posted July 27, 2001 02:13 AM            

I've only done places I've lived to begin with, because I'll probably upset someone by slating their hometown on the basis of a motorway service area otherwise.

Midlands I was born there. Contains Birmingham, for which it will never be forgiven. Oft known as the Black Country, because of the mining & heavy industry that used to be there, not to do with the extremely racist joke about the number of Asian and Afro-Caribbean people living there. I can't really find much nice to say about it. D

Somerset Full of inbred cider drinking yokels, and my parents. But it's got seaside, lots of my friends and plenty to do when you're bunking off school/work/whatever. B+

Yorkshire I've lived there for 7 years now. I'm still a foreigner if I go out of the cities. But the people are lovely and they talk to you for no apparent reason. And Yorkshire has got everything you could possibly need - seaside (if you happen to like Scarborough) old ruins in York, old people in Ilkley & Harrogate, Moors, lots and lots of rain, far more pubs & clubs than is really necessary in Leeds, far more curry houses than is really necessary in Bradford (and damn fine they are too), and the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield every year. So, I'm feeling pretty generous & it only loses out because the weather is crap A

posted July 27, 2001 07:17 PM            

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Say it with me:
"I like to get tied up!"

posted July 29, 2001 08:57 AM            

Kent
Other than consisting mostly of golf courses...what can you say about Kent? It's either London-based million-making commuters living in patched up 15th century mansions with two children called Petunia and Reginald and their six ponies, or it's slum dwelling shell-suit wearing teenage mothers on crack.
Really.
OK, so Canterbury's nice, and there's a few half decent castles and 'rolling downlands', but it doesn't make up for the fact that houses cost 50% more than elsewhere, tins of baked beans cost 30% more than elsewhere, and that for the rest of your life everyone you meet will assume rom your accent that you have a double barrelled surname and play a lot of polo.
C

Greater Manchester
At least you get to choose your social divide here. You can either decide to live in Lancashire and mutter about your dad the coal miner, or change to Cheshire and start shopping in the new Harvy Nicks.
A

I'd do greater London and Essex too, but I was only little, & I htink rating them on their quality of playgrounds is porbably unfair.

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Trust me, I may be a doctor someday.

posted August 06, 2001 12:48 PM            

And I've been reading Elmore Leonard and Sir Doyle.

posted September 07, 2001 07:29 AM            

Yorkshire. Where I went to university. Bradford is big, VERY hilly (as I found out the hard way, being a cyclist) and contains much of interest but you need to search it out, because for some reason people in Bradford don't shout about these things as much as they do in London, for example. Haworth (Bronte country), very scenic, VERY hilly (bordering on mountainous in places), has its own steam railway, great place to indulge all those romantic "Wuthering Heights" fantasies, except in Winter ... -20°C!!! Harrogate is a retirement town, but very refined, very genteel, and rather expensive. Leeds is a HUGE city, which has almost merged with bradford at its extremities, and is best avoided if you're a cyclist because it's full of motorways. A.

Cambridgeshire: only part I've visited is Cambridge proper. Cambridge is WONDERFUL - it has a chocolate shop that will make hand-made chocolates to order with your own centres while you wait! And, a French restaurant that serves steaks in garlic butter washed down with a good Merlot for a ridiculously cheap price. Main street into the city centre has something like 50 mediaeval churches along it, and McDonald's were only allowed in if they were discreet. So McDonald's is tucked into a back alley, and has a frontage like a Greek temple, minus the usual acres of garish red & yellow plastic! Oh, DON'T stay at the YMCA, because the beds are designed for pygmies and the mattresses are like granite. Apart from that, room facilities are OK. Oh, and when you see a party of small girls from a kindergarten wearing blazers, straw bonnets with ribbons in them, walking in single file, and addressing people politely, you KNOW you're on a different planet! Go there and die ... A+++++++++ (I want to move there but can't afford to ... sigh)

Greater London - more of everything per mile, but HIDEOUSLY expensive. Even the Tate Gallery & its Pre-Raphaelite collection can't compensate for the attitude of the locals - they think all people from the North wear cloth caps, say "Eeh bah gum" all the time and belong as exhibits in a safari park. As for their pretence at sophistication, I have two words to say in reply ... "Millennium Dome". Nice to visit as a tourist, but hell to live in. C-.

Finally, I MUST say something about Basingstoke. I went there for a job interview once. Never again. The place has been taken over by mega-corporations, who have all built their gigantic glass and concrete penis extensions there. The land is thus too valuable for PEOPLE and HOMES, so most of the locals have been pushed into outlying ghettos. Even the shops are underground ... the surface is too valuable for anything other than all those CEOs in suits and their Mercedes-Benz S-Class limos. It looks as if it has been taken over by the Borg. And it has no pavements for pedestrians - the inference being that if you're not on the board of a mega-corporation and don't have a large German car, you're a pleb and you're not welcome. Z-. Basingstoke is Hell On Earth - please, someone nuke it ...

posted September 08, 2001 02:51 AM            

I can't explain it.

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Narf. Or rather, Poink.

posted September 09, 2001 06:56 AM            

"Good morning gentlemen, and how may I assist you this fine day?"

Actually, this always makes me smile, because most Americans think there's only one "English" or "British" accent. If you were to put all the Brit Brunchers in a room together, then you'd notice the difference. Yet we can (kind of) tell the difference between someone from New York & someone from Louisiana. OK I might not do much better than that, but at least I know that there's more than 1 American accent.

posted September 09, 2001 09:26 PM            

(Luckily enough for me, many girls at my high school seem to love the Aussie accent... )

And you're right with the Yank accents. can pick several different American accents now, (Southerner, Northerner, New Yawker...) and even kind of tell if someone's Canadian...

Weeeee.

posted September 18, 2001 07:01 AM            

Tasmanian is significantly different from the accents of mainland Australia, as are the accents of certain parts of major cities (if one can conceive of the concept of an Australian equivalent of The Hamptons, there is a difference between these suburbs and the outlying areas).

New Zealand accents I have little familiarity with. But I assume that the same principle of timbral diversity applies.

Canadian is very diverse. I have correspondents from that country, and it is even possible to discern accentual differences in their E-Mails, as they tend to write conversationally.

American is diverse, but not so noticeable in E-Mails. However, when my university played host to 150 American exchange students, it was possible to discern at least 16 variants. A trained ear may have discerned more.

The reason certain English accents are regarded as somewhat erotic stems from the association with all those Merchant Ivory movies starring Helena Bonham Carter. Helena is a faerie princess.

posted September 25, 2001 02:05 PM            

"Prompted by a keen desire to evoke
All the blessed calm of matrimony's yoke,
We shall toddle off tomorrow
From this scene of sin and sorrow
For to settle in the town of Basingstoke!"

I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me.