The Babylon Lane Tales - Filed under 'yorkshire'

reasons i heart yorkshire #273:

It's a brisk Sunday morning in Heptonstall; a small Yorkshire village of Hovis advert cobbles and Sylvia Plath grave fame. Sir Roger enters the post-office, he has the glint of the nicotine deprived in his eye and the wobble of a Saturday night enjoyed in his step.

"I'll have twenty marlboro lights, please."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I can't serve you."

"What?"

"I'm sorry. I'm underage and I'm not allowed to sell them to you."

"You're underage? WHAT?"

"Yes, that's right. I'm not 16 so I can't sell you them, but if you come back tomorrow when Tony's working you can buy them then."

You cannot ever beat small town Yorkshire logic. They've got their finger on the pulse of addiction. Perfect.

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20 October 2011
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god's own county, innit.

I'm a child of the army. I struggle to feel that I belong anywhere. I don't have a hometown - a place where I, my family and childhood friends are from - where I can lay my hat and seek solace in familiarity. In the absence of this, I always seek asylum in Scarborough.

I feel complete when in Scarborough. Perhaps it's the reassuring clinch of the morning sea frets or the crispness of the medicinal sea air. (Though these didn't do much good for poor Anne Bronte, who was sent to Scarborough to recover her health and dropped dead on the site of the Grand Hotel.)

More likely it's part Yorkshire DNA, a pinch of acquired nostalgia and a whole lot of love for this magnificent and, somewhat faded, regency town.

I didn't spend much time in Scarborough as a child, but I listened for hours to my mother's tales of knickerbocker glories, the donkey bridge and being buried up to the neck by her two boisterous brothers.

I've flicked through the family albums so often that their memories are mine. I blink and I feel my teenage gran's hand happily in mine, as she sashays her smart nipped-in waist down the prom, holding her hat on with daintily gloved hand; I smell the bristly tweed and tobacco of my great-granddad's three piece suit, as I nestle my face on his shoulder to protect it from the harsh North Sea breeze; I hear the squabbling and laughter of four children in matching, home-knit, itchy jumpers, as they drop crab lines off the harbour wall. Scarborough is my inheritance and it is the heirloom that I ritually share with my child.

Scarborough gives in spades. You don't believe me, do you? Here's what you're missing:

1) The Sea. The Sea.

You may think it's a given that you see the sea at the seaside. Well you'd be wrong. I live within spitting distance of many of the North-west's seaside resorts (Blackpool, Southport, Morecombe). "I bet I see the sea first" is a game of inevitable failure, as you all ugly squint and confusedly point at the distant horizon, hoping that the murky grey line, covered with cloud is water. To prove it's the sea, you set off determinedly, walking two miles with bucket in hand, to drearily dangle your toes in the jelly-fished water. (Don't even get me started on Grange over Sands/GRASS).

The sea in Yorkshire is proper sea. When the tide is out you can still touch it, feel it, smell it. It's noisy and wild, forcing you and your possessions to dance the slow, seaside shuffle, as it steals the beach from beneath you.

In Scarborough it's worth spending the day building elaborate sand castles, because you know the sea will come in and satisfyingly fill your zig-zag maze of moats and tunnels. (In Southport you would be too exhausted from the hike to the shore or to daunted by the prospect of digging a stream for a mile to even begin.)

Scarborough gives good sea.

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