VICE has a long-running series where British writers bring photographers back to their hometowns, which I stumbled into this morning via Metafilter. It's stunning, and while I didn't recognize the Edinburgh entry almost at all, there was another piece that unexpectedly took my breath away.

I'm from Oxford as much as I'm from anywhere, but I've never read a piece that captured my experience of the city. Instead, it's always the opulent, ancient buildings of the university, the famous writers like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein, or the plummy, upper middle class concerns of the North Oxford set. An outsider could be forgiven for thinking that the city was all cream teas and tennis.

Not so much. As Nell Frizzell writes:

Say its name and people will think of spires, books, bicycles, punting, philosophers and meadows. Few will think of cheap European lager, samosas, hardware shops, GCSEs, underage drinking, the number 3a bus or going twos on a roll-up beside a mental health hospital. They may not even think of the car factory, the warehouses on Botley Road, Powell's timber merchants, the registry office in Clarendon Shopping Centre, The Star pub, plantain sandwiches or Fred's Discount Store. But that's the Oxford I grew up in.

Me too. Nell's description of east Oxford is spot on, although we moved in different social circles; there was no cocaine in my world, even if we also gathered at exactly the same pub. All of these places are my places too, and the things she cares about in her hometown are things I care about also. In a life where I've lived in multiple countries and never quite found myself fitting in, including in the place I grew up, that's an incredible rareity.

I'm very glad I moved away - living in a variety of places has been right for me, and I expect I'll continue to move around. Having no nationality and no religion means that the pull to travel and exist in different contexts is strong. And Oxford really does have some deep problems. But that doesn't mean I don't miss it, too.

Because of the images that Oxford conjures in the minds of people who have never been there (and even some who have), I find it hard to explain where I came from. I can immediately taste the samosas and smell the beer-stained floorboards, but it's hard to convey. Now, at least, I have something I can point to; a description I actually recognize.

If you're interested in a realer Britain, the whole series is worth reading.