Instead, I should think sympathetically about my buyer, young doctor-in-a-hurry - he has to finish one job (in Southampton, way down on the south coast) and move the following day to a new one (in currently-cold and grey Newcastle upon Tyne, 324 miles away) at the start of August, knowing no one, move into temporary digs, and buy my house at the same time. I think I might have the better end of this stressful process, somehow. And probably more cake.
We get cross up here when southerners - for that read mainly Londoners - regard anywhere north of Watford Gap (77 miles from London) as being as remote as deepest Siberia. More than 200 barbarian-infested miles still to go before you reach here, I'm afraid. Scotland gets even crosser than us, but that's another nationalist story....
Anyway, the young woman in the Somerset estate agency dealing with my new house (look for Minehead - it's near there, and please notice the confident "my"?) can go a lot better than any Londoner in her cautious interpretation of the geography of our tiny crowded island. She told me that the vendor had "moved North." Could this be somewhere like Manchester, say, a good 3 hours' drive south-west from here? Or Carlisle? Berwick upon Tweed? They're all North.
Then the other day the papers revealing everyone's addresses and solicitors arrived, and I noticed with glee that the vendor lives in Ascot. Just to the left of London....
I shall check if I will need a passport and a survival kit to travel out of the South West in future. It looks like there's going to be an awful lot of North to contend with.
11 comments:
Ah, that means I live in the North too, just a few miles away from Ascot :-)
You have to understand those mummers in Zummerzet, out in the far West . . .
And then there's the North/South divide.... of London!
If I'm in England and say that I live in Wales, it's "Do you know so and so?" NO - they live 150 miles away in a place I've never been to (but do know how to pronounce!).
Hang in there, maybe you're nervy because you want to move so much and because you don't have a new job to worry about as well. My fingers are still crossed.
my current book, a Ruth Rendell Inspector Wexford mystery, mentions Somerset often - and of course I immediately think of you, "your" new house and the team especially the tiny dog who I am planning to kidnap when I come south (or perhaps directly east) to visit, once your settled of course. xo les Gang
Your North is our West - a vast lump of territory that many people from Toronto (the Canadian equivalent of London) don't bother to differentiate by region or geography.
I confess to having been guilty of saying that I prefer Northerners (of the UK) to, well, the others ...as if you could lump them all together. But it seems I'm not the only one!
I've sat in the back of a cab in New York and revealed that 'home' is Manchester but had to admit that sorry, we didn't know George Best. Even this small island is quite a large place and we can't be expected to know everyone. I'll be looking out for you as you make your way south though.
This sounds pretty definite.. you are on your way.. congrats!!!!
A good geography lesson for this clueless American. I've been wondering about the specifics of where you are and where you are going.
When we lived in Hampshire, the locals considered London to be 'north'. People used to say to me that they would love to go to Scotland on holiday - when I asked them where in Scotland they would look perplexed and say 'just Scotland' as if it was the size of a town!!
Nerves of steel - that's what you need xxxx
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