At long last, Northerners get the respect we deserve.
My own singular encounter with the North-South divide occurred as I was visiting the University of East Anglia during my search for UCAS options (pausing only to falsify climate data and bring science into disrepute, of course). Just before we began the tour of the campus (which resembled the midpoint between a man-sized concrete hamster maze and the very least imaginative scenes in Metropolis), our guide asked my two fellow potential initiates and I where we had come from. Both my fellow travellers answered "London"; I offered "Middlesbrough". Our guide blinked, cocked her head in consternation, and told me "Wow. Yeah, we had someone else from the North here just the other day". Mercifully, she resisted the temptation to ask whether we were acquainted.
This though was entirely outdone by a friend of mine at the time who chose to apply to Cambridge, and who was also called upon to reveal her heritage during her visit. She too (equally erroneously) named her home town as Middlesbrough, which provoked the response: "Fucking Hell! Do you need to carry a knife?"
h/t to Danny.
2 comments:
Reminds me of my first year in London, when I overheard two locals in the seminar room discussing what they'd done at the weekend. "I went up north to visit my parents", the slightly vapid lass in front said.
"Your parents live in the north?!" came the genuinely astonished response.
"Well, north of London," she replied.
Further questioning revealed they lived no farther away than Luton.
sigh...
Post a Comment