510 days ago
I am not often asked wherev I am from. If so I’d mumble someing about Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire and that would be that. Nobody would ask “but where are you really from?” forcing me to discuss Kent, Dorset, Worcestershire -on two sides – and my illegitimate great grandmother who was from God only knows where. I am more often asked where my wonderful wife is from and that is because she has brown skin. I say Nottingham.
2482 days ago
It is the sort of conversation I only really have with my father. We sit here tonight in Shipston. With the Mrs having taken Joshua back to Bristol, I am with the old man for a couple of days. We are killing time ahead of the BBC news. I write the odd article, he reviews old family papers, something that is the focus of his life these days. Have I discussed the Ightham murder of 1908 on these pages? No? Well, maybe another time.
3593 days ago
I have a terribly guilty confession. It really is shameful. But I am open with you and so confess that …I have started watching Coronation Street. It is really quite gripping to discover what life is really like in the Grim North.
The Mrs – hailing from the entrepreneur free, economic wastelands of the welfare addicted Grim North, that is to say Nottingham – is a lifelong Corrie fan. Until recently we have agreed that when I am there she records and when I am away she gorges and catches up. But then I started watching. It really is fascinating.
I had no idea that life in the North was so interesting. Apparently there is a murder on the Street about once every six months. Folks disappear for unexplained reasons (because the actor who plays them is on trial accused of being a nonce, a rapist or both) and no-one lives with their actual parents. In the North it is apparently compulsory for kids to live with a step parent and their new partner while their actual parents both live with new partners and the children of other folk.
It is all very confusing but since The Mrs is a sociologist she is able to explain it all to me. Right now someone called Tina who seems to have had sex with every man in the street (apart from the large numbers of homosexuals camped out in Corrie) has been murdered. The main suspect is a white man whose son by his first marriage appears to be black and lives with his white ex-wife. Go figure. The main suspect lives with the wife of his father (currently a “disparu”) who is not his mother. The other suspect is the main suspect’s wife (not yet divorced). In fact the killer is the brother of the main suspect’s wife whose girlfriend is the sister of the main suspect. Or is it half-sister? Whatever. As you might gather it is all gripping stuff.
My wife says hat Corrie is set in the traditional small c conservative part of Manchester
3846 days ago
We departed the Grim North (Nottingham) at 5 PM on Sunday. Sadly during my stay I did not sample local culinary delights such as Cock-on-a-stick (Nottingham) or Pikelets and Wrights Pies (Stoke). Instead it was wonderful food from the mother-in-law, who showed great self-restraint and managed to praise Tony Blair only once during our visit). And there was no time to go out and visit the abandoned factories and look at the poor folks who cannot afford shoes as they searched the garbage cans for their next meal. An opportunity missed.
Getting back to the civilised south was the problem. As we moved down the M42 traffic slowed and then ground to a halt. Perhaps there was a problem at passport control as the few thousand Northerners with a work ethic jammed the gates as they headed back to paid employment in the bountiful south after a weekend with the wife, kids and whippets? Actually it was a lorry on its way back from bringing emergency relief to the folks in Stoke, that had jack-knifed and left us stranded in the pitch black for almost five hours.
At last the Old Bill cleared the hard shoulder and we made our escape finally arriving in Bristol at 12.30. Downton Abbey was videoed and that treat awaits tonight.
