It's grim up north

Brown said:

Well, when I do write ups of my various outings I try to give them a title that's borrowed from a book or a film or something similar. Hence 'Long day's journey into night', 'To the ends of the earth' and so on. 'It's grim up north' was a song in the early 90s by the JAMs, but of course the phrase had been knocking around for ages before that. The idea was promoted in a piece of travel writing by J B Priestly in the 1930s ('English Journey') who described the Newcastle area with particular misery. Well, it would be - the great depression and all that. The north looks very different now of course - much more gentrified, and rife with hanging baskets and gastro-pubs. When I was younger, I remember my parents, who were native Geordies, were astonished at what the place looked like. When they were young in the 1930s all the buildings were black. Once they'd been cleaned, the yellow or red local stone was exposed, or the colour of the brickwork, and it looked like a totally different place.

Yes Mr Rogers, I'll come over to the east of England one day.

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Al2O3 said:

Ah, I hadn't realised there was a literary link. The more people who think it's grim up here the better for me. We are becoming over populated by folk from the South, looking for cheaper housing, releasing equity so they can live it large in their retirement.
Can't understand it myself, it flippin miserable up here, freezing cold, dark, rains all the time and full of coal mines and if it's not coal dust it's asbestos. It's not fit for human habitation up here really

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Bobsticle said:

They have gone and put some newfangled black sticky stuff over the cobbles on Deansgate in Manchester. You can't even hear the milk cart coming up behind ye. Most of us ain't as nimble as we wuz what with the rickets so its only a matter of time before there's a nasty accident. Its never going to catch on.

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