One of the great surprises to me upon moving north was discovering the extent to which it felt like another country. Partly it was from the look and feel of the north – the high, open moors and big skies, the wandering drystone walls, the grimy mill towns, the snug stone villages of the Dales and Lakes – and partly, of course, it was to do with the accents, the different words, the refreshing if sometimes startling frankness of speech. Partly it was also to do with the way southerners and northerners were so extraordinarily, sometimes defiantly, ignorant of the geography of the other end of
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