On the first day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
one unusual place
[Title] Tale of the City
[Fandom] Ashes to Ashes
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Shaz remembers home. The memories don't match up. (Slight spoilers for S3 of the show.)
People who weren’t from round here might think “London” when they heard her accent, sure, but when Shaz was growing up, trips into London were for treats, special shopping, matches maybe.
(Those memories are there, of course they’re there, just you look at them and something -)
Her family always joke about her “working in the big city” but it’s a joke that’s true. Living in London’s like swimming in it, you can feel the weight and size of it spilling out around you. She likes it, though. Likes the energy. Mostly.
(You look at them and something in them slides out of focus, like it’s getting covered by a reflection of your own face or -)
The clubs and the music scene, and the people you meet, all of that’s infinitely better than anything from home, where the only option is gin and orange in a pub that smells like old men and you get gossiped about if you hold hands with a boy in a cafe, never mind anything else, never mind dancing til three a.m., never mind going home with a girl.
(You remember that pub, and you remember your first kiss round the back of it with a boy in your class, but you remember he had Walkman headphones round his ears and there was a song playing in them that you remember hitting the charts last week, that can’t be right, that can’t be right -)
Work’s a whole other thing, of course. Mostly Shaz doesn’t want to talk about it with family. Mum would worry, Dad would say she was being a tool of state oppression, both of them wouldn’t say but would think maybe a girl should be doing something else, something safer, something lighter.
(When’s the last time you talked about it?)
(When’s the last time you talked to them?)
(Sometimes, at three a.m., after the dancing, or after staying at work all night, you feel like you’re remembering a dream you had, and the dream is that you called them, maybe even went back for Sunday lunch, and it wasn’t them, it was people with their faces, like you get in dreams. You feel you’re remembering a dream, but you don’t remember when you dreamed it, you just remember what day you went back, and if you looked in your handbag you’d find a crumpled-up train ticket for that day and then you’d know it was real.)
London’s more, more everything, more noise, more people, more crime and dirt and music and lights. Easy to forget about things in London. It all comes at you too fast.
(It was only a dream. So you forget about it.)
one unusual place
[Title] Tale of the City
[Fandom] Ashes to Ashes
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Shaz remembers home. The memories don't match up. (Slight spoilers for S3 of the show.)
People who weren’t from round here might think “London” when they heard her accent, sure, but when Shaz was growing up, trips into London were for treats, special shopping, matches maybe.
(Those memories are there, of course they’re there, just you look at them and something -)
Her family always joke about her “working in the big city” but it’s a joke that’s true. Living in London’s like swimming in it, you can feel the weight and size of it spilling out around you. She likes it, though. Likes the energy. Mostly.
(You look at them and something in them slides out of focus, like it’s getting covered by a reflection of your own face or -)
The clubs and the music scene, and the people you meet, all of that’s infinitely better than anything from home, where the only option is gin and orange in a pub that smells like old men and you get gossiped about if you hold hands with a boy in a cafe, never mind anything else, never mind dancing til three a.m., never mind going home with a girl.
(You remember that pub, and you remember your first kiss round the back of it with a boy in your class, but you remember he had Walkman headphones round his ears and there was a song playing in them that you remember hitting the charts last week, that can’t be right, that can’t be right -)
Work’s a whole other thing, of course. Mostly Shaz doesn’t want to talk about it with family. Mum would worry, Dad would say she was being a tool of state oppression, both of them wouldn’t say but would think maybe a girl should be doing something else, something safer, something lighter.
(When’s the last time you talked about it?)
(When’s the last time you talked to them?)
(Sometimes, at three a.m., after the dancing, or after staying at work all night, you feel like you’re remembering a dream you had, and the dream is that you called them, maybe even went back for Sunday lunch, and it wasn’t them, it was people with their faces, like you get in dreams. You feel you’re remembering a dream, but you don’t remember when you dreamed it, you just remember what day you went back, and if you looked in your handbag you’d find a crumpled-up train ticket for that day and then you’d know it was real.)
London’s more, more everything, more noise, more people, more crime and dirt and music and lights. Easy to forget about things in London. It all comes at you too fast.
(It was only a dream. So you forget about it.)