To want to move back home? (Northerners, feel my pain!)

[edam]

Went back up North for my Godmother's 90th birthday party at the weekend, to the village where we lived until I was 7 (moved away due to father's job but moved back to a neighbouring village a few years later).

It felt so nice. Comforting, cosy, full of nice and 'real' people. I don't know how to explain it, but people up North just are different. Friendlier, more straightforward, very dry sense of humour that is always just beneath the surface. Down South, you can have quite a long conversation before anyone cracks a joke...

I live in the Home Counties, very nice small town that is (relatively speaking) friendly with a sense of community. But it's not half as genuinely friendly and can be quite smug and pretentious. I dunno, I'm generally quite happy here, but going back 'home' made me long to return permanently. Oh, and the countryside around my Yorkshire village was just stunning, and feels 'right' to me. While Hertfordshire is just there. All very nice and all that but hardly compares!

I want to live in Denby Dale!

[gorionine]

Edam, I am not a real northerner (foreign) and have lived in different parts of the UK but I do agree with you, the North definitely feels like home, even for me. There is a warmth here I have not found elsewhere!

[StealthPolarBear]

I love the north.
And I have a friend in DD

[midnightexpress]

Ha. I grew up in Hertfordshire, and while I have no desire to move back there, I do miss the south. I live in Glasgow, and while it's all very lovely, people are friendly and funny, and countryside is ravishing, most of my old, dear friends are down south. For me, that is the dilemma.

[Tortington]

i feel your pain regarding the people, the familiarity, the humour etc.

[tethersend]

YANBU. I lived in Hertfordshire for 6 months after DD was born, it's awful and so unfriendly. I lost the will to live.

And I'm a southener! Back in London now... so much happier

[FABIsInTraining]

I understand totally.

I went home up North last month and it felt I belonged for once.

The countryside is just amazing.

People understood my accent.

I was with people who knew me and liked me.

I want to move baccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

[Lizzylou]

I live in East Lancs (from Midlands originally), the people are warmer, but deffo not the climate, and the RAIN!

Mind you without all that rain the countryside wouldn't be so beautiful (or my hair so frizzy)

[mumblechum]

I know what you mean, but we've been down South for 10 years now and enjoy the fact that you can have a BBQ or sit outside in the evening without hats, scarves and mittens in July.

TBH when I go back up to the home town in Cumbria it all looks really grey (because EVERYTHING is made of slate) and kind of cold and drab. Wouldn't move back up north for anything now.

[edam]

Yorkshire doesn't look grey, though...

Custy, I recognised you as Northerner when I first saw your posts on MN - something about the reminded me of all the strong Northern women I had known and loved (even though you are the wrong side of the Pennines). You made me feel all nostagic, even then!

[Tortington]

WE WON THE WAR!

[5inthetomb]

I love it up here. Only ever been down south once, an it was weird.

[Tortington]

they don't do chips peas and gravy on a muffin down here

weirdos

[Tortington]

and chinese places sell chinese food whats chat about? in Oldham chinese chippies were THE best chippies.

[mumblechum]

And you can't get mushy peas with your fish and chips unless you go to some poncy gastropub at £25 a head.

[mumblechum]

Or pie and peas with raw onions in a bowl of malt vinegar.

It's actually worth going back up North for the food, come to think of it.

[MarthaFarquhar]

LOL at all the chippie remarks. We moved to Manchester a year ago (am a cockney originally) and am a stone heavier now due to weekly chippy tea.

[5inthetomb]

And why is gravy not brown down south?

[EdgarAllenPoo]

unashamed sountherner here - wouldn't go back evn though it would mean larger house etc.

i remember asking for an umbrella for christmas as a child....then using it all summer.

i don't think my mum found it any easier to make friends as a southern woman in a northern village than i am now as a (now long) ex-northerner in the South.

[edam]

Custy, I think you'll find a Welshman won that war! And my Dad's Welsh so I beat you ner ner ner ner ner.

Don't get me started on chippies, we passed the best chippy in the world where I have very fond memories but it was too late at night so it was shut!

[MarthaFarquhar]

my local chippy offers a choice of three different gravies

[lynniep]

Weeeeell, much as I love going back (County Durham) I wouldnt move back there.

I only really felt the difference when I lived in London. Then I got a little freaked out when I visited my folks - I mean people talked to me in shops and stuff - bizarre!!

I actually didnt know I had an accent until I moved away then went back - now I struggle when I go back because I tend to revert back to a northern twang and it makes me really self-concious because I can't help it but to me it sounds like I'm taking the mickey.

I'm happy where I am (Cambs) and whilst I'd never say never, I'm not desperate to get back to northern life. Its too cold for a start

[Deadworm]

My experience is that the differences between north and south are a bit overstated. It is often friendlier in northern towns -- but I think that only has to do with the differences between communities whose membership is relatively stable (people living in or near towns where they were born) and communities in which most people have settled during their adult life.

The south has had more economic migration from other parts of the country, so its people are less settled, more transient. Northern and southern ndividuals aren't really so very different.

[reikizen]

I loved living in London for many years but feel so much happier living where I was born in Manchester.

[Rhubarb]

Apologies to all Northerners here, but having been brought up in Oldham with Custy (not literally but ykwim), worked in Manchester and lived in Preston, I do prefer the standard of living down here.

I'm in Wilts now and yes it is hard when you crack a joke and people think you are being serious. Esp when you're straight-faced like me. But I do have a good craic with people down here, mainly taking the piss by calling them Wurzel and going on about hay bales, whilst they go on about the pits and mines and so on.

It's sunnier down here. We were back up in Preston a couple of weekends ago and it was noticeably colder and drizzly all the time.

People here do seem to be friendlier to me, they'll say hello in the street, greet you when you walk into a shop etc. Up North everyone mostly keeps their heads down to shelter from the drizzle.

The Northern countryside around Lancashire and Yorkshire is stunning, but round here there are pretty little villages with thatched cottages. You can also stumble across medieval villages and almost every willage has a story or a landmark.

People can be eccentric down here without others taking the piss. I see old ladies with bright pink hair and noserings, and mums my age in full goth outfits, you just couldn't get away with that in Lancashire!

So yes there are many things I miss about the North, but all in all, the benefits of living down here, to me, outweigh the disadvantages.

[Sourdough]

Moved to the industrial north a few years back and hated every minute. It was a completely alien culture to me. My Mum is a far-northerner, so the north itself holds no mystery, but the part I was in felt weird. People were friendly, but superficially so, in that' arright, duck' kind of way but never actually wanting to know you better. Maybe it's just that fish out of water feeling and it's the same wherever you go/are from. Moved just 20 miles further south during the summer and it feels totally different here and I love it. Really miss 'The South' though and would move back to Hampshire tomorrow, if I could