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!

I think she maybe Chill

May be

Sorry

Nope, not too scathing I hope.... just that Northerners do not feel the cold! I lived in Leeds, it was awful, people were rude, hated the South, and on and on.....

There are loads of no tarts in the South West.

when i went out in newcastle lots of women went out in next to nothing, regardless of weather.

and yes i definitely think the North is more rife with sexism and homophobia...i was really shocked to find men-only bars still existed in the 90's, and see a local news article about gay men being banned from certain town pubs. they'd never have done that in brighton.....

when the say the north is friendlier..i guess that depends on not being gay/ goth/ weird looking/ southern.

I think that there are pockets of that sort of blinkeredness, but it isn't everywhere.

I have never felt out of place, although that girl, Sophie who got kicked to death for being a Goth by youths was from near here (but that particular town is, ahem, rather strange).

there's plenty of homophobia down South actually. Those nail bombs weren't in Manchester, were they?

"I hated Oldham and always will, I have very painful memories of Oldham. Manchester was better, it was always my escape."

Rhubs you took the words out of my mouth
Yes, down here people don't get my sense of humour much, I am viewed as a very strong woman, and I am definitely more of an individual than many, but I am much happier here (midlands).
I suppose it depends what you're leaving behind

Nice to 'see' you Rhubs

I live in the Midlands and its luverley.

RhubsChildhoodNeighb... Mon 12-Oct-09 20:33:17 Add a message | Report post | Contact poster

"I hated Oldham and always will, I have very painful memories of Oldham"

Yes that sums up how I feel about my northern hometown.

there are tarts in next to nothing up and down the country. and tehre are people up and down the country who think such skimpy dressing is somewhat ridiculous. my (yorkshire-born peak district-living) mum once drove through Chesterfield town centre late on a Saturday night. "Is there a fancy-dress party or something?" she asked. "no mum it's just a normal Saturday night." "don't they get cold....?"

having said that I can remember, as a teenager, refusing to take a coat to a nighclub because I couldn;t afford to pay for the cloakroom. and because my coat was completely untrendy and 2 or 3 years old. so maybe there's an economic aspect to it.

I'm a Southerner but have lived in Yorkshire and Leicester before moving back daahn Saath.

Loved the humour and the lack of pretension of the North. Loathed the bigotry (racism, homophobia, southernophobia) and inward-looking, inverted, bag-of-chips-on-the-shoulder nonsense. Northerners really do keep this North/South divide going as Southerners don't seem to care where people come from nearly as much.

I now live in a South-East City which is full of people from everywhere. I get pissed off with the wealth, boring talk about property prices, arty-farty ponciness and hippy capitalism. But I love that you can be a bit different and not follow a prescribed set of social rules and I haven't heard the word 'Paki' for years.

I still miss the village that I grew up in, just because that's where I spent my formative years, not because it was in the South

I lived in the South for about nine years and the rest in the North. I have lived in 9 different regional areas. There are racist people in all areas. There are very few areas of the North or South where racism or homophobia is considered acceptable by general society.

I don't think the North/South divide is perpetuated by anyone disliking anyone else. it is perpetuated by real differences in life expectancy, education levels, job opportunities, unemployment levels and health issues.

I have heard Northerners and Southerners being mean about each other, because you get prejudiced people in any culture. It is really quite a trivial issue compared to social inequalities.

"Southerners don't seem to care where people come from nearly as much." Ho ho very much ho. When I first moved to London from up North, I got really fed up with the snotty attitudes I met. Far too many people seemed to regard the North as some far away 'here be dragons' place that was really not part of England at all. I met dozens of oafs who really did work on the assumption that everyone who came from outside the Home Counties lived in a back-to-back, had a flat cap and kept racing pigeons.

Agreed, there are racist people everywhere. But I was stunned at the open racism I heard in the North (poor, working class city with large Pakistani population). It was regarded as odd not to be racist there. It is very PC where I live and most of the population would string you up for racism, (it's another story entirely for prejudice against the white working classes).

Agreed about the inequalities, but it isn't the fault of ordinary Southern people, more history of industrial decline, policies, power-base in the South-East etc. I still maintain that the N/S bitterness is largely one-way and directed at Southerners as a whole rather than what has led to the inequalities.

I have never heard anti-Northern sentiments expressed here but there are so many exiled Northerners, the locals are used to influx and change. No-one bats an eyelid at a different accent.

Loving the stereotypes on this thread

Edam- I totally agree. I'm from Newcastle, and many moons ago attended a large Christmas party in Oxford with an Ex BF. We were having smoked salmon during the meal, and the woman to my left turned to me and said "I don't suppose you will be used to this type of food, coming from up North". WTF??? I had never met someone so ignorant...

Hertfordshire is pretty dreadful isn't it?
Move to London pet.People are much nicer here.

My in-laws both from the North-West have lived in Hertfordshire for aeons and think is is paradise. I think it is a non-place myself.

Lol Hatwoman about Chesterfield on a Saturday night. When I lived in Devon I used to go our for the evening to Woolacombe, where I used to wear jeans, flips flops, pretty top, all very casual as you would be in a surfy seaside town. Went out for evening in Chesterfield and I felt like a complete yokel, men were weraing suits and ties and all the girls, bar none, were wearing cocktail dresses, full hair and make up and were really glam. Me and XDP just sat there in awed wonder.

We did get a few funny looks for our strange attire, but had a cracking night out. I like Chesterfield

I'm from County Durham originally and moved away about 15 years ago, first to Middlesex and then to Bishop's Stortford on the Herts/Essex border.

I don't go back up North very often because it's much too cold but the people are really friendly and when I go back it's like putting on a pair of comfy old slippers, you just slip back into life, carry on conversations that you left off 5 years ago. I did find some people from Herts a bit weird particularly those born and bred in Stortford and they did struggle with my sense of humour at times. In fact looking back, my best freind darn Saarf is from Yorkshire and now my best friends here in France are from Yorkshire too. Maybe us Northerners need each other.

Used to work for Americans though, now they really don't get my sense of humour absolutely took me literally at everything I said.

Ah edam - i get where you're coming from. i too want to go home, desperately ATM. Further north than you want to go though. i have spent 15 years of my life living wherever the bloody RAF have sent us and I ahve enver hated a place as much as I do here. Aside from the odd racist comment I get, I just feel so homesick, which was a new concept for me until we arrived here 2 years ago.
Yes it's drier and warmer, but I don't like it
We tried to get a move back to my hometown, where we do actually have a house and there is an RAF base close by, but the RAF/MOD gave the slot there to soemone else, despite DH ahving applied for it months before it became actually availiable, and then the tossers RAF/MOD decided that my health - physically mainly but mentally too, - wasn't severe enough to warrant a move on medical grounds and the closest they are prepared to offer us is Yorkshire.

Aside from 'didn't you love chips and gravy with the big light on' I am at a loss to define NOrthern humour. I have always thought it rather backward and obvious (working men's club type) in comparison to humour I associate with Southern comedians, aside from the extremes I wasn't aware Northern humour was difficult to get.

I realise not the whole North champions Chubby but that is what I think of when people talk of Northern humour, anything else is just humour.

I don't think people are thinking of professional comedians when they talk about northern humour. I think they are talking about a warm, sharp, irony that includes a lot of self-awareness and taking the piss out of yourself and out of ordinary life, that some ordinary northerners have and that most appreciate. if you want to think in professional terms think Peter Kay, Phoenix Nights.

That is not Northern humour, that is British humour.