Nah then! Tha’ needs t’ be in t’ reet mood for this un , so I reckon tha’ needs t’ click yon button fost afore we git sterted.

Translation for Southerners (TfS): Please click the button below

FREE NORTHERNER KIT

Did you press the button? Go on press it. You know you want to. Press it. PRESS THE BUTTON!

Now, having pressed the button (did you?), I suppose you’re sitting there thinking,

“Well, that’s a bit of a cliché Creasy, not sure what all those Northern folk did to deserve that. Oughtn’t we be a little more woke than that?”

It might be. A cliché I mean. The fact that it’s a cliché invented by everyone who thinks it’s cool to use words like “cliché” (Translation for Northerners (TfN): “Cliché“: Sommat southern bastards come airt wi’), doesn’t make it any less true, or indeed a bad thing. No, I’m here to promote the flat cap, a ferret in your trousers, a frying pan full of black pudding and a pint of bitter t’neet and every neet (Translation for Southerners (TfS): “t’neet and every neet”: Every night), as the only moral alternative to the many ills of today’s society.

I grew up in a small Lancashire village called Rishton on the edge of the western Pennine moors, a few miles from Blackburn; an old mill town. The mills were long gone when I was a kid, albeit the tall chimneys remained like something out of a Lowry landscape. The major industries were farming, Steel Stock and making bombs at the local Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF).

My memories of growing up there are fond ones. We weren’t poor or anything. We lived in a nice house in a nice street and my best mate Pete, lived two doors down from me in a house called Casa Mia (Translation for Everyone (TfE): “Casa Mia”: My House). His dad, Joe, was Spanish and had come to England as a Franco refugee. He was from Bilbao in the northern Basque region of Spain, and little bits here and there suggested that his family might have been very sympathetic supporters of the Basque Nationalist Party, which later became ETA. Apparently, Pete’s Granddad used to hide their rifles under his floorboards.

Our street was quiet enough that me and Pete, with some other lads from the street, could have a kick about without any fear of being run over by a car. On our bikes, we could be in the countryside in five minutes or ‘Arrod in ten (TfS: “‘Arrod”: Great Harwood not Harrod’s).

At the age of 5 years, I was wandering around Rishton on my own or with Pete. Nipping down to the toffee shop (TfS: Confectionary retailer), down the backs (TfS: roughly cobbled road behind terraced houses with garages and whatnot), to get to the “wreck”. For my entire childhood, I could not work out why this big field with a footy pitch, swings and child-friendly, solid steel roundabouts was called the “wreck”. As far as we were concerned, it was in pretty good nick. It was only later in life when I moved to the South and heard the word “Recreation” in everyday parlance, that I finally put two and two together (TfN: Recreation: Sommat southern bastards come airt wi’).

We knew everyone and everyone knew us. Not just on our street, but pretty much the whole village. That “knowing” was the stringy glue that bound Rishtoner’s together as a community. Well, that and Nelly’s.

Nelly’s was the best chippy. It’s not there now; I think it became a Chinese takeaway, but back in my day it was the best chippy.

“Best chippy where Creasy?”

Everywhere. It couldn’t be matched. The only one that came close, was the chippy in Gretna Green we would stop at on our way to Scotland for our Easter and Summer holidays, but it wasn’t really close. Nelly’s was #1 and #2 was a very long way away. The food was great at Nelly’s, no question about it, but it was so much more than that.

First of all, there was the location. It was right across the road from the Walmsley Arms pub. Now the Walmsley was a proper Northern pub, and by that I mean the establishment itself had no redeeming features whatsoever. Southerner’s would call it a “shithole” (TfN Shithole: A pub that dun’t sell scampi or ‘ave a beer gerden wi’ slides an’ swings an’ that). The Walmsley makes the Rovers in Corrie look like an Alaine Ducasse bistro (TfN Alaine Ducasse: Southern bastard).

Upon entering the Walmsley, which was usually the same minute it opened, you were immediately presented with a key decision

“Right room or left room?”

This decision was made all the more difficult because there was essentially no difference at all between the right room, or the left. Both rooms were bare. Pictureless walls, laminate-top tables, basic chairs, against-the-wall leatherette padded benches and threadbare red carpets with a barely discernible pattern. Personally, I would recommend the left room because it had a window and there was more natural light during the daytime (UPDATE: I recently passed the Walmsley, and whilst the establishment is clearly still open, the window is now boarded up so both rooms will be equally bleak now).

Me and Pete did our apprenticeship just up the road from the Walmsley between the ages of ten and sixteen. Every few days, we would go to Nelly’s and order our usuals: “Meat an’ p’tator pie chips an’ gravy please Nelly” for me, and Pete, who due to his Spanish heritage had a much more adventurous palette than me, would order “Cheese an’ onion pie an’ chips please Nelly“.

We would retire to the doorstep of a little shop about 5 doors up from the Walmsley and settle down to our meal. Obviously, we ate the chips first. Pete would reach over and dip his chips in my gravy. We would eat in silence except for the occasional “Awreet mate” (TfS: Good Evening) thrown out to someone walking past with their own paper bundles of steaming Nelly goodness. Once the chips had been dealt with, you were full, but we would press on regardless. I would get started on my “Meat and p’tater pie” and Pete would dive into my “Meat and p’tator pie”.

“You mean his “Cheese an’ onion pie” don’t you Creasy”

Well spotted my eagle-eyed padawan, and no I don’t!

Pete would tuck into MY pie, and the last traces of the gravy, with only the odd “S’a fuckin’ good pie is that mate“. At first, I didn’t care. It’s what mates did. You shared your pie. And it wasn’t really the fact that he was eating my pie that bothered me. No, it was the unspoken question of the uneaten Cheese and Onion pie that really got under my skin, but I wasn’t going to ask, and for years we went through this ritual with that question hanging there between us like the aroma of my thick brown gravy. Each time though, it got just a little bit more irritating until one day I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I bellowed

“WHY T’ FUCK D’YER NEVER EAT YER OWN FUCKIN’ PIE PETE?”

He looked at me like I was stupid and said

“I don’t like Cheese an’ onion pie”

and unfathomably, that’s where we left it.

Just for the record, he didn’t like Chicken Vindaloo either, but he would also order that every Friday night after we had had a skinful at the Vulcan in Blackburn.

“Oh, Ishmal! Oi Ishmal! Listen. Last week curry very good. This week, too fuckin’ ‘ot!”

I’m pretty sure the waiter’s name wasn’t “Ishmal”.

Nelly’s was much more than the village chippy; it was an epicentre. That thing around which, much of the village’s going’s on would go on. As much a source of cultural nourishment as physical. A vault of memories of a place where “community” wasn’t something you had to go out and start volunteer groups to create, but one where it was simply how you lived and required no thought.

“I’ll meet yer at Nelly’s then…”

“I’ll just ‘ave a quick ‘n at t’Walmsley and then ‘oer t’ Nelly’s fer tea”

“I’m off t’ Co-op next t’ Nelly’s”

“Where will I meet yer?” “I’ll be at t’ doorstep near Nelly’s”

Note to Southerners: I’m not translating all of that, you should be up to speed by now

“You’re being a bit nostalgic aren’t you Creasy?”

I suppose I am. I suppose thinking back to a time and a place where knowing the folk around you and them knowing you, and knowing that when the chips were down they would be standing right next to you tucking into your “Meat an’d p’tater pie”, is nostalgic. But it wasn’t really that long ago. Not really. And it’s not just that Northerners are better than Southerners. Even though that’s unarguably true, it’s more than that. It’s the location they live in too. Harsher, steeper, colder and closing people together in smaller, more spread out communities. Less rich. Less “automatic” and more manual. Less get a man in to do it and more “I’ll sort that our fer yer“, knowing that sometime soon you might sort something out “fer ‘im“.

I miss the North and have a deep yearning for its way of life, it’s people and their values. I miss the easy thirty-second conversations about any old crap, the taking the piss and the humour that really doesn’t belong because people shouldn’t have such a great sense of humour when things are so much harder.

I try to hold on to my Northernness but every now and again, I hear myself say “Shall I get you some Sushi for lunch darling” to my twelve-year-old daughter, and I think…

“that’s sommat a Southern bastard would come airt wi’!”