It depends on where you are in the UK. If you are in London then North is north of Watford Gap (i.e. Midlands northwards.) If you are in the Midlands then North is Yorkshire and Lancashire. Then it switches. Yorkshire and Lancashire people think they are in the North. On the other hand, people in Newcastle, Durham and the Lake District think they are the North, and Yorkshire and Lancashire are South. The Scots take no notice - they know that only they are the North.
Reminds me of a favourite piece of dialogue from The Professionals when a villain explains that the even worse villains are from "the North".
"Where?" Cowley demands. "Norway? Sweden?"
To which the response is, "Not North Pole North, North of England North!"
True, there is some degree of perspective involved in what classes as 'the north'. I'm from Yorkshire, and I have endless arguments on this subject with a friend from Newcastle.
The Midlands is the slightly woolly area in the middle that no-one can agree in whether it's the south or the north, and Midlanders usually respond to this question with, "neither!" (I now live in the Midlands, and this is the usual outcome of me calling them southerners.)
The area around the England/Scotland border is called, sensibly enough, the Borders. 'Marches' is a Norman version of Anglo-Saxon mark, meaning border. No idea why which gets what, though.
More seriously, the BBC once did a survey asking people if they thought they were in the North, alternatively, and where they thought the North was. If you took the first line - the "Are you a Northerner?" one, it ran through Burton-on-Trent, which is pretty reasonable. On the other hand, if you took other people's perception of where the North was, my home town of Sheffield was not in the North, and there was dispute over Liverpool!
Reminds me of a favourite piece of dialogue from The Professionals when a villain explains that the even worse villains are from "the North".
"Where?" Cowley demands. "Norway? Sweden?"
To which the response is, "Not North Pole North, North of England North!"
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The Midlands is the slightly woolly area in the middle that no-one can agree in whether it's the south or the north, and Midlanders usually respond to this question with, "neither!" (I now live in the Midlands, and this is the usual outcome of me calling them southerners.)
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(and what's it called where the Marches meet the Midlands?)
sorry for such questions.
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The Marches aren't between England and Wales, it's just a term for an area that consists of bits of both.
Which all sounds horribly negative for what are reasonable questions, sorry!
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thank you.
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More seriously, the BBC once did a survey asking people if they thought they were in the North, alternatively, and where they thought the North was. If you took the first line - the "Are you a Northerner?" one, it ran through Burton-on-Trent, which is pretty reasonable. On the other hand, if you took other people's perception of where the North was, my home town of Sheffield was not in the North, and there was dispute over Liverpool!
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