london essex................ real essex......... all just a bunch of shandy drinkers either way

As we are in Portugal, I prefer the term Panaché drinkers - it hints at the Class of Essex

But you do have a point, up in Danelaw you certainly know how to drink, and, since my mum's family is from from Nottingham, I have ventured far enough Up North to understand why you poor souls would want to dull the pain by keeping permanently drunk

mmmmmmm ..... the 'class of essex' ............ up north, chicken nuggets and chips £3.50 down south - pomme frites and chicken goujons £8.50 flat beer with no head on it and chippies that dont do beans or peas or gravy, and the chipshop owner called me a foreigner for the strange menu requests....... he was a greek.

joking aside the stepson lives in Winchester, never a ruder more self-privilidged place could you ever visit............... and whatever you do, never speak to a stranger on the train, the bus or at the bar.........we started off here in the algarve and eventually over a few years found ourselves migrating to be northerners again, much friendlier.

Nottingham is a bit grim granted, there is the nice part of the centre 'the park' and to give you an idea of how much they dont want the riff-raff driving through it, the streets have barriers that lift with some sort of access card (I did some work there once and couldnt get in due to the barriers, had to park up, then walk to the customers house to get him to let my van under the barrier) the rest of the city is a s**thole, until you get to the suburbs then it can be quite nice as long as you are far enough away from sneinton and the meadows.........oh and hyson green.....oh and top valley........... and sherwood, and possibly bulwell.............apart from that just think yourself lucky that you only got stabbed there and not shot............ ergo we live in Portugal

Winchester! When I moved to the South Coast I found it really snobby and cold and closed, and I know Winchester ....
Remember, Essex and e East Anglia were Danelaw too, we are Southern Northerners p'raps?
I felt right at home with the Aus humour when I spent a year there in 1990 - probably since most of them could trace their ancestry back to Essex? (Blackened faces on the Essex Highways etc)

But I am from the nice end of Essex (where we pretend we are from good Suffolk Breeding Stock)
Although Clackers isnt that nice any more (actually its downright scary) and Frinton has always been so far up its own bottom it is in imminent danger of disappearing
And various Nimby De La Lá type places spotted around too

Only just seen this thread, it made me smile and think of when my dad moved our family oop north back in 77.

On our arrival at our new house my mum, a fish and chip fanatic, told me to get on my push bike and find a chip shop for our tea. She knew exactly what she liked and I knew her preferences off by heart. The chip shop I found was packed being teatime and the first thing I noticed was a group of kids outside with their chips on a tray, not newspaper and what looked like gravy on them, made me feel queasy!

My turn to be served came up and I asked for plaice and chips for my mum, the owner told me they had none. Haddock then, nope. Rock Nope. I then tried skate and the owner said look son, its cod, cod or cod which was always my mums last choice. Ok I'll have cod please. Anything else? Yes please, can I have saveloy and chips twice which was mine and my dads favourite and with that he leaned over the counter, grabbed me by the collar and threatened to throw me through the window for taking the piss! You can have sausage, sausage or sausage. I was too scared to ask for my sisters order!

I got home, threw the bag of food at my mum, said never again and I am asking my nan if I can go back to London and live with her and grandad, northerners are nutters and they put gravy on their chips!

Love it!
Has Nottingham always been the dump it is now?
I remember going up there to see family as a kid in the 70's and it didnt seem like it to me
I do remember being absolutely amazed at the size of and things at of Goose Fair tho!

Anyway, this was supposed to be an anti-foreigner thread, and despite all of your failings and lack of class, you northerners are still 'Us'

Perhaps we should get onto Londoners, they are the worst ones around my way, Either Posh Yachties or 'the Romford Navy' on their No-Neck Jet Skis (luckily Darwinism is thinning those huge-engined PWC no-idea idiots out)
Same thing in most countries, Anti-Capitalism (Anti Capital City)
Not many non-Parisian Froggies love a Parisian in my experience
Certainly Lisobetas have an image as being vain, entitled, convencidos
There's also a South-North Divide here too, similar to ours, but not identical, and they also have the Mouros (not the fairies, the Moors) down in the Algarve, and their Zummerset-ish Alentjanos

There are loads of 'Others', but none as Other as Estrangeiros

Of course, to us British Expats all these foreign lands are full of foreigners anyway

I love the fact that we British are Mongrels - waves of historical invasions and then immigration, that's what makes us so rich.

Now I go home and see Union Jacks hung from the lamposts
And then I come back home and see Adolf Ventura's posters

At least I will be dead in a few decades or less

ayup................. Nottingham being a dump - not always no, its a bit like most ex-industrial northern city/towns once the skilled jobs go abroad or simply close down as in the coal mines then its a rapid downward spiral, yeah the jobs have been replaced but nearly all of them minimum wage jobs, sports direct at Shirebrook is a perfect example, the damage that has done is imeasurable, little Poland it is known as, the problem is the youngters cannot remember all of the Poles that came to work in the pits when they where open, and they think its a new phenomenen, I have several mates in their late 50's early 60's now who have polish second names, proper grafters they where.

I have visited and stayed in most northern towns watching and playing rugby, proper rugby that uses real blood (if you arent a follower of rugby you might need to google that, leicester tigers I think it was) not the kick n clap, heave, rah rah variety........... anyway a lot of the places visited where proper edgy, rochdale, keithley, wyke, hull, guiseley, chorley ....my god chorley.....billinge (for the drizzle) etc, all of them the people where happy with their lot and comfy in their surroundings as they where used to em, the fact that we thought that most of em where s**tholes was lost on the locals as it was what they where bought up in......... or dragged up ........ any visitor to mansfield would say the same now, its a s**thole that used to have some pride and dignity.............much the same for my wife now driving through her old home town down south that she left nearly 40 years ago......unrecognisable.

And the chippy in Erith ran by the Greeks did something called 'rock' I said whats that ? and the owner didnt even know what it was ........... completely alien to me at the time, never heard of it ...... and wouldnt touch it with a barge pole. we had cod and haddock, and they usually passed the haddock off as cod as well, because it was cheaper to buy.

what people do not realise is the north was the workshop of the UK that generated the money, the mills, the mines, the potteries, the factories etc etc, not anymore, a bit like up here in Porto, the people up here say 'Porto generates the money and Lisbon spends it' that might be right it might be wrong I do not know enough, but that is the perception of people up here, rightly or wrongly, very proud people up here.

ahhhh........ the evolution of a thread eh

I too had never heard of "Rock" until I got sucked into London (despite trying to avoid it). Odd that here in the Alentejo the parts farthest from the coast serve "Sopa de cação", same fish, different recipe.

Few people going to Bath today would know of Stothert & Pitt, who built dock cranes for use worldwide (and also built the "Iron Fairy" road cranes) . Few would know of the underground factories built in the Bath Stone quarries and the many light engineering companies that employed so many - now it's all "Georgian City" and Romans.... Nothing stays the same.

Few people visiting Limerick would know of the five big bacon factories that existed back in the day, before the University and its discovery by the Brazilians. King John's Castle was a tip back then and Garryowen was known for more than Rugby.

PS the expression "Lisbon plays, Braga prays, but Porto works" is the old truism...
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HUGE generalisation, but ....
'Northerners seem cold until you get to know them. Southerners seem friendly until you get to know them.'
Quote from a German, but can be applied to other countries and Europe perhaps?

Fits most seaside towns too, where people used to go until they went to Spain and Portugal
Clacton is a prime example, and includes the most deprived place in UK (Jaywick)

Fun Fact: Driest place (YMMV but very close to if not) in UK is a few villages away from my home, and has half the annual rainfall of Lisbon

Errr, has Nottingham moved or have they renamed a town that is actually in the North, such as Leeds or Doncaster? Nottingham, the one that we used to go to when we were young, free, single and penniless, has always been in the Midlands. It had the reputation of having twice as many girls as boys so we used to go there in the hope of finding romance, but from memory I don't think any of us ever pulled. I was born and grew up in a village in rural Northamptonshire - the county of spires and squires. We're very posh... well, some of them are. Life was good and simple then, we had a butcher, baker, post office and two coppers. No chippie so a van came round on Wednesday nights and we would queue up to get cod and chips. Wife was conceived in Hong Kong, born in Sandbach (the one in the actual north) and grew up in rural Devon. After she begged me to go out with her (sort of) we decided to go to a chippie on a cold and wet day (in summer), and when I uttered the word "cod" she nearly choked on her tongue! Cod? What on earth are you on about man? she said. You need 'addock. My bit of rural Northants was changed forever when some bright spark with a trowel and mineral list found iron ore. Time for the Industrial Revolution to visit the county, and the sleepy village of Corby was chosen as the site for the new steel works. With so many good men lost to the war they were desperate for workers, and so the net went far and wide and pretty much stopped at Glasgow (also in the actual north). Half of the male population of Glasgow actually walked all the way to Corby to work in what was then known as Stewarts and Lloyds steel works and later became part of something called British Steel (from when it lost money at an alarming rate. How strange), having been nationalised by Harold Wilson or someone of his ilk. Sadly, my village was in the Corby catchment for secondary school education and so having miserably failed the 11-Plus I used to board the school bus to Corby and back five days a week. By this stage the whole town seemed to be infested (sorry, populated) with Glaswegians and unsurprisingly the town's accent was also Glaswegian (in the middle of rural Northamptonshire) . Us posh-speaking (almost) village boys were looked down on and thought of as straw chewing oafs and country bumpkins and so the bullying was awful as by then gang culture had also spread south. I was out of there at the first opportunity and never looked back. I hated it. The best thing I did was to start travelling. What an interesting world we live in. In truth we stayed in Hong Kong for too long (30 years for me and 35 for wife) and we should have pulled the pin and come to Portugal 10 years ago or more. I did a year in Arizona before I met said wife and always planned to go back, as I loved in there. Seeing what's happened to that country now I wouldn't go back for a gold pig. I'm more than happy in lovely Lagos. Now resident wife loves the fish here too (horse mackerel in particular). She still refuses to eat cod...

Well done!
Have a House Point
I was wondering when someone would take the 'Nottingham is Up North as far as a Sissy Southerner is concerned' bait

northants.........cobblers !!................ joseph cheaney my favourites actually, not bad for an uncultured northern-ish oik and if cheaneys say you are a 10 and a 1/2 then you are a 10 and 1/2 ..........nevermind anybody elses measurements.

owt north of watford is up north ..........ok

we used to travel back from wembley after the challenge cup final and there was nowt more warming and welcoming than the sign on the M1 that said 'the north' with an arrow pointing upwards, obviously it would be upwards and not downwards due to the fact that you where going 'up' in the world..............hence owt north of watford being the north....... it starts after that sign on the M1

Corby........... bloody awful place ....brutalist concrete architecture and sectarian rascism ............. what a heady mistura

My oldest football-related memory,.......We lived in southern Shropshire at the time. I used to play football against the boy from down the road, me 6, him 7. He supported West Brom, and I said to Dad that I had to have a team too
Dad said to me, "There are only two big teams in THE MIDLANDS these days - and if he is West Brom, you can be NOTTINGHAM FOREST."
Very definitely a Midlands team, and they still are!!

6, 7!!