The north/south divide. A take from the middle.

Every Northerner knows that the Southerners have all the money, and Southerner knows that The North and its inhabitants are covered in coal and dirt for twenty-four hours of every day. Right?

And if you're from the South, you're obviously from London and the surrounding area, and if you're from the North, then there's only one accent you can possibly have, and that's "northern". Correct? 

Not only are you rich and a Londoner, but if you're southern, you're a snob, and the North... Well, what can I say? It's just grey and rainy up there.

When it comes to stereotypes, Every one of you northerners and southerners has it easy. And here's why...

None of you is from the Midlands. Now don't get me wrong, I'm inherently proud of such a thing, but any of you who aren’t Midlanders fit so nicely into one category that at least when you meet one of "the others", you know the response you're going to get. I can never be quite so sure when I have a conversation following this kind of pattern:

"Hello, I'm Imogen."
"Imogen, [that's a nice name,] where are you from?"
"Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands."

Cue these next possible responses: "Oh, so you're from the North!", "Oh, so you're from the South!", "Oh, so you're a Brummie!”

None of these is correct or satisfactory; all of these have been heard. For a start, the clue is in the title – Midlands. Middle of the land. The West bit just means I’m in the western part of those middle lands. Birmingham is a good forty-five minute drive away on a good day, and the accents are quite stark in their differences – come and visit me, I’ll show you around and prove this to you. It’s also fairly common for somebody to tell me that Wolverhampton is “north of the Watford Gap, so therefore you’re northern”. Except to say that most people who suggest this are rather ignorant and do not know the word ‘therefore’, so take it that I’m generalising somewhat.

It’s a pity that the Midlands have such a bleak reputation: where I live, it’s twenty minutes maximum into Shropshire and so you’re never far from countryside. Even my little suburb itself is not the absolute pits. Also, the area (which is also known as the Black Country, and not for a race reason, or because it’s dirty) kick-started the Industrial Revolution. Lots of it isn’t pretty but without it, the entire rest of the country wouldn’t be where it is today. I don’t think that enough people recognise that.

I do wonder if perhaps we should tone down the use of our stereotypes. With a father from Durham, a mother from (and my lifetime spent in) the Midlands, and a year in a southern university (with regards to attitude, it feels like the most southern university you could get), I’m starting to feel a little mixed up here. Yes, some of the stereotypes are true, some of them are not, but often enough we don’t look past them and see the truth. A recent trip to a friend in Leeds with some people from university, mostly from the South of England, another from Herefordshire which is arguably the South, proved that actually Yorkshire is beautiful, and not just full of coal and dirt, whether they had already realised or not. This is not to say that stereotypes can’t be funny – my brother puts on a generalised northern accent all the time to talk about coal – but maybe we should reconsider how heavily we rely on them and actually take some time to look, learn and appreciate.

And of course, having come to its defence once, I’d like to mention that like every city, my city has its rough parts, but Wolverhampton is definitely not the fifth worst city in the world. Have you seen Tripoli lately?

Oh and you may notice some stereotypes in this article…