The clocks went back an hour last night and the consequent earlier onset of daily darkness will be the main topic of conversation between British people for the entirety of this week. It always has been, and always will be.

It’s been less than twenty four hours and we’re already feeling it. LED strip lights rising from the ground and suddenly appearing everywhere we turn. A black velvet curtain drawing the days to an early close. Menacing orange and black paraphernalia everywhere, and the inexplicable smells on the streets of metal and smoke.

For me, this time of year often makes me think back to my time as a student at Lancaster University in north west England. I’d heard the expression, ‘It’s grim up North’ numerous times prior to making the move and was determined to see for myself if this were true or not. It definitely wasn’t. Yet whenever I think about the place, it’s usually in the context of a Winter evening, much like this one.

It’s November 2005 and I’m sat on the top floor of a double decker Stagecoach bus that smells of Wrigley’s Orbit, wee, and diesel oil. The wheels on the bus are going round and round, and the lights on the bus are making my hungover head pound and pound as they illuminate the harsh orange zig-zag seat patterns. A Sainsburys bag, fill to the brim with representatives of the Basics range (soups, garlic breads and pastas aimed to last the week), is hooked on to my wrist threatening to cut off circulation to my hand as I cling on to both the bag and the seat for dear life.

Inertia flings me towards accidentally nutting the bell each time the bus brakes. I find comfort in seeing the neon red letters that spell out BARGAIN BOOZE, because it means we’re finally at the bottom of the hill from hell in the Bowerham part of town, and the ride home should become more smooth from here. I may even be able to safely place my shopping bag on the floor before it rips from the weight of all the soup cans and sends them rolling down the aisle like the barrels hurled by Donkey Kong in the retro arcade game (yes, that did actually happen once).

I finally reach campus and step off the bus to walk to my halls of residence, but first I have to have a fag, after all that hard work clinging on to heavy shopping bags and trying to keep upright. As I puff away my student loan (the current me still hasn’t forgiven the younger one for this) I look up at half a dozen kitchen windows and see several episodes of a student drama tv series all screening at once. A couple of lads in striped polo shirts with emo hairstyles are chucking the entire contents of their food cupboards into what appears to be some sort of stir fry. The girls upstairs are dancing around in brightly coloured rara skirts and drinking out of fluorescent beakers. One of them is swapping the CD around in the stereo that sits on the windowsill. There’s another kitchen where the window is covered in a collection of handmade paper snowflakes that gets bigger with each passing day, and a couple of others where the lights are out. All the occupants are either out on the town ploughing through vodka Redbulls, or in their rooms graffiti’ing the reincarnations of forests with neon Stabilo highlighter pens.

I head up the internal stairwell towards my flat, being careful not to step in the congealed puddle of Dolmio sauce that’s been there all week following a drunken dare gone wrong. The unmistakable scents of the tomatoey residue and washing powder fill the air. As I push through the heavy fireproof doors to my flat I’m overwhelmed by even more senses. The smell of Heinz spaghetti and garlic bread being cooked away in the kitchen. The audience of Deal or No Deal gasping as the infamous 1p box is exposed on a flatmate’s tv. Another flatmate on the phone to her mum, assuring her that she’s eating well. The wisps of somebody else’s cigarette floating out from underneath their bedroom door. Somebody listening to Binary Love by The Rakes. The smell of burning garlic bread.

Shit. The smell of burning garlic bread.

The shriek of the fire alarm which ensues. The cackle of students, most of whom are half cut, trying to evacuate the building as the porters arrive to shout instruction in loud, northern tones. We shiver in the cold air of a northern Winter, watching each others’ exhales under the streetlights, whilst waiting for various risk assessments to be complete. Eventually, we’re able to file back in.

“So, what shall we have for dinner?”
“Garlic bread?”
“Fook off!”

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‘The Proust Effect’ is the name of the phenomenon whereby certain senses can evoke sudden nostalgia. The novelist Marcel Proust coined the expression after feeling transported to his childhood following consumption of a particular tea-soaked cake in his later years. It’s a legitimate effect backed by science – all to do with how we process memories – and something I find particularly staggering is how it can appear out of nowhere, all encompassing. Stepping back to a former life. Have you experienced The Proust Effect recently?

This post is dedicated to R.G. 19 years after our shopping rolled out all over the bus as we returned to campus. How we laughed that day x

Song of the Day: The Rakes – Binary Love