Non fiction

Up the hill

Every morning when he drags his exhausted body up the road this disgusting sign catches John’s eye. If he is honest, he doesn’t want to welcome them. It’s his Sheffield, where he grew up, like his father and his grandfather did. Sometimes he pauses and remembers these mild Saturday afternoons when he was a chap and his father used to take him down to Bramall Lane, the home of Sheffield United. Although his father was a steel worker and was earning a low wage, it was still enough to see the Blades. John remembers how proud and lordly his father looked when he was wearing the colours and shouted his battle cry 'com’on, Blades'. But these times where long before this sign was set up. This slightly filthy, but still obtrusive object reminds him of these pretenders invading his shelter, now wearing the colours and shouting the battle cry of his father. These mummy’s boys have never learnt what hard work really means, how hard it is to toil another eight hours at Chicken Stop on Division Street after a long day at University in order to afford the tuition fees for the next year at Uni. They have never realised how energy-sapping and demoralising it is to have to sell them chips when they stumble into the takeaway late at night, completely shit-faced after their long party at Sheffield University Students’ Union.

Every time he sees the welcome sign and he realises that he gets too furious because of this injustice, John forces himself to look at the other sign some metres further right. It indicates that the street up the hill is a one way road. It reminds him that getting up the hill is his only possibility. Sometimes it makes him even forget that THEIR legs are rested and could carry them faster.

Marc Schulze