Open Writing

I was reading Peter’s article about Huddersfield being the “happiest town” and it set me thinking about “us northerners.” Even a Lancastrian from the other side of the Pennines can claim to be a “northerner.” What is it about us which makes us the way we are, which sets us apart from others, for we are a happy lot and also a stoical, down to earth lot? “What’s it all about Alfie?”

I have been listening to Alan Bennett’s CD “Untold Tales.” It brought quite a few lumps to my throat but also brought more than a few chuckles. I identified with his summaries of northern folk, “don’t get above thissen” and so on. Perhaps, more than anything, I admired the fact that, despite or even in spite of an Oxford education, he had made no attempt to lose his northern accent. He accented it when imitating others but in his narration the hard vowels still remained. He had a bath not a “baath” and he walked down a path not a “paath,” and was proud of it.

So let’s get back to this “northerness” which sets us apart.

Why do people consider anyone living above, or is it below, as one goes up to London, the “Watford Gap” to be inferior when we really are superior. I remember once swimming with my niece in Huddersfield baths on one of our trips “home” when she said to me “I’d like to speak like you Aunty Glen.” “Why?” I asked, in my definitely Lancashire accent, it has been recognised all over the world. I chatted to her as we swam length for length about the fact that one should be proud of one’s accent and what mattered was to speak clearly and be grammatically correct, from there we moved on to other things.

I pointed out that this class distinction was a load of rubbish and that Britain’s “greatness’ was derived not from the upper classes with a plum in their mouths, whom you couldn’t understand anyway, but from the wealth created by the industrial north. “Where there’s muck there’s brass.” The pits, mills, steelworks, shipbuilding yards and so much more belong to the north, (we will include Glasgow too,) and long before, in the days of the great abbeys, the old pack horse routes for the wool, which made England great even then, belonged to the North. The Chancellor of the Exchequer still sits on the wool sack, the symbol of England’s wealth. Yes we northerners have a lot to be proud of.

But what has this got to do with happiness and Peter’s article?

Well there are two things which make me think Northerners are different, one is their attitude to life and the other is their sense of humour. It is the dryness and power of the understatement which makes you crack up laughing. Watch “Last of the Summer Wine” or “Brassed Off,” “Calendar Girls” or “The Full Monty” and you will know what I mean. It isn’t the custard pie in the face or the “over the top” American humour, it is the simple “Ow’s tha’ doin?” “Not s’ bad.” As the recipient of the question sinks ever deeper into a canal. The understatement of situations marks the northerner. You don’t make a fuss.

And so to the attitude to life. That stoicism. Children under five sent to work under machines in the cotton and woollen mills. Pregnant women pulling coal trucks, like pit ponies, “down t’ pit.” A heritage which makes you the sort of person who doesn’t moan about a cut finger and thinks a broken arm is “a bit sore”. There’s food on the table, the front step has been “donkey-stoned” and the “nets” are white, so “What’s the matter with you, get on with it?”

And so we do. We sing in choirs at full volume and play in brass bands to get rid of the coal dust in lungs and what singers northerners are, as indeed are the Welsh miners. My daughter recently paid a return trip to Britain and one of her best memories is of her Uncle Brian singing in the Colne Valley Male Voice Choir, accompanied by brass bands in the Huddersfield town hall and she is a pop music fan. She was so moved by the power of it.

So let’s face it. Of course we are happy; we get on with it and find something to do if we are bored. No wonder Huddersfield has the highest members of U3A and as for Openwriting, it is all down to a man from Huddersfield.

Just a little aside before I down pen, Martin’s cousin, last seen when Martin was four, visited us for a couple of days when we returned from Golden Bay. His miner’s lamp sits on our oak chest, passed on to us by Martin’s mother, “it’s a proper one, you know.” The old photos were out and the family tree and they talked nineteen to the dozen into the early hours. When he and his wife left on their way home to OZ, adopted by them when pit closures came about, he flung his arms round me, gave me a big hug and said, “Ee ‘a’n’t it bin grand lass.”

Yes the North is a grand and happy place to live.