When I lived in Sheffield during the early 90s, there were many things that made the home of cutlery a brilliant city to have chosen for college. Clubbing for students was a riot with something available most nights. The Leadmill in particular is one of the best venues I've ever been to - a perfect size with a great line ups, club nights and jazz sundays and after an evening there I can testify that the burgers from the van outsde at 3 am, have never been bettered. I saw early Jameroquai there with a gig bus outside bigger than the venue but clearly necessary to accommodate his hattage. The place is so intimate it made any gig special, but with the atmosophere of somewhere like the Brixton Academy - fantastic.
However, aside from this and the brilliant access to the beautiful Peak District right on your doorstep, Sheffield has all the benefits of a large city but with the friendliness of a market town. I never tired of being called 'love' or 'duck' when I got on the bus.
But a real inconsequential pleasure that I treasured during my time there was driving up the M1 from Sheffield and passing the Concrete Flares, or the Tinsley Towers as I now know them to be called. The giant cooling towers were so impressively close to the road you felt absolutley dwarfed. But they weren't imposing, or sinister as huge looming structures often are, they were friendly and such a joy to see every time.
It's a terrible shame they're to be destroyed there's not many things you look out for with glee when driving along any stretch of road. The angel of the north is one, the striding wicker man in Somerset another, but the Tinsley towers, were not contrived as art but art they are. A feat of engeineering and beautiful for that. When much of the industry of Sheffield was swept away, the steelworks and related manufacturing industries of North Sheffield lay abandoned when only Forgemasters, they of the supergun would shoot sparks into the night during the winter, the tinsley towers stood proud and magnificent against the skyline and I just adored them - feelings I assumed were just personal to me but are clearly shared by so many others. It is terribly sad to think the concrete flares will no longer be there, cheering me up as I beetle up the motorway giving me a smile for a few miles after I say hello to them. The M1 will soon be even duller.