Ian McMillan: Home thoughts from a Northern perspective

I could be anywhere and yet I know I’m not. I’m in London. I’m in the South. Somehow, even in this room, I can sense the South. Is it something to do with the quality of the aforementioned streaming light? Is it to do with the traffic noise on the already-busy road outside? It can’t be, can it? Light and noise are the same anywhere, surely. And yet somehow I know I’m in the south of England and I feel just a little uncomfortable.

I know this is silly, but there’s something about the North that makes me feel safe, makes me feel wanted, makes me feel loved. And there’s something about the South that makes me want to be in the North. Nothing against Southerners, nothing against the South, really. It just feels different, somehow. Southern.

Now, I know that stray Southerners reading this (you can still get the Yorkshire Post at King’s Cross Station) will be nodding and saying “Yes, I get that feeling when I have to go North. The South makes me safe, wanted, loved”. And people somewhere in the middle, somewhere like Crewe or Leek, will be saying “I can sympathise; I feel a bit on edge whenever I leave Crewe. Or Leek.”

It’s to do with familiarity, of course. I love the North because I’ve always lived in the North and I can’t imagine anything else. So, am I a narrow kind of chap? Should I broaden my horizons? Should I do a house-swap with somebody in Tunbridge Wells just to see how the other half live?

It’s a dilemma. I don’t want to be like a member of one of those tribes in the Amazon Basin who’s never been introduced to what people laughingly call the “Outside World” and who starts back in alarm when they see a microwave or a go-kart. I’m not like that though. I’ve seen the Outside World and I prefer the North.

I check out of the hotel and walk down Pentonville Road to King’s Cross. It’s early and there are people westering home from last night. A man asks me directions to Angel Tube station and I tell him, pointing up the hill. He thanks me, calling me John in that London way.

How can I be from the North when I can give directions in London? Maybe I’m really becoming a citizen of the world. Maybe in the end it doesn’t matter where you are.

At the station, I can hear people talking in Northern voices and I feel comforted. Nobody is calling anybody John. People are calling each other Love and Duck and Hinny and Marrer. People are speaking with Northern grammar and Northern locutions.

“I’m starving, me!” a fat bloke says as he queues up for a sandwich.

“Has tha seen that theer?” says a woman who possibly isn’t from Tunbridge Wells. I feel like I’ve come home, even though I’m just waiting to get on the 06.15 to Doncaster. I smile, involuntarily.

I sit on the train and we begin to move North. There’s an aggressive man a few seats in front, still drunk from last night, shouting into his mobile phone. He gets off at Stevenage and I mentally nod and say to myself “Stevenage, thought as much”. And yet that’s daft. There are nice people in Stevenage and there are boorish drunks shouting into hand-held devices all across Yorkshire and points North.

I wave to the bloke as he weaves up the platform and he raises two fingers in the air. Ah, the cheerful Northerner rebuffed by the Southern slob. And yet I’ve been gestured at all across Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria, Northumbria and Tyneside. Maybe I should just stop waving randomly at people. Ah, well, it’s because I’m friendly. I’m from the North.

We speed home, jettisoning Southern people in Peterborough, people who are not quite sure in Grantham, and Midlanders in Newark. I’m feeling happy because these rails are Northern rails and the cup of tea I’m drinking is, somehow, Northern tea because I can see Northern fields outside the window.

Not for the first time I decide that The North is a state of mind, a mythical thing that has no real relationship to where you happen to be.

And then, on Doncaster station, a man comes up and asks me directions in a lovely Yorkshire accent, and I can’t help him. I’ve not heard of the road he’s talking about. I’ve only been down South overnight and I’m changing. I’m lost in the North, me. Help…