No matter where I go in the world, surrounded by such beauty and wonder, filling my belly with as much scrumptious food and drink as possible, and immersing myself in varying cultures, people and different ways of life, I find myself thinking of home. And for those of you who don’t know me (or have yet to hear my dreadfully broad accent), home is Yorkshire.
True, I can’t see myself living there for good in the long run, there’s other places I’d like to eventually settle and bring up a family, but it’s almost impossible to shake off the feeling home brings, that nostalgia and strange comfort you find in familiarity. So I’ve put together a list of a few things I miss about ‘the north’ when I’m away on my travels.
1.The Yorkshire accent
That warm welcoming accent, and one word in particular: ‘Love’. “Hiya love”, “how are ya love?” “Do you want some help with ya packing love?”
2. Affordability
I guess this is more directly related to my experience of living in London, but it makes me want to cry when I come back home and see a 3-bedroomed house to rent with a garage and garden for half the price of a tiny one-bedroomed flat above a Chicken Cottage in London!
3. The food
Yes it’s a stereotype, but bloody hell do I miss a good ol’ Yorkshire pudding and Sticky Toffee pudding with custard, not to mention real fish and chips WITHOUT the skin! (And then dunked in mushy peas mmmm!)
4. The strong sense of community
Again, this is related to my experience living in London, but you can’t help but feel people are more distant down there. In the north we all know our neighbours, their dogs, cats, grandmothers, granddads, the bin man’s name, his wife, the postman, the guy who walks up the road in a drunken stupor every night at 11pm with a bottle of cider in his hand (you get the gist!).
5. The countryside AKA the Yorkshire Dales!
Although I’ve been lucky enough to have visited some unbelievably beautiful places on my travels, places filled with mountains, waterfalls, deserts, volcanoes, beautiful beaches and vast blue tinted glaciers, but it’s hard to miss the green rolling countryside, divided by scattered dry stone walls, framed by the grey slate of the sky with the constant whiff of good, hot, steamy horse manure in the air! “Heathcliffe!” “Heathcliffe!”
6. The tap water!
I can’t stress enough how much I miss the tap water up north when I’m away. It’s clean and actually tastes good! No chemical after taste reminiscent of accidentally swallowing the chlorine water in the swimming baths as a child, no added fluoride, no need to filter. Just pure and simple water. (Scandinavia not included obvs).
7. Chavs
Ok, it’s not that I miss chavs, but there are some things which are extremely entertaining about them. Take this car for example, what kind of person would plaster ‘Yo Shag’? across the back of their car. A chav, that’s who! (I was so happy to catch this camera. I think it highlights the essense of a chav precisely!).
8. And last but not least…
(It had to be said!), the price of drinks, and preferably in a quaint countryside pub! From almost fainting in Norway, where the cheapest bottle of wine I could find IN THE SUPERMARKET was £30.00 ($45), to the sound of my male friends complaining that the cheapest pint of beer they could find in London was £4.00, it’s lovely to come back home and be able to buy a round of drinks without breaking the bank and having to declare myself bankrupt.
20 responses
Love it! Beautiful photo of you on the Yorkshire Dales. I do love the green countryside of the UK, though in the winter it’s always so overcast that I don’t want to go walking anywhere near as much as in the summer!
Am I being overly romantic when I call overcast weather ‘atmospheric’ and ‘broody’?! :p
But yep, rubbish weather is usually just depressing!
Yorkshire misses ya too love xx
Not long now 😀
So many truths!
I have lived in Stockholm for five years and before that two years in Tokyo. Always miss the “little things” from home.
London will always be my home. Born there, raised there. I miss the trivial things in reality. The smell of the tube, the Metro paper. The little things.
For sure Stockholm has changed dramatically the past five months but that is all about adaption to the homelessness issue that it’s suddenly facing. But I miss Vinegar, Monster Munch, GMTV (is that still on?) and above all a cheap beer!
But it’s not about what we miss but how we respect what we miss that matters. Life is a journey and where we come from makes us who we are.
And now I MUST visit the Dales soon! It has been way overdue.
Coincidentally I’m in Tokyo as I type this. Yes I agree, it’s the small, trivial things that we often take for grant which we ironically tend to miss the most! Oh gosh, pickled onion flavoured Monster Munch, yes!
This is one of my favourites of all your posts I have seen so far. My maternal grandmother came from Yorkshire and she told me a lot about the county. I have spent time there too, but not recently, alas. Fond memories of Headingley, Fountains Abbey and Filey beach. Great to read about what you like most about Yorkshire. Thanks, Shing.
Hi Eddie, I’m really happy that you enjoyed reading this post! Ahhh so you have a wee bit of Yorkshire blood in ya then?! Fountain’s Abbey is one of my favourite places in Yorkshire too, when the sun is shining there’s no prettier place! Bolton’s Abbey is up there with it too!
My friend Karen lives in Leeds, and I’ve had the fortune to visit a couple times, and walking the Dales was perhaps one of my fondest memories. Nothing like it. Great photo of you Shing there. Thanks for stirring me memories of the area (sorry, fell into the local slang) 🙂 I’d love to hear your voice. Maybe I just haven’t seen it – do you have a video clip somewhere of you talking. I’m a sucker for that accent, you know ! Or maybe some day I can give you a call, and pick your brain on things I should do on a return trip. Feel free to write me back channel at my e-mail address. Cheers !
Hi Brad! It’s great you’ve had the chance to enjoy my stomping ground! And even better you have a friend to show you around! Well if you ever do a return trip let me know!
Haha maybe one day I’ll do a video clip for my blog… but this voice really isn’t made for the camera :p
I quite like the Yorkshire accent! Whereabouts are you from? I went to uni in Hull, which had a magical accent – a phone call was a fern curl!
‘A fern curl’ – that actually made me laugh out loud Richard!
My postcode is Bradford!! (Although really it’s equidistant between Bradford and Leeds).
I feel exactly the same with KL. I’m not based there anymore, and I don’t foresee myself moving back for the long term, but somehow, home will always be home. Although among the two, KL is more London than Yorkshire. 😀
Haha KL definitely has the big city vibe!
I was born in Liverpool but then Ma and Pa moved all around the country (somehow missed Yorkshire) before settling in Southport where I went to secondary (grammar) school. But I have lived 21 of the last 25 years in Thailand. The other four were in Bhutan. Back in 1997 I had a 5 week holiday back in Britain with my Thai wife. We visited family and friends starting in Kent, moving on to Gloucestershire, Merseyside and Cumbria. It was while staying with a friend in Cumbria that I woke up one morning half way through our holiday and said to Rung: “You know Love, I’m looking forward to getting back home.” that’s when I realised that home was Thailand and the UK (place of my birth) was the foreign country. I enjoy going back to Britain every few years or so. But I can not imagine living there again.
I looooove Liverpool! I can see how Thailand became home for you. I think falling in love and building a family redefines the word ‘home’. The word is less so about where we are born but what we end up creating for oursevles. That’s quite a beautiful thing.
I think your daughter is very lucky to have two completely different sides to her heritage. That’s how I feel about myself at least.
Should you decide to visit Thailand do contact me. Mon (the daughter) is in between studies at the moment (she’s 22) so is available to show you around. I envy you being in Tokyo. Japan is one of my favourite countries and I have spent several months working there but not since 2004. I’ve a conference in Pinghu, Zhejiang at the end of this month and will take Mon so she can experience another country. She has already packed her case and I think we are looking at three wardrobe changes a day over a five day period. She reminded me that she is going to be studying fashion design soon and three changes in a day is therefore quite restrained.
I’m sold on your home! When can I come visit??
I totally relate about the water. Using nothing but bottled water in India for 2+ months was tough.. even for brushing my teeth. It’s a bit more involved than one would think.
Awwww! Such a lovely post. I’m from the suburbs of Manchester originally and I haven’t lived there in over 20 years! I live in Berlin and before that Prague and London. I love living in Germany and I can’t imagine ever living back in England any more but I still miss the English countryside. The Merseyside, yes, and the Yorkshire Dales. The cold, wet, windy weather streaming on my face, Northern voices (although I myself have a posh one LOL!), an English newspaper, sausage roll, a steak and kidney pie, lemon curd, custard creams, a “real” cup of tea and a prawn and cocktail sandwich coupled with prawn and cocktail crisps. English TV, just walking down the street and finding a robin in a hedge. A grimy English film, or BBC 2 series such as “This Life.”
I was living in London when it first came out on BBC2 and we all thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I’ve been wanting to buy the DVD Series but it’s still over €120 on Amazon and I can’t justify buying it. Sigh!
” the guy who walks up the road in a drunken stupor every night at 11pm with a bottle of cider in his hand ”
This could be my uncle, i’m a Yorkshire Lass myself living in Liverpool at present and everything you said struck a little chord in my heart.
I’m lucky enough to get to visit my dad every now and then and can’t help but wonder how simple life would be if i moved back and raised my lil one the way i was.
Thanks for the memories,
Laura