I’m often going north these days - in my head. As some of you might know I’m trying to piece together a shambolic film production of a documentary about the concepts, stereotypes, feel, identities and changes in the perception (internal and external) of Northerners, that is English Northerners.
I won’t put the whole outline here just yet. It requires a bit more work and thinking through. These things need incredible, unbelievable amount of research even though my point of view is that of a foreigner and I want to sustain a sort of fresh, naive approach. There are few questions that I want to ask: what is class and why is it spatially organized in this country? Who is working class? Why does Liverpool hate Manchester and the other way round? Why does everybody up North and nobody down South know what Gregg’s is? I don’t want to have any preconceptions as to what the answers are. But I still need to know what is it that I’m asking about.
I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about Albert Dock and that nobody back where I came from, probably not even my mum, life long Beatles fan, knows what it is. This causes an urgent need to call home and ask: what do you call a Scouser in a shirt and a tie?*
Sometimes I find myself drifting away, stopping eating with the fork half way between my plate and my mouth, half-turning page of a book, partially opening a can of beer… because I’m stuck boiling my brain thinking how on earth am I going to get hold of Jimmy McGovern?
All the time these days I’m going. And I’m almost there, I’m almost north.
*The Accused.
