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!

maybe...but perhaps it's one form of British humour that's particularly well-liked in the north? non-northern humour would be the clever R4 type stuff and that pratt with a mop of dark hair who's a pernicous little mysogynist who clearly thinks himself very clever whose name escapes me...

could it be to do with the community thing again? A straight-faced ironic sense of humour will work best with people with a shared sense of values, because they can see where you must be taking the mickey. I've always thought this was why the "average" American humour wasn't like this, because it is such a huge country with so many people, being able to judge what those shared values are would be quite difficult. On the other hand, once you get to know some Americans, there is absolutely no reason why that brand of humour won't work.

If you want to be home-sick for a brand of humour, try leaving Ireland. I've never laughed as much since!

Jimmy Carr is not really representative of anywhere is he?

The whole North South thing really fucks me off. Northerners are not more friendly, that are certainly not more funny, tbh I find their humour more obvious and less intelligent than humour found in the South. But then subversive humour is not easy when the topics are still chuckled at literally. The 'bold as Brass, me' thing annoys me too, bold as brass means rude in my book.

Why do Northerners claim things like humour that are nothing to do with the North?

Why do Northerners have such a chip with gravy on their shoulder?

Irony is not bloody Northern.

well star, I've lived all over the country and I've found nice people and horrible people everywhere I've been. I like living in the North, although much of the reason, I'm sure, is because I'm Northern-born and it is most familiar to me.

BUT when you wonder if/why there is a problem between Northerners/Southerners, why have you just said that we are unfriendly, not funny, rude and stupid?

Fortunately, I am sufficiently intelligent/friendly/polite to hope that you are just teasing.

Does anyone really think of their idenitity as being 'Northern' or 'Southern'? Surely identity is much more local than that?

I absolutely adore Liverpool's people and culture, but have never had the opportunity to live there. I don't think being Northern makes me, culturally, anything like people from Liverpool just because they are also Northern.

Some places that have a lot of cultural similarities (in my subjective experience, as I have lived in lots of places):

Cornwall and Cumbria
Newcastle and Essex
West Yorkshire and Lancashire

But I don't consider Gloucstershire to be anything like Essex, or North Yorkshire to be anything like West Yorkshire. It is utterly bizarre to have some prejudiced idea of 'North' and 'South' particularly if you have only lived in one or two areas.

I was saying to a London friend of mine, whose friends were moving from London to my rural Northern village (that I moved to and am not from), that some people locally could be initially somewhat mocking when they met offcomers. My friend said it didn't matter because her friends were not from London; they were born in Leeds. But to locals where I live, Leeds is as foreign as London.

North and South are fairly meaningless terms. I do think prejudice spreads because people have a few bad experiences and use that as an excuse to make generalisations about millions of people. Just because someone once made a prejudice remark to you is no justification for making prejudiced remarks in real life, or on this thread.

I find prejudice very depressing; I am sure many other people do.

I agree some Northerners have a HUGE chip ( battered with a marsbar) on their shoulders.
If you like it so much just go back !!! There's already a housing shortage in the Sarf.

I went to Uni oop North and hated the eternally grey skies, the cold, and the inverted snobbishness that 'Northerners' are somehow better. Before I stayed there it had never occurred to me I was a 'soft southerner' !!!!!

I always think it's funny how most people, as soon as they become famous/ and or can afford it, feck off down South at the first opportunity.

The whole North/ South divide is set up to make Northerners feel better about shite weather/grey towns/lack of money etc. IMO.

at Star recognising my description of Jimmy Carr!

also smiling at the irony of star saying the north-south thing annoys her...and in the next sentence perpetuating it...

MillyR, that is an excellent point, there are such differences between regions/areas in the North and in the South.

All this North is better, South is better gumph is just a red herring, the Op wants to go back home, where she feels at home, that could be the Isles of Scilly or Ben Nevis, she just longs for a place close to her heart.

I wish I felt that strongly about somewhere!

Oh, and I hardly think Roy Chubby Brown "defines" Northern humour, we don't all have to laugh at a rascist/sexist/homophobic joke before we're allowed to live here

I cannot identify Northern humour and can only think of club circuit comedy as differing from Southern humour.

I do hate the North/South thing and rarely find a reason to cite the things that I loathe about the North, well my experience of it.

Glad that you were able to offload then Starwhores

My DH is the same about the south east to be honest, though he'd live in Devon/Cornwall.
We'd just have to get pies/black puddings and chips and gravy flown down

Milly funny that, I was just thinking that Cornwall and Cumbria have a lot in common - demographically, socially and indeed geologically!

Can we just agree that the North/South are not culturally homogenous and there is good/bad/predjudice/generosity to be found everywhere?

You're right, star there are plenty of Northerners who get their knickers in a twist about the South, unnecessarily so. But then I've had some pretty silly anti-Northern comments laid at my door in the past, too - but I haven't mentioned them so far as I didn't think they were important!

But please accept that we can't possibly all be stupid/rude etc - this is how offence is caused.

Undoubtedly a lot of the problems are because there is a pocket of wealth and opportunity in the SE. Some people outside get jealous and don't cover themselves in glory as a result (hence your chip comments I suppose).

And as for the weather - well, funnily enough, it varies. The Lake District is one of the wettest parts of the UK and yet surely most people will agree that it's one of the most attractive?

If you are one of the anti-Norths, I can only suggest you hop on a train to York or the Lakes and have a re-think.

BUT the poor OP was only saying she felt 'at home' at home and she wanted to go back? Surely we can all say, 'good for you'?

I've just remembered one thing said to me when I moved down south, doesn't your accent make you sound thick and common.

Or another one at work, me and another Northern girl working with a Londoner, God I'm stuck with a couple of monkey hangers tonight.

Oh how I laughed!

'monkey hanger'??? What's that about?

How about, 'you must be so glad you've made it down here (Bournmouth), especially with the sea and everything'.

I'd just moved from Scarborough.

i feel homesick alot but i wonder whether it is more to do with a sense of belonging. My children think kent is home, which feels really weird

Angry I think you're right. Somehow 'home' can get into our blood.

The monkey hanger thing is in Hartlepool a million years ago, the locals hanged a monkey because they thought it was a French spy (never seen a monkey or a Frenchman before).

I'm actually from Durham and my friend was from Halifax.

I'm happy wherever I live and although it's nice to go north and whenever I think about the north I always call it home, I don't know if I'd ever choose to move back there. It really is bloody cold.

I haven't said Northerners are stupid or rude.....

No matter where you are from, North or South, you will come across a typical stereotype.

How many times have you Southerners, esp star, come across a nice, intelligent, funny, non-bitter Northerner? More time that you'd care to remember I'd bet, it's just that you prefer to remember the others as it fits in better with your preconceived ideas.

Same with Southerners, there are plenty who have a ripping sense of humour and are easy-going, affable people. But it's too convenient for Northerners to pretend that they're all shandy-drinking wusses.

We are all guilty of perpetuating the North/South myth.

'Tis funny tho!

Erm, to my childhood neighbour - I'm intrigued to come across someone else who hails from Oldham, how did you escape and when?

I lived in Werneth which was actually a lovely place back then, everyone knew each other. For nights out, Custy and I would go to Henry Afrikas and be terrified, or if we were feeling posh, Montys.

Actually the nicest Northerners I have met live in the South. I have met loads of lovely Notherners, but had such a terrible experience living in the North.

star - this is where I got it from and there are couple of other references on the previous page.
'I find their humour more obvious and less intelligent'
'bold as brass means rude in my book'

I am happy to concede that you were talking about behaviours not individuals, but they were still behaviours you were associating with the North. I really don't want to fight, star, just want you to understand rhubarb's excellent point.

ANGRY, why is it weird that your children call Kent home? How long have they lived there?

tbh, home to me is wherever I happen to be living at the time. Certainly the town in the Lakes where my parents and the rest of my family live isn't home, and it hasn't been for over 20 years.

star lots of Northerners end up in the South because that's where most of the good jobs are. Hey! That's how I ended up there myself (does that mean you might secretly like me?). Also it does have more 'cosmopolitan' experiences in a small area, so if that's your bag, the South may be where it's at.

Still prefer the North!