went, to throw pennies from the first-floor window of Pap Reg’s office into the buckets of bank managers dressed as women below. A marvellous evening was guaranteed and we were, I suppose, united in our love. But is that it?
Being from Northampton is good if you want to start a new life. Like so many artificially expanded new towns, it does a nice line in blank canvasses.
The Northampton accent may be regarded as something of a handicap out there in the sophisticated world, but it doesn’t quite carry the stigma of a Birmingham or a West Country. It’s nothing like as recognisable for a start. The Northampton accent is – whaddya know! – a sort of cross between half a dozen others: a heavy dose of West Midlands, a dash of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, and the cretinous-sounding twang of the country. In 1933, an editorial in the local paper complained, ‘In Northampton we suffer, largely, from a lazy lower jaw which drops in the pronunciation of vowels and does not rise to clear-cut rendering of consonants.’ People in Northampton, especially the older generation, pronounce ‘going down town’ as
gooing dane tane
, and ‘our old car’ would come out as
air uld cah
. I would be referred to by my grandparents as
air
Andrew. Yes is
yis
and yet is
yit
, and ‘this afternoon’ is streamlined to
sartnoon
. They might also call you
m’duck
as a term of endearment. You are their duck.
The first thing I did when I got to London was work on a London accent. I didn’t want to be exclaiming
God blarmey!
all my life.
My wife, who was born in London, calls me northern, but when your home town is only 60 miles by road or rail, it hardly feels like dark, satanic mills and black pudding. As far as I’m concerned, Northampton is up the road. And that simple proximity was, I’m sure, a calming influence on my college years as I adjusted to life away from everything I knew. Like being a student with stabilisers.
There’s something primal and necessary about leaving your home town, even if only for a spell like my mum and dad. Having said that, I totally respect Melissa for staying put and sending her boys to the very schools we went to. After years in Colchester and Germany with the forces, Simon and his family were drawn back to Northampton too. There’s something poetic and circle-of-life about that. I have no contempt for people who choose not to leave. Northampton’s development was all about welcoming people in, not driving them back down the M1 to clog the south-east back up again!
Northampton didn’t drive me away: it raised me, it shod me in Doc Martens, it took my virginity, and it prepared me for my own journey into space. That’s why I’m so keen to record my 19-year love affair with the place and ‘put it all in’, as Raymond Carver once wrote. As a home town, it was big enough to get lost in and small enough to have a local rock scene. Urban enough to have jobs and rural enough to have country pubs. Conservative enough to have engendered a modest goth community in the Eighties and tolerant enough to let us occupy the bar of the Berni Inn with our big hair. Even the ugly place names stir my bones: Lumbertubs, Lings, Jimmy’s End, Moulton Park, Billing, Ecton, Harpole, Weedon, Brackmills. 8 I still love everything about this place.
This happy childhood I keep fretting about – Northampton did that.
And you are my duck.
1. Published in serial form in 1990 by Mad Love, a local publisher who acknowledge the assistance of Northampton Borough Council, Northampton Transit and the Northamptonshire Police at the back of issue #1. Although drawn by American artist Bill Sienkeiwicz, he’s clearly worked from photographs of Northampton locations such as the railway station and what could be the Black Lion pub where our band played so often. It’s a stunning piece of work by the way.
2. Given to my dad as a prize by Northampton Grammar School in 1953.
3. Given to me in the form of a seven-inch single as
Being from Northampton is good if you want to start a new life. Like so many artificially expanded new towns, it does a nice line in blank canvasses.
The Northampton accent may be regarded as something of a handicap out there in the sophisticated world, but it doesn’t quite carry the stigma of a Birmingham or a West Country. It’s nothing like as recognisable for a start. The Northampton accent is – whaddya know! – a sort of cross between half a dozen others: a heavy dose of West Midlands, a dash of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, and the cretinous-sounding twang of the country. In 1933, an editorial in the local paper complained, ‘In Northampton we suffer, largely, from a lazy lower jaw which drops in the pronunciation of vowels and does not rise to clear-cut rendering of consonants.’ People in Northampton, especially the older generation, pronounce ‘going down town’ as
gooing dane tane
, and ‘our old car’ would come out as
air uld cah
. I would be referred to by my grandparents as
air
Andrew. Yes is
yis
and yet is
yit
, and ‘this afternoon’ is streamlined to
sartnoon
. They might also call you
m’duck
as a term of endearment. You are their duck.
The first thing I did when I got to London was work on a London accent. I didn’t want to be exclaiming
God blarmey!
all my life.
My wife, who was born in London, calls me northern, but when your home town is only 60 miles by road or rail, it hardly feels like dark, satanic mills and black pudding. As far as I’m concerned, Northampton is up the road. And that simple proximity was, I’m sure, a calming influence on my college years as I adjusted to life away from everything I knew. Like being a student with stabilisers.
There’s something primal and necessary about leaving your home town, even if only for a spell like my mum and dad. Having said that, I totally respect Melissa for staying put and sending her boys to the very schools we went to. After years in Colchester and Germany with the forces, Simon and his family were drawn back to Northampton too. There’s something poetic and circle-of-life about that. I have no contempt for people who choose not to leave. Northampton’s development was all about welcoming people in, not driving them back down the M1 to clog the south-east back up again!
Northampton didn’t drive me away: it raised me, it shod me in Doc Martens, it took my virginity, and it prepared me for my own journey into space. That’s why I’m so keen to record my 19-year love affair with the place and ‘put it all in’, as Raymond Carver once wrote. As a home town, it was big enough to get lost in and small enough to have a local rock scene. Urban enough to have jobs and rural enough to have country pubs. Conservative enough to have engendered a modest goth community in the Eighties and tolerant enough to let us occupy the bar of the Berni Inn with our big hair. Even the ugly place names stir my bones: Lumbertubs, Lings, Jimmy’s End, Moulton Park, Billing, Ecton, Harpole, Weedon, Brackmills. 8 I still love everything about this place.
This happy childhood I keep fretting about – Northampton did that.
And you are my duck.
1. Published in serial form in 1990 by Mad Love, a local publisher who acknowledge the assistance of Northampton Borough Council, Northampton Transit and the Northamptonshire Police at the back of issue #1. Although drawn by American artist Bill Sienkeiwicz, he’s clearly worked from photographs of Northampton locations such as the railway station and what could be the Black Lion pub where our band played so often. It’s a stunning piece of work by the way.
2. Given to my dad as a prize by Northampton Grammar School in 1953.
3. Given to me in the form of a seven-inch single as
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