Well, when I do write ups of my various outings I try to give them a title that's borrowed from a book or a film or something similar. Hence 'Long day's journey into night', 'To the ends of the earth' and so on. 'It's grim up north' was a song in the early 90s by the JAMs, but of course the phrase had been knocking around for ages before that. The idea was promoted in a piece of travel writing by J B Priestly in the 1930s ('English Journey') who described the Newcastle area with particular misery. Well, it would be - the great depression and all that. The north looks very different now of course - much more gentrified, and rife with hanging baskets and gastro-pubs. When I was younger, I remember my parents, who were native Geordies, were astonished at what the place looked like. When they were young in the 1930s all the buildings were black. Once they'd been cleaned, the yellow or red local stone was exposed, or the colour of the brickwork, and it looked like a totally different place.
Yes Mr Rogers, I'll come over to the east of England one day.
