Siana Bangura: Week 1

So my summer is officially over. I’ve crash-landed and it’s now term-time. Three months of freedom have now come to an end and I feel grief and relief in equal measure.

When my friends ask me how I’ve found my vacation, I can only respond with “it’s been a mixed bag” – because it has. I’ve been busy, that’s for sure. I screamed until my ovaries burst as I danced in the rain to Jay Z and Kanye West’s chants about being ‘Niggas in Paris’ and moshed just breaths away from Beyonce’ at Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend.

I volunteered as a Team London Ambassador and put aside my fashion snobbery in order to showcase the Capital, wearing a bright pink uniform and a trilby made from paper (lucky for me I avoided the vom-inducing radioactive green that some poor sods had to rock).

I danced with a Mariachi band, and told Mo Farah I love him and fancy having his next set of twins if Usain Bolt rejected my advances. There’s something sexy about that MoBot of his, no?

I even found time to take a jaunt to the Midlands and… um… become a permanent resident. I must say that this particular part of my holiday has been a culture shock. I’m a Londoner through and through, almost tribally so – heaven help me.

I am loud (as are my clothes), flamboyant, and vivacious. I enjoy wearing fascinators to the corner shop to buy my brown bread and soya milk. Bright red lipstick and Cleopatra eyeliner are my life’s staples and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sporting my new blue suede shoes (although I’m still not too sure why people stare at them so much).

I’m also used to walking extremely quickly and the fact that a large percentage of the people in my new town are old doesn’t help me beat the dead march. I’ve been zapped up North, where people have strange and difficult to understand accents that kind of grate on me. Everybody says “thank you” to the bus drivers as they get on and off the buses, which have only ONE set of doors.

I’m having to learn to undo my anti-social city commuter ways and accept that a drunken fella might sit next to me, despite there being plenty of other free seats, and want to tell me about his stint on the X-Factor (pre-televised auditions stage of course) even if I don’t really want to hear about it. Total mind-fuckery. But of course, these are all things that I will get used to and, perhaps, one day embrace. We shall see.

Despite these antics though, a chunk of me wishes that my summer had been more exciting. I would have liked to have had an adventure – perhaps trump my last effort and go live with the Wodaabee Herdsmen of the Sun instead of the good old Amish; or maybe have hung out with Rihanna, Melissa and the crew as they holidayed on a swanky cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranean, smoking blunts at 4.20 pm and drinking with the noise police.

But anyway, now that my summer is over, it’s time to get back into the Cambridge swing of things. I’m already slaving away trying to complete my first essay of the year. But it’s good to be back and remember what it’s like being one of few people with rhythm in a room full of drunk and awkward Cindies-goers.

I’ve missed the cheesy chips and poor conversation courtesy of the “Van of Life”… heck, I’ve even missed the expensive concoctions at the Peterhouse bar and our ‘Wednesday International Special’.

Maybe this year I’ll finally get a poison named after me and tick one more thing off my Bucket List. One can hope.