Off The Rails Border Crossing
Nell Frizzell casts her eye over the north-south divide
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There are many things that, though obvious, want repetition. Dogs in fancy dress costumes are amusing, for instance. Harem pants make you look like an incontinent bigamist, for example. Converse are shoes for children, as it were.
Just such a statement is the assertion that people make more effort in the north than in the south. Oh, okay, not necessarily the effort to pay eye-watering rents and retain an industry, I grant you. But in terms of making an effort in how you look, the South of England can barely touch the coat tails of its North Country counterpart.
I bring this up because I recently spent a day travelling from London to Liverpool. I would say I spent the day ‘among the people of Liverpool’, but there was an England game on during the afternoon and so for those two hours I was entirely alone – the streets of Liverpool more deserted than the Sahara.
From the moment I set foot on the platform of Lime Street Station, however, it was clear to me that a pretty seismic shift had occurred. People in London don’t get changed to go out; they wear jeans at their birthday party; they don’t wear makeup to work; they can’t afford to go to the hairdressers.
In Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle on the other hand, people look like they are about to receive an Oscar while shopping for loo roll in Morrisons.
The north: where overdressed is far from over.
Posted on Wednesday 7th July 2010
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