Published at 10:12, Tuesday, 27 January 2009

North and south Cumbria are two distinct places. Once you get over Dunmail, even the accents sound different. To my ears the locals speak Lancashire

I went to Ulverston the other day. Took my passport of course, foreign phrase book, plenty of Factor 15, pocketful of Euros, just in case. Didn’t want to get stuck in some strange foreign field not knowing where I was, how things work. It’s not really a joke. I have always felt it is the Deep South, once you get over Dunmail Raise, where they do things different. I suppose people from the Mediterranean, ie around Windermere, or Kendal, which to me is practically North Africa, do think they have reached the Arctic wastes when they travel north and get over Dunmail. North Cumbria and south Cumbria are two distinct places, despite being one large county since l974. Yes, I know that historically they were separate, that the new mega-county took over Westmorland and large chunks of Lancashire, but even so, it always surprises me that once you get over Dunmail, even the accents sound different. To my ears, the locals are speaking Lancashire, not Cumbrian. I have to repeat things, say them slowly, sometimes use sign language. I suppose they think we north Cumbrians are speaking Scottish, or perhaps Geordie, anyway some funny northern lingo they can’t quite follow. The actual landscape is also different. Once you reach Grasmere, it always seems more colourful, rounded, smooth, lush, and the houses appear more twee, more affluent. Geological differences do, of course, make the hills a different shape, and produce different contours and colours – but that happens all over Cumbria as geologically we have one of the most varied counties in all England. Until I was 21, I hadn’t been further south from Carlisle than Penrith. Seemed so exotic, all those red buildings. Actually, that’s a fib. At the age of 15, I did go on a trip with the Creighton School to France. Can’t remember much about it, except I had terrible asthma. But that was the only time I’d been abroad, or on a plane, till my honeymoon aged 22 when we went to Sardinia. And what I mainly remember about my honeymoon was a boil on my bum. My own dear children, by the time they were 10, had been everywhere except orbit. I did spoil them and we were living in different times when going to Spain on a package hol had become cheaper than a week at Silloth. Setting off from Loweswater for Ulverston did seem a bit of an adventure – and I even took my mobile phone. That is a real sign that I’m off into the unknown. I only use it about once a year and even then, I can never work it. I don’t know how to get out messages. I put in £25-worth of calls five years ago, and there’s still £19.55 left. I take it on the theory that if the car breaks down, I’ll be able to get help from err, I dunno, people. Luckily it hasn’t happened yet. I thought I’d go the west coast route rather than traipse down the middle and get stuck with all the honeypot-seeking tourists crawling along the A591. Then I remembered I hate that west coast road. It seems to go on for ever, takes much longer than you think when looking at the map. And looking at the map, you get tempted to take shortcuts which lead you up dead-end tracks and over wild fells which means you have to come back again. Somehow I missed the turning to Broughton, as the road was up, and found myself in I didn’t know where. Turned out to be Millom. Hadn’t been there for must be 30 years since I went to interview Norman Nicholson. They always say what a brilliant poet, which he was, but I preferred his non-fiction books about Cumbria. I parked and walked around Millom, peering as if I’d landed on the moon. I know nobody here, and nobody knows me. No one will come up and say “Sat beside you at Stanwix school” or “I played with you in the Carlisle Grammar School second XV”, or “I used to go out with your Annabell”. When that happens in Carlisle, I stare into faces, wipe the years away and say “Yes, of course, how are you doing?”. In Millom, I was a total stranger, with no connections. If I collapse and get taken to hospital, my wife will think what the hell was he doing in Millom anyway. Didn’t he set off to go to Ulverston? I wondered if Millom would be a good place to hide if I ever do a bank robbery or run off with a 23-year-old Polish waitress like the one in the Harry Enfield sketch. No one would think of searching Millom for someone on the run. Or Whitehaven or was it Workington, like that bloke from the north east who faked his own death in a canoe. Before he hit Panama, he had started a new life in Whitehaven, or was it Workington. He probably didn’t know the difference… Ulverston is terrific – such an attractive, bustling, real, self-contained, self-confident little town. I say real to differentiate it from Hawkshead which is just as pretty but always strikes me as unreal, like a stage setting. Ulverston’s Coronation Hall, where I was giving a little talk to help the local bookshop, is so big and grand. Wish we had such a building in Cockermouth – or even Carlisle, which has no public building like that, not since they knocked down HM Theatre. I could live here, I thought, no bother. But then I’m always thinking that. Last time I thought that I was in Venice. I explored the streets and shops and had a great day out. But there was no sign of a language school. I’ll need that, if I’m ever going to learn to talk Lancashire...

Published by http://www.cumbrialife.co.uk