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!

How timely - am writing an article about this today.
As a displaced northerner I miss the humour so much. And the warmth of people.
And the lack of guile.
And the working class pride.

And yet...I couldn't wait to leave at 18 and see the big wide world. I felt suffocated.

Now mmy kids are posh southerners. Sigh.

martha - you're just showing off

i know - how rubbish is it to hear your northern kids speak southern !

I love the North, whenever I go south I feel so out of place and intimidated.

Yorkshire is piles nicer than Hertfordshire.

Now, you lot from the wrong side of the Pennines, with this comment about how much warmer and drier it is darn sarf. It is much less wet in Yorkshire (any part of Yorkshire) than Preston ...

Hmmmm I think the perceived divide is wrong. It's not north/south.
It's south-east/rest of the world.

Dh and I moved to Lancashire in the mid 90s but decided to move back home to the Midlands to be close to family when we had ds1 as we felt he would't feel connected enough to his family only seeing once a month or less.

BIG mistake. We have both been homesick for Lancashire ever since. We loved it there so much and they were the happiest years of our marriage. We would go back in a heartbeat, but don't want to uproot 3 very settled and happy dcs to do it.

Oh yes, it did rain a lot, but we loved it anyway.

pros and cons the weather in the south is definitely warmer and drier but the northerners are on the whole less competitive and friendlier. If I had to choose I'd live in peak district

We lived in the South (Essex) for nearly 20 years and finally took the plunge to move back to the north east 2 years ago. Best move we ever made, people much warmer, great humour and just a mentality of all being on the same side. Pretentiousness is definitely a frowned upon trait, and that's a great environment to bring kids up in. Would wish for better weather, but otherwise fantastic up here.

It is also very wierd to hear your kids speak broad lancashire, oh yes sirree.

I am not sure about this not raining so much in Yorkshire, PIL's have a caravan in Yorkshire and it rains a lot whenever we go.

DH couldn't cope living in my hometown, the lack of "owt moist" with his chippy chips and decent pies made his life unbearable

I miss Yorkshire! And I'm only in the midlands now!

I wrote this in my blog after a visit "home" this summer:

"I miss the Victorian buildings, mill chimneys, and always green rolling hills in the distance which hint at sheep and dry stone walls and ever so cold crystal clear streams. The crop farming landscapes of Nebraska and Lincolnshire are still alien to me. My heart is in Yorkshire and when I return I feel refreshed and whole again."

When dh got his British citizenship I had him get it in Yorkshire so he would sort of be part Yorkshireman!

I'm born and bred North Yorkshire, and wouldn't move ever! It's the best place in the world

And I like rain and wind and cold! It's proper normal weather!

Quatt - you are right about the Pennines. Every time I cross Saddleworth the gloom settles in. Tis like a scene in Twilight.

When I moved south to go to college, I couldn't believe how earnest you were expected to be to show you were Nice. Or NOICE [saccharine smirk] (said with same prolonged OI vowel as "HOI!!!!!!!!", said for about half an hour when you see someone you know).

I was just thinking about how instantly I clicked with the only woman in my NCT group from the North and how appalled the others often look when we rip into each other - especially at first when none of us really knew each other. I have lost my accent so the fact that I have the sense of humour takes some by surprise.

Rhubarb - I know what you mean, constantly backtracking as people look horrified and you have to explain that it was sarcasm.... or exaggeration... it can be hard work.

I like London because people aren't all up in your face the whole time. The benefits of the "friendliness" of the north can be overstated - it can become a very rigid supervision by society at large to make sure eccentricity is not tolerated and rarely attempted. But god I miss being able to engage in a little gentle sarcasm with strangers sometimes.

I think it has to be London, or the North.

Commonnortherner - damn right, that's what weather is supposed to be like.

Hmmm this reminds me, I need to get dd back to Lancashire for a while.

Her vowels need flattening.

I have just come back from 'home' (deepest Devon) after spending a weekend with my mum. I also want to go hooooooome. I moved away 3 years ago (now live in Gloucestershire) and have tried tried tried to settle in but I still feel homesick.

It's not the fast pace of live, Cheltenham/Gloucester is hardly cosmopolitan living, but I miss people I know saying hello in the high street, the cafe dd and I used to go in, the atlantic sea gales breeze and the SEA and BEACHES and EXMOOR.

Nothing up here compares. Nowt. The Cotswolds are just a couple of vaguely pretty hills compared to the cliffs and moors.

CAN'T bloody well go home as there are no jobs and the schools are crap. And can't commute from Ilfracombe to Bristol (if I could I would).

We live near to Denby Dale Edam and in fact I was driving through just an hour ago on my way back from the tip at Upper Cumberworth

You're right - it is wonderful around here and I don't think I always realise how lucky I am to live here

And I know this is a notherners thread, but I am from North Devon so am a northerner of sorts, and I get the North/South divide thing (we North Devonians feel the same about those South Devon twats from Torbay )

I just want to go back to my village. Don't care what anyone says about the rest of the North or the North as a generic concept. I want to go home! And I want ds to go to my old village school, which is still there. And I want to be able to call in on my 90 year old Godmother for a gossip and sherry with a slice of her fruitcake and some Wensleydale.

Can't think of living anywhere than the south west, the people are friendly and funny (not in a Bernard Manning style like the obvious pie and mash Northerners)

It is a load of tosh that people are more friendly in the North although they are a lot more prejudice. Inverted snobbery is still snobbery.

I remember when I left Oldham to go to college in Oxford, my Oldham accent must have dropped a bit (I hated it anyway) because when I went back to Oldham for a year afterwards, I was hated because I was seen as "posh".

This bitterness towards people who do well up North isn't nice.

I suppose it's based on your memories isn't it? I hated Oldham and always will, I have very painful memories of Oldham. Manchester was better, it was always my escape. Preston was fun but again, recent memories are tarnished with ante-natal depression, seeing someone get their face kicked in and being broken into.

Nowhere is perfect I guess. Your home is where you make it and where you feel happiest, whether that's oop North or down Saarf.

edam - what is stopping you then? What would you have to overcome to move back to your village?

I always think that if you want something enough, you just have to work out how to get it, then put your plan of action in place.