Sort of on accents
I've never felt any attachment to my home city, perhaps partly because I never picked up the accent when I was younger. I've had people call me 'posh' for having no accent, but mostly people don't believe me when I tell them I'm born and bred Sunderland, going back generations. How can someone feel like part of the city when other people from it tell you that you can't be from there? I hate it here, mostly want to go to university just to get the hell away from here, and would like to firebomb it from a safe distance.

However.

In the last couple of years, I've started travelling around the country more, just to get out, and making friends (mostly in Leeds, as it happens, but that's by the by). Most of the time, they can't work out where I'm from either, so it's not just here. But once I've told them, if they call me a Geordie...oh, there will be blood. No. NO. I am a Mackem, and don't you fuckin' forget it.

So even though I don't feel, and have never felt, part of the city, I will fiercely defend my supposed identity to outsiders. Strange, really.
(and now for someone completely different, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 7:09, 7 replies)

Im the same
with Coventry. Dont have an accent, dont live there anymore, will fight someone if they slag the city off. Weird but true.
( SpankyHanky, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 8:05, closed)

ahem
The only place I have ever been to that is worse than Coventry is Luton.

Maybe Willingham as well, and Soham.


but they are pissy little villages and don't count.
(Halfy By light alone, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 11:57, closed)

I'm the same
with Manchester. Which is better than London. Fact.

Coventry though! Ha! Nice one.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 10:40, closed)

Sand Dancer
:)
(Halfy By light alone, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 11:56, closed)

This rings home for me too..
Seeing as Dudley is certainly not Birmingham, and coming from there does not make me a Brummie, no matter how many cockney cunts try to tell me I am.

Clicky for you my good sir.
(syz, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 15:00, closed)

Whenever
I'm outside the hole that is Wakefield, it becomes the most glorious city in this otherwise inferior country, and I am inexplicably proud of hailing from the place.

Soon as I get back, it becomes a shit-hole that I can't wait to escape. Same with loads of things though.
(slotbadger, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 8:36, closed)

Fellow Mackem!
But I work in The City Which Shall Not Be Named so in my defence I say that I am proud of being a mackem just to annoy the skunks.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Wed 21 Jan 2009, 15:47, closed)