third subject of Italian was by far and away the most exciting option for my forseeable future.

I decided to make the change official. (This proved to be horribly bureaucratic.)

Anyway, after some time, I had a plan in place for the following year - my third of university: I was going to Verona to study. This came as a surprise to some of my friends and as May drew closer and with it the thought of goodbyes and 'I'll see you in a year' I started to invite my groups of friends over to my modest abode so that I could have my last supper with them.

There was a group of five of us. Five people that didn't really know each other that well until, during second year, we all had a movie night together. So I decided that it would be nice for us all to go out for dinner: one housemate, two coursemates, and a friend from the Christian Union. We ate handsomely and came back to my house for a movie.

We were treated to a much better show. Nature's finest.

A Sunset in St Andrews

May, 2009

I've called this picture 'A Sunset in St Andrews' because that's all it's a picture of, but to me it means so much more. It was the real end of an era. By the time I'd come back, I'd pretty well lost one of the friends for reasons I could never work out: when they say absence makes the heart grow fonder - they're lying.

The five had become four and things just weren't the same. Everyone had moved on in the year I spent away - including me. Of course we're all still in touch - even now that three of us have graduated - but maintaining those links now we don't see each other every day won't get any easier...