The North

catalog

Well-known member
The north works best when you consider the major cities as little villages and you skip between them as you would between west and east london. each one on it's own is very limited. there's no centre to it . Or the centre would be a field, a moor, a reservoir, something like that. I think the m62 is really what ties it all together. I consider it to be a major river.

The actual culture of the cities is very influenced by the small mindedness of the hilly outlying areas. That movement from one to the other and back is where cool things happen. You can't take your eye off any area, you need to consider the whole lot.

i think other places are rougher than where I am. Birmingham/Midlands seems really rough to me. And not North really. I've not felt a sudden threat of violence up north for years, but there's something there in the background perhaps. Poverty mainly. I'd say same issues as London, except London benefits from having that centre. And the clash of people concentrated in a small area does something incredible. You don't really get that up north - seems harder for scenes to grow now, dunno.

I don't think it's as much of a thing as it was, the North/South divide.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Chunks of north going Tory was a hoot, for all the wrong reasons. Pure voyeurism on my part

Leeds has a heavy, uncompromising air to it. When you approach from the M1 the ongoing elevation throws you a tad. From Elland Rd you can see up toward t’moors, taking snaps of the kids with Billy B’s statue

Moorland features consistently. Brady/Hindley’s ghosts weighing down a heavy air in the psychosphere, the route through Snake Pass which is surely among Britain’s most stunning road routes, while the M6 has the tedium of Sandbach service so beloved in the days of Shelleys


The True King of the North

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catalog

Well-known member
I really thought those David peace adaptations, red riding, were terrible rubbish films. Almost couldn't believe how hokey.

The books weren't awful, but neither were they very good.

But the films, just awful. Very one dimensional view of the North and also a view that felt very much like a saleable view of the North which made no sense to me. I couldn't believe k punk thought so highly of them.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Had this sitting on a shelf since it was given as a present, not had the heart to be disappointed

 

william_kent

Well-known member
I really thought those David peace adaptations, red riding, were terrible rubbish films. Almost couldn't believe how hokey.

The books weren't awful, but neither were they very good.

But the films, just awful. Very one dimensional view of the North and also a view that felt very much like a saleable view of the North which made no sense to me. I couldn't believe k punk thought so highly of them.

I couldn't get through the first episode of the TV series. The point when I turned off was some scene in the newspaper office where you could hardly see anything because of the simulated cig smoke - struck me that they were trying too hard to capture a period feel to the point where it became parody.
 

catalog

Well-known member
exactly. it was very overwrought with nothing but pouring down rain, mardy women, blokes as snivelling toads or psychos. totally took over any ability to coherently function as a story.
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
I grew up in the north west and now live in Yorkshire..after 20 years or so in London.

The smug pride in being from The North really fucks me off. Largely because lots of it that I see directly is white middle class people clinging on to this idea that they are somehow underprivileged (compared to "That London") and assuming a kind of virtue because of that. Middle class boomers reciting Peter Kay lines cos ITS FUNNY COS ITS TRUE

The other thing about the north is lots of it is shit really. Nothing wrong with that, lots of places are shit. But whereas say people from Southampton don't bang on about being from Southampton all the time, people from say Wigan think it's the greatest place in the world. I quite like that though really. The fierce loyal impulse.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
I grew up in the north west and now live in Yorkshire..after 20 years or so in London.

The smug pride in being from The North really fucks me off. Largely because lots of it that I see directly is white middle class people clinging on to this idea that they are somehow underprivileged (compared to "That London") and assuming a kind of virtue because of that. Middle class boomers reciting Peter Kay lines cos ITS FUNNY COS ITS TRUE

The other thing about the north is lots of it is shit really. Nothing wrong with that, lots of places are shit. But whereas say people from Southampton don't bang on about being from Southampton all the time, people from say Wigan think it's the greatest place in the world. I quite like that though really. The fierce loyal impulse.

The pride/resilience paradox. Jonathan Meades has a weird relationship with Southampton as an aside


The north starts in Derby. But the Midlands is what the north could have / should have been. The true north.

Derby is Grim Britannia. Pride Park took over from the BBG which remains one of the original black holes in English football. As bad as Chelsea’s shed or Ninian Park across the border

The big man opening right up (and prescient in a weirder way)

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I grew up in the north west and now live in Yorkshire..after 20 years or so in London.

The smug pride in being from The North really fucks me off. Largely because lots of it that I see directly is white middle class people clinging on to this idea that they are somehow underprivileged (compared to "That London") and assuming a kind of virtue because of that. Middle class boomers reciting Peter Kay lines cos ITS FUNNY COS ITS TRUE

The other thing about the north is lots of it is shit really. Nothing wrong with that, lots of places are shit. But whereas say people from Southampton don't bang on about being from Southampton all the time, people from say Wigan think it's the greatest place in the world. I quite like that though really. The fierce loyal impulse.
Yeah this is what I was alluding to earlier, my GF being browbeaten by loads of bullies repeatedly insisting they were the friendliest, warmest people in the world... John fucking Parrot going on and on about how funny he is cos of his legendary scouse humour. Fuck me.
 

martin

----
I think my least favourite place in the north is Liverpool. I know this is going to piss off Scousers, but I just don’t get anything about it. I thought the music was crap – Beatles, Julian Cope, the Las, the Zutons…it’s a long, depressing list.

Everything seems like a bad copy of London. Echo & The Bunnymen = poor man's Psychedelic Furs. Toxteth Riots = poor man's Brixton Riots. Benjamin Zephaniah = poor man's LKJ. Hollyoaks = poor man's Grange Hill.

The city is boring and it’s the only place I’ve been north of Reading where people in pubs did head swivels and gave me dagger glares as soon as they heard my accent (something I was warned about as a naive, unworldly brat when going to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle... but it never happened when I went to those places?). Why is everyone there so pissed off?

That said, it was still miles better than Southampton.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I have never been to Liverpool. I read something once about how the Liver Building was listed for years one of the most recognisable buildings in the UK - in fact probably simply THE most recognisable, and why stop at the UK, why not the world? But not because of a poll or anything, just cos people from Liverpool insisted it was until a recent poll actually showed that hardly any fucker was able to pick it out of a line-up.
It's the "friendly and warm"or "funny" thing writ large - it's not up to me to decide if I am friendly, it depends on other people, it doesn't become true if I simply insist on it.
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
"But still the north lingers in me, there in my bones and my blue-tinged skin, in my love of barm cakes and brass bands, of pies and pit-songs and pea-wet, and of the train that carries me home again, through Crewe and Warrington to Wigan; a love that is dark and tender and true".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
"But still the north lingers in me, there in my bones and my blue-tinged skin, in my love of barm cakes and brass bands, of pies and pit-songs and pea-wet, and of the train that carries me home again, through Crewe and Warrington to Wigan; a love that is dark and tender and true".
That just reads like a pisstake from the Daily Mash or something.
 
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