The North-South Divide

I read in the paper about a North-South divide in house prices. The divide is not new, but over time it takes different forms. I grew up in a North-South divide household in a London suburb. My father was a displaced, domino-playing Yorkshireman. My mother was a committed southerner, and hated it when we traveled too far north. She associated the North with grime and poverty. I loved the trips to Bradford when I visited my grandparents because it was a completely different world, one where I struggled to understand what people were saying; a world which provided a sharp contrast, visually, with my modern, suburban surroundings.

PARADISE LOST

Down at the bottom of the Northern Line

Is a thirties estate where the weather is fine.

Dad gets the tube at seven thirty

And Mum stays at home so that nothing gets dirty.

Mock Tudor houses have lawns and wooden fences

The streets are lined with blossom trees, the parks have bins and benches.

The gutter sparrows cheep all day, the ash cans clash and crunch

The rag and bone man’s carthorse has a nose bag for his lunch.

Out of school I roam the park, would we see the flasher?

And splodge along the River Wandle looking for some treasure.

I know I live in paradise, I’ve been up North you see

Where everything is black with soot, and you go outside to pee.

My sister, tall and grown up, she says we live in Mordor

And eating greens at Sunday lunch is a form of torture.

There’s a scene, I go upstairs, the box room of the house

And listen to the radio with Georgy Girl, my mouse.

My sister has a boyfriend, disapproved by mother,

They only go out to the stock cars if she takes her brother.

I have to go to keep the peace, I sit all quiet and squirm

But secretly it is good fun to watch them crash and burn.

She wants to leave, she hates this place, she calls me ‘ugly toad’.

I want to marry Zena Marsh and live just down the road.

My sister lived in Mordor whilst I lived in heaven.

Sister dear was sweet sixteen and I was just eleven.