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Where are you from originally and what was it like?

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I am interested, my childhood story (or part of it) in the comments)

1

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  1. I am from a South Wales valleys steel town called Ebbw Vale, however I was born in nearby Tredegar (like Aneurin Bevan), my dad was born in Ebbw Vale (he was one of ten), my mother (an only child) was from Yorkshire, they met on vacation in Austria and she only moved there when they they got married, I never really thought about it at the time, but it was probably very difficult for her to move into such a closely knit community with an English accent. I think in the end she thrived though. Both my grandfathers died very young (long time before I was born), my mother’s mother lived with us and the other grandmother lived in the town. I have one younger brother, he lives now in West Yorkshire.

    At one point the steel works employed 11,000 people, this in a town which at that time had a population of about 26,000, in the 1930s it was the biggest steel mill in Europe. Everybody you knew either worked there or had a family member working there (a few also worked in the nearby coal mine). Things were already starting to get worse in the 70s even pre-Thatcher but after that it gradually dwindled and closed completely in 2001. The buildings ran right across the bottom of the valley, the site was more than a mile long. Our house was very central and looked over the works, actually it was a real eyesore and I think the orange smoke often drifting over the town may have contributed to high rates of illness and a lot of early deaths (mostly men who worked there). The whole site was cleared over several years and the town is now much prettier, they have built a college, a school, a hospital in place and a railway station, one of two serving the town after train services are reinstated after a 45 year gap.

    I think it was generally a good town to grow up in, a fairly hard drinking, violent place but with a good working class community spirit, Now it is one of the most impoverished areas in the UK, which brings many related problems like alcoholism, drug use and depression. Otherwise we had a good rugby team which remains the case today, they are currently 15 points clear at the top of the Super Rygbi Cymru Table, went to my first game in 1969 so a fan for 57 years (often from a distance). There were a ridiculous number of pubs, nearly all gone now, replaced by the ubiquitous Wetherspoons. Same goes foe cinema, at one point there were 4 or 5 now none in the town, in fact the last one closed late 70s probably, I remmeber going to Saturday morning matinees and I also saw Jaws there.

    We lived at the end of a fairly long street that ran parallel with the town’s main drag, I could walk everywhere. At our end of the street there were 8 houses, we were in a block of 5 terraced ones, with 3 semi-detached and detached properties on the other side of the road. Most of my friends were in these 8 houses, my best friend lived in a nice bungalow opposite with nice gardens, we played there and there was also a short cut through his garden to the local playground with swings etc and a decent sized pitch where we played football, rugby or cricket about 250 days a year. His father died suddenly I guess when we were around 13 or 14, and they moved to Abergavenny. In one of the semi-detached houses there were twins who were 2 years older than me. They were always squabbling, but I became more friendly with them at this point. Next door to them was a house where 3 respected bachelors lived with their aging mother who was a widow. At some point she passed away, and I heard from the twins that they had a projector and used to watch pornographic movies together in their front room. Bizarre!

    In the house next door to me there lived an hard drinking man with his family, one son, he was older but we hung out with him quite a bit. There was something different about him, thinking about it now I wonder if he was physically abused. I did feel sorry for his mother as I would often be awoken in the small hours when he came home drunk and things would kick off apparently violently. Another neighbour 2 doors away was a local politician and once famously had Michael Foot (our MP) and Brian Clough in his house!

    But even darker, the town shops behind our street had flats above them, they had gardens at the back that connected to our street. In one of these flats lived a very respected “elderly” couple, hard to know now how old they actually were, guessing in their late 50s or early 60s. Everybody liked Mr T (not that one), a lovely friendly chap. When the twins were about 16 he started taking them for rides in his car into the nearby countryside, nobody thought this was strange at all, he was such a nice guy. One of the twins told me that on at least one of these trips he had been sexually assaulted. I was 14 and I couldn’t really comprehend what he was telling me. I feel terrible looking back on this that I didn’t say anything, but nobody ever did say anything.

    I left at 18 for university and never lived full time there again, these days hardly anybody I know lives there, but I will continue to visit when I can, at least to visit my mother and father’s graves. I don’t think anybody else does.

  2. Glasgow for me. My first address was in Partick, on the street adjoining the one where Billy Connolly spent his early life some years before. At the time I think it was regarded as a downmarket neighbourhood though I’m told that these days it’s one of the most desirable addresses in the west end. When I was between 2 and 3, so early enough that I only have a few vague memories of the first flat, the family moved a mile or so west to Broomhill. Just before my twelfth birthday we moved further, to north Wales, but I still regard myself as Scottish. I can’t say I ever took to Wales and have been there a very few times since I escaped at 18.

  3. Suburban London for me, pretty much equidistant between the Uxbridge and Watford branches of the Metropolitan Line. North Harrow and Rayners Lane* were the stations but I could also get to West Harrow across the allotments behind the house. My dad was from Ladbroke Grove and my mum from Leigh on Sea, near Southend. I moved a couple of miles nearer central Harrow when I was 21 then to Wealdstone, both shared places, then to Bletchley near Milton Keynes for about 3 years.
    Redundancy and a move near Godalming followed. I lived around there for 10 years and met my wife, finally going south to Worthing, where we’ve been since 2002.

    *Mornington Crescent!

  4. Reading – the Berkshire town 40 miles out of London with aspirations of importance- not helped by multiple local authorities around it’s boundaries fighting for supremacy, and no-one really winning.
    4 times it’s applied to be a City, and 4 times it has failed.
    But we’re not taking it lying down – at least one of the bus routes, and at least one road sign say “City Centre”.
    About to apply for City Of Culture 2029 – good luck with that. We have The Abbey, the Prison (once home to Oscar Wilde), and a Banksy.
    We also have a Ring Road running through the centre of town, and a theatre/music venue with terrible acoustics.

    Childhood in the Town just sort of happened – nothing to report really, was quite dull. Don’t recall much in the way of major events. The Queen came once to open Shire Hall.
    (probably some other events I’ve forgotten)

    Can’t be that bad … I’m still here, and have never lived more than 8 miles from the Hospital I was born in.

    • My second job was in Reading in the 80s. My image of it, insofar as I had one, was of a dull place where I’d spend three or four years and then move on. In the end Mrs BB and I stayed 17 years, and came to love it. It’s where we bought our first house and got married, it’s where our children were born, it’s where we spent our 30s. We have nothing but happy memories and a lot of affection for the place.

      • Yes, it is relatively dull, lacking identity, and governed by 4 bordering councils meaning no-one is ever sure where the borders are.
        But is is “sticky” – I’ve had the opportunity to move elsewhere, but on balance stayed put because despite my “oh woe is me” outlook of the place, it is “home”
        (and I’m too old to uproot myself to be honest).
        One bright point .. .at least it’s not Slough

          • My cousin went to Brunel university in Uxbridge, on the other side of Iver, and used to call Reading “the social armpit of the universe”. I don’t think he’d ever been to Slough.

              • Slough. I mean, fucking hell. The name. It means ‘a swamp’ or ‘ a lack of progress’.

                How in hell has that name endured? Slough. Even the word looks awful.

                I don’t mean to diss it. It could be as posh as Belgravia or as picturesque as Taormina but if either of those were called Slough you wouldn’t want to go

                • The word i associate with Slough is despond with it being the fictional bog in John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress.

                  I went there once some 40 something years ago seemed OK. Of course Sir John Betjeman didn’t think highly of it.

                • I worked there for a year and entirely concur with your assessment. What a dump. I went to see BB King when I was there and even he was crap.

                  I think everything I owned smelt of Mars Bars for months after I left.

                • My Mum was born there (Stoke Poges actually), and my Dad grew up there.
                  And all 4 Grandparents reside on plaques in the Cremotorium.
                  Mum & Dad (in the past) entertained ideas of moving back there in their dotage – but what stops them is their own phrase “well, it used to be alright”.
                  I have a friend who lives there (purely for economic, commuting to London purposes he assures me (and probably himself?).
                  Last time I spoke to him about the are his reply: “still dying on it’s arse, but ore than it ever has been”

      • Excitement for me when at school was sitting on the bus going down Shenfield Road into town and singing along to the Philip Bailey/ Phil Collins hit of the time – “It’s a Reading Rover. It’ll take you places like no other”

        We were crazy, back then. Radio 210, the Butts Centre. We had it all

        • I remember when the Butts was rebranded as Broad Street Mall. Understandable really, but it didn’t it make any less shit. Although the Our Price was a happy hunting ground for a while. I remember buying the White Album in there and the look of joy and relief on the face of the old hippy behind the counter made the purchase worthwhile on its own. He had clearly been selling what he deemed to be 80s shit all day, and finally someone was buying something worth his time to sell.

    • Never living more than 8 miles from your birthplace. When I was young I would have thought that was a pretty uninteresting way to get through life. Now I am not sure about that at all. I live 3000 miles from my hometown, sometimes that ain’t so great, especially when things go wrong in your life. In a parallel life I stay in the valleys all my life, would I have been happy to do that? I don’t know. I think as one gets older there is something of a yearning feeling to get back to where you came from.

      • As your launching post was about where we come from, dai, I chose to restrict myself to taking just about that, though I note others didn’t*.

        One of my oldest friends has never lived very far away from where he grew up, even to the extent of the university where we met being pretty much the closest to his birthplace. On visits to his home, I got a glimpse of what might have been had my family never left Worcestershire. He lived in a similarly rural part of the world, and he and his local friends had anecdotes aplenty of their teenage years going mildly wild in the lanes and fields and pubs of their countryside surroundings.

        That sense of what might have been was temporarily attractive. But I could also see the limitations and slightly claustrophobic nature of that growing environment – it appeared that everyone knew everything about everyone else, from the commonly-used nicknames to the stories that were told about each other. Going back there last year, I had the bittersweet sense of 50 years of ongoing interconnection between those who had lived their entire lives in each other’s pockets. I was welcomed back by several who remembered me from an earlier period in their lives, and it was enjoyable, for an evening, to catch up with some lovely people. But would I have liked to have experienced every one of those intervening 30+ years with them and only them as my regular companions?

        Though I’ve lived a very peripatetic life since the days of Salwarpe (Reading/Zürich, Brussels, Basingstoke, Southampton, India, Essex, Bradford, Philadelphia, East London, North London, Bonn), each of those places I lived in and the people I met had an impact, leaving residual memories that make me who I am.

        Now having lived in the same place for 22 years, with kids in double figures (who have always lived here, with their lifelong and developing friends and peer group around them), and with work colleagues from every continent and most countries (many of whom I’ve known for me then a decade, but with fresh faces appearing every month), I feel I’ve had the best of all worlds. I feel really settled in Bonn. I’ve been shopping at the same shops and stalls in town for 2 decades, and know so many people around town by first name or face.

        If I were to go back to Worcester or Droitwich now, the sense of alienation and separation would feel uncomfortable, I think. Some landmarks and features wouldn’t have changed – the churches and cathedral, the stations and some of the pubs and older buildings. But most of the rest, and all of the people would make me feel like I was in a parallel universe.

        For me, I make my home in the place where I am and the people I’m with, wherever and whoever that happens to be. Also, I’ve got all of you lot sitting in my pocket, if I want a travelling community with me.

        *Just an observation, not a criticism.

  5. When I was born, my family lived in Dublin City centre, walking distance from the Rotunda maternity hospital. I grew up in Ballymun, Ireland’s first high rise estate. It seemed an idyllic place in the 70s, central heating, infinite hot water, playgrounds and the English TV channels – all highly desirable things almost unknown in the rest of Ireland. Also it was all countryside, forest and farmland beyond with the exciting airport just a short cycle away. It was rough from the start and poorly balanced demographically with young families away from supportive relatives, rural families transported to a harsh urban environment. There was a lot of crime around it seemed and Republican terrorists on the run were known locally. Our relationship with kids on neighbouring blocks or housing estates veered from battles with sticks and stones to endless 20 a side football matches.

    By the 80s it had become a dumping ground for all of Ireland’s problems, drugs especially heroin, people with serious mental health problems released from institutions with no support and people the corporation or council wouldn’t house anywhere. We had heroin and joyriding before the rest of Ireland. People used to travel from far and wide to throw themselves off the blocks. It became notorious and dangerous. The death rate among my teenage peers was very high looking back. Unemployment reached 90% when I left school. The schools were very good and my class all came out well educated. Ballymun became a cliché of burnt out cars and kids bareback on horses. It features briefly in the Commitments but Roddy Doyle’s Family was filmed there. Another film Into the West starring Gabriel Byrne was filmed out the back of my block. Also Adam and Paul. They started to pull down the high rise blocks around 2000. I have a sister who still lives there but my parents moved away when our block was scheduled for demolition. I moved to London in 1987 and back to Dublin in 2000. Ballymun is the reason I “drifted”, into social work as my career.

  6. Sarfend-on-Sea. My father’s side of the family came from Essex farm labouring stock in and around Stanford-le-Hope; his mother was one of 18 children. My mother’s side was more exotic: Irish theatricals and sailors. We still have a pair of vases brought back from China by Captain Jeremiah Coghlan some time in the 1860s. He served on the ship that laid the first transatlantic cable in 1858. Family legend has it that a forebear killed William Rufus in the New Forest in 1100.

    No such excitement growing up in Southend. The main attraction was the Golden Mile and the pier – raffish and rackety and slot machine heaven. The laughing policeman was an early favourite; later it was a video machine that used authentic gun camera footage so you could pretend you were shooting down ME109s.

    And then there was music. The Paramounts at the Shades coffee bar featuring Gary Brooker and Robin Trower; Mickey Jupp and the Orioles at the Cricketers; the Whirlwinds and the Monotones from Canvey Island at the Elms, accompanied by loads of terrifying Teds (“oo you lookin’ at?”). Endless package tours at the Odeon.

    And of course London was only 40 miles away, and I moved there as soon as my salary as a publisher’s oik went up from £10 to £12 a week.

  8. I’m from Karori, a suburb of Wellington New Zealand. A rather dull, middle class place, trying to be a little bit of England. Only one Maori classmate in my entire 7 primary school years there.

    To paraphrase George Harrison “The Beatles saved the world from boredom”. Our vaguely hip neighbours had the Twist and Shout EP and the Hard Day’s Night LP. Changed everything. I have not been bored since.

  9. Born Halifax (not Nova Scotia) moved to Brighouse at ten days old. When my mother died two years later moved to Batley as seen in the film here.

    Bought a house which it turned out looked onto the street where my mother was born.
    Didn’t stray far from there until I was 70.

  10. Sheffield.

    Was born there but moved to South London (Worcester Park ?) between the ages of 2 and 8, before returning and was there until I went to Uni in Manchester (and my parents then moved to Edinburgh).

    Fond memories of Sheffield. We lived between Handsworth and Woodhouse (and apparently just around the corner from where Sean Bean was from). The infamous Orgreave coal works was nearby (I remember the miners strike battle as being where we used to go to Asda) but on a recent trip back that’s all gone and cleaned up. Still have some family in Sheffield – but at the posh side (just up the road from Joe Root !) and so still make it back every year or two.

  11. I was born in Worcester and spent my first 12 years living in a Georgian farmhouse in a small village between there and Droitwich called Salwarpe, (which could have been Ambridge, it was the right part of the world).

    It was a blessed, bucolic childhood and I have only happy memories of living there. Surrounded by fields and country lanes, there was a small stream at the bottom of the hill for playing Poohsticks and building dams in, and a railway line across the fields with countless blackberry bushes alongside it where we would go Seamus Heaneying every autumn, and behave naughtily like the Railway Children when there wasn’t a train coming. There was a BMX track on the other side of the village where we could ride out bikes up and down, and my best friend lived with his 3 hot older sisters in the next house in the village, some 10 minutes walk away. We built dens, constructed Lego spacecraft, played swingball in the garden, climbed trees and made massive straw bale castles with 10ft jumps in the barn on the farm next to his house. Then we would listen to his sisters’ classic rock records on the family record player, and his own NWOBHM cassettes inhis room.

    There were fruit orchards (apple, pear, plum) across the county to visit, as well as wildfowl and historic building museums and stately home adventure parks for birthday treats.

    Grandparents lived in East London where we would go for Christmas and get treated to trips into the West End and to see touristy parts. A great aunt lived in Corfe Castle, so we got to go to Famous Five world in the summer. Greatgrandparents on one side lived in a 17th century moated manor house in mid-Essex that used to be a palace of the Bishop of London.

    Then, when I was 12, I went to boarding school in Reading and my family moved to Zürich. We pretty much never went back to Worcestershire and after a few years of renting out the farmhouse, sold it and I lost all connections with that life and that world. If I went back now, almost everything about the house, the surroundings, the village would be different. I’d have to go and sit in the Norman churchyard and commune with the lychgate, the ancient yew trees and the tilting, moss-covered gravestones to reconnect with what once was.

    Nostalgia is a sweet intoxicating brew that is best not to sip much or often.

  12. Born in Dublin and grew up in Clonskeagh with just my mum and two sisters as my dad & mum had spilt up when I was 4 . Moved to Liverpool at the age of 7 for a short while but we couldn’t settle so ended up in Woodmancote in Gloucestershire . Mum bought a mobile home next to a farm and I had an idyllic childhood playing in the surrounding fields and woods . In my early 20’s moved down the road to Cheltenham married had a child then divorced . Now married again but living in Winchcombe for the last 12 years and never been happier .. Still call myself Irish even though I have spent most of my life here in the Cotswolds . Often wonder how my life would have turned out had we stayed in Ireland .

  13. I was born in Cardiff, was there until 18. During that period it was slowly losing all its industrial base. My childhood was difficult. My mother was Spanish, I was asthmatic and missed a lot of school particularly , primary, and I was shy. So I felt like a bit of an outsider. My dad drank a lot and had a brittle temper
    – so that didn’t help. Music and reading were always an escape. And cliche of cliches, punk took me out of myself and into world, well mostly Cardiff Top Rank. TBH I don’t think I found myself until my mid-20s. By which time I’d lived in Reading, Worcester, and Birmingham.

  14. Birmingham born and bred. Very proud of the city although I no longer live there. My childhood was joyous and also very secure. Mum and Dad never had a bad word for each other and kept my brother and I safe. I remember my childhood quite vividly – summer school holidays were spent playing football, riding bikes and building treehouses in Chelmskey Wood before it became a concrete jungle. I was also a voracious reader, a builder of Airfix planes and a keen collector of Marvel comics. Sadly mum binned them not aware of their potential value many years later. As a teenager I started to go and watch Birmingham City (aged 11) and am still gong now 58 years later. On the weekends when Blues were not playing I used to get the bus into town with my mate Pete who is still my best friend now. We would go record shopping and then go and eat pizza – perfect weekends. I got my first full time job at Minster and Malvern motor insurance company. The work in the renewals department was mundane and not for me.
    Just over one year later I got a job as a freight forwarder – an industry that I remained in for the rest of my working life. I was very good at it and it took my round the World and allowed me to live in Miami for two years in the mid 80’s. At that time I was married to my first wife which was not an experience I remember fondly although it did produce my son Alex. He grew up loving football, travel and music.
    He lived in Iceland for 6 years now but still gets to watch every Birmingham game home and away courtesy of a tv package not available here.
    1997 I married my soul mate and we reached 29 years as men and wife last week. We have a daughter now 27 who lives in London and is flourishing in social media.
    We live in Lichfield which is 20 miles from Birmingham – I still go there for concerts and to meet friends. I think the people of Birmingham have a unique humour and by and large are welcoming to all and sundry.
    Of particular note to me is my relationship with my Grandparents growing up. On both sides they were wonderful and supportive. The holidays in Bournemouth that I used to go on with my paternal grandparents are etched in my mind as the happiest times of my childhood.
    And of course it never rained

  15. The small, safe, pretty, comfortable market town in the middle of the Manchester stockbroker belt that is Knutsford. Lots of other families of the same age, so lots of kids to knock around with, all within easy cycling distance. We used to play in the sand on the many building sites of the new estates.
    Close enough to the city to have access to the Bright Lights(and work), but definitely surrounded by endless hedgerowed country lanes and woods, and proper country pubs populated by rural people straight out of central casting.
    My family believed the world was its oyster and all my brothers emigrated, as our father had done before us. I have always liked my local oyster, so I stayed, and live a mile and a half from the maternity hospital where I was born. May that never change.

  16. Middlesex. Almost on the border with both Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Just inside the M25 which was being built while was I was a boy. Ours was a proper village but quite close to London. School fetes, village carnivals, funfair every June. Looking back it was somewhat idyllic. Was quite famous for a period in the 80s due to the heart transplant unit at the hospital. We had 10 pubs at one point. Only 3 there now.

    After that.

    Devon
    Reading (the shite part)
    Devon
    Watford
    Connecticut ( a years secondment, should have stayed)
    Watford
    Connecticut (see what I mean)
    Texas
    Ireland

    Finally ended up in the place we always wanted to be (without knowing it).

  17. That’s a tricky question. Inwas born in Birmingham. Lived in East Lancs till I was 6 (I have some old photos of my dad and I climbing on the earthworks for the East Lancs road which was just being built). Then we moved to Hazel Grove, south of Stockport which I can remember quite clearly. We backed onto open country so it was all the childhood clichés – climbing trees, tree houses, rope swings, building the bonfire etc. lovely. Then when I was 10 we moved again, to Macclesfield which was on a new soulless housing estate near a few rough areas and I hated it. Had all my teens there and went to Oxford Poly when I was 19 and vowed I would never go back there. I did visit but have very little affection for the place. So where am I from? The North West I suppose, Cheshire maybe. What was it like? Damp and depressing.

  18. Northumberland, just. Right on the very southern lip as it merges into the conurbation of Newcastle.

    The centre of the Toon was a 20 minute bus ride. The bleak, beautiful heart of Northumberland was a just about equal 20 to 30 minutes drive away. As was the coastline. Almmouth, Amble, Bamburgh, Beadnell, Craster etc. My Dad was a postie, with an afternoon sideline as a painter and decorator so we weren’t affluent but – and here’s the cliche – I wanted for absolutely nothing. Looking back it was and remains a wonderful place to been born and grown up in. Geordie/Northumbrian pride is huge, though these days – like every other region – parochial traits are played up more than they ever were which can be tiresome.

    Shy but curious I always wanted to step away ‘for a while’ as a young man. Fate allowed that in my early 20’s when I failed a probationary period at a job for the Post Office so to cut a long story short I applied for a very low level admin job at the Foreign Office. So went from being skint in the North East to skint in the South East and with rent to pay. How I ever managed is quite beyond me.

    Anyway, ‘for a while’ has been almost 40 years. I visit family and some friends up at what I still call home reasonably often. The Toon i bought all my records and books in has been redeveloped twice in that time. Thankfully it still feels the same and I’m still proud of the place. Sometimes I ask myself, when on a commuter train to Paddington, why I left? The answer is still the same. I was curious. I’ve had some great experiences with great friends made since and I got lucky workwise.

    It’s all still there for me whenever I want it.

  19. St. Helens. My first house was a terrace behind the town hall. We had a tin bath and an outside toilet. The town was dominated by Pilkington’s Glass whose invention of float glass enriched the company and the town generally. My grandfather operated a crane for them. By the seventies, float had been superseded. It was also a mining town. It suffered badly under Thatcher and during the strikes, by which time I was at university in Birmingham. The mind’s soon closed. I came back once I qualified but have worked in Runcorn and lived in Warrington for nearly four decades. My mum and her sister’s all live near each other still in St. Helens. It’s a shell of what it used to be. Deprivation is rife. Very sad.

    • My dad worked at Pilks for a while.

      I’m from Ashton-in-Makerfield, a south Lancashire mining town. None of you have ever heard of it and with good reason.

      Cheer up TL, at least it’s not Skelmersdale.

      • Runcorn and Skelmersdale are essentially twins.

        On the upside, Saints are doing better this season, so far, and the town is halfway between Liverpool and Manchester.

        (And, of course, I’ve heard of Ashton-in-Makerfield 😉)

  20. Taunton. My dad was in the army, so the family moved about six months later and I’ve never been back (the thread about Somerset indicates I haven’t missed out). Since then, all over the world (Germany, Hong Kong, North Yorkshire, London). From 8 to 18 I went to a minor public school in Somerset, mostly paid for by the Army. During that time I only saw my parents, and the family home, about 12 weeks a year. Re. the School reunions thread, I still see about four good friends from those days – everyone else (pupils, teachers, the people who maintain the public school system) are dead to me.

    I moved to London for college and have stayed ever since. I don’t feel like a Londoner per se, but love it here and hold the flag-shagging ‘Sadiq Khan has imposed Sharia Law and you’ll get your phone nicked as soon as you get off the train’ idiots, all from out of town, fathoms beneath contempt.

  21. A suburban village just outside Woking home of the Jam. I went to grammar school and then to sixth form college in Woking. Kazuo Ishiguro went there too as did Bill Sweeney head of England Rugby. Not a bad place London was only about half hour by train.

  22. Old Torry, Aberdeen, an ancient fishing village. Our house under the lighthouse was last in a long row of tiny cottages. Outside toilet (which was terrifying in the dark) and a tin bath. We had the only car in the street but in the early-mid fifties there was lots of poverty around us, barefoot children (at least in summer) and a hard working, hard drinking culture. Outside I spoke the local language, Doric, but inside it was your proper English (Mum was from Barnard Castle). Us kids roamed far and wide, as long as you were back for dinner then tea nobody seemed to care where you were . Mostly we fished and threw stones into the sea but sometimes we got up to real mischief. If PC McKenzie caught you doing something naughty it was a kick up the arse from his size 10 boots. A walk to catch the school bus (my grammar school was in the other side of the city) meant walking past fishhouses where stood young women gutting cod and herring. This teenager was subject to highly embarrassing cat calls, references to my tiny willy and “Come over here and I’ll gie you a great big kiss!”.
    When North Sea Oil came along, the town council decided to demolish virtually all of the village so Shell &Co could build an enormous depot. We moved to a new high-rise flat built against much local opposition in the posh West End. We had an inside toilet and a bath!!
    Went off to be a long-haired student in London in 1968, never lived in Aberdeen again. No relations are there anymore so visits are rare but anytime I do the memories come flooding back.

  23. I don’t know.

    I was born in Edinburgh and lived in small places outside – Currie, and Kirkliston.

    We moved to England – Surrey – when I was 6, I think. To Norwich in 1985, then Hampshire – and back to my Surrey school – in 1987. A year in France in 89/90, then Leicester, Glasgow, Hants, Cambridge, Hants, then the USA.

    I haven’t spent any longer than about 2 weeks in the UK since emigrating, and haven’t been back to Surrey/Hants at all.

  24. St Andrews in the East Neuk of Fife – hence my ‘nom de forum’.

    Born and bred in the town, I eventually went to school and then uni in Edinburgh, following in my fathers footsteps in the days when a Scottish education was to be prized. Thereafter, I adopted a peripatetic career and life style which took in the assorted delights of Port Glasgow, Liverpool, Edinburgh (again), Sandy, Bedford and finally Horsham – where I have been since the last century!

    Work took me to London in the 1980’s and we enjoyed being in range of its delights. My wife was a Londoner and her roots were south of the river. It was those roots which led us finally to Sussex where we enjoyed many happy years until her passing.

    Whilst I still have family in the Highlands of Scotland, I have not often returned to St Andrews – too much has changed from the idyll of my youth for me to feel comfortable there these days. However my memories are strong and it was a great place to grow up with its mix of town and gown and, of course, the golf. Until I was 16, I could play the Old Course for free and thereafter the permit was ten shillings a year. Happy Days!

  25. It’s weird, I am not sure I am “from” anywhere. OK, I was born in Lewes, Sussex, but spent more of the year, boarding, in Eastbourne, 7-18. So built up no roots, not least as my parents retired to Stubbington, in Hampshire. My 5 years as a student, in London, and living in Battersea and Lambeth was more formative, but I then went where the work was, in my case, Brum. Lived in Shirley, Solihull 1984 until 2001, when my first marriage ended. Stayed working in Brum but moved to Lichfield where I have remained, eventually moving work to there and retiring.
    Have to say it is a great place to live and ticks all my boxes. There was an inkling of desire to move somewhere more rural, but the disadvantages seem more trouble than they are worth.
    Despite all this, I still have the audacity to consider myself a Hebridean celt, courtesy my mother, and Scotland as my spiritual home.

  26. Grew up in suburban London, Wanstead to be precise. My parents grew up in the same street in nearby Leytonstone and I have many happy memories of visiting my grandparents there in the 50s and 60s. Wanstead was, and is, leafy and very nice and I have a lot to be grateful for – my parents were young during the war and I remember rationing, but they did their level best to give me and my younger sister a caring and loving upbringing. We weren’t well off, but Dad was a toolmaker all his working life and we had all the essentials and the freedom to grow up secure and happy. We never had a car, but you don’t need one in London anyway. I went to the Grammar school, and then to Teacher training college in Cheltenham from 1969-72 where I first met people from oop norf, and also had the time of my bloody life.

  27. Born in Burton-on-Trent and then lived in Tamworth until I was 3. Family then moved to Olton on the edge of Solihull (near Acocks Green which Pete Paphides writes about in his book).

    Eventually left 6th form college, did a few crap jobs and eventually moved to Bristol from 1991 to 1998. Spent most of my time there in Bedminster. The company asked me if I wanted to work temporarily in Dubai for a few weeks in 1998 and I ended up staying.

    Got married (24 years and still going strong) and then we moved to New Plymouth, New Zealand for about 4 years, Azerbaijan for a couple of years after that – both of those moves for work.

    And then just after the pandemic was over back to the UAE and Fujairah this time. Which is where we are now. I’ve probably been back to the UK a dozen times in the past 28 years and generally it’s only for family events and stuff.

    My brother is still in Olton – whilst I was desperate to get away from what I saw as a really boring place in my early 20s (I liked it as a kid though). I quite like it now the past couple of times I’ve paid him a visit there.

    I sound like I’m from Brum (and usually don’t bother to correct anyone), but I’ve spent over 2/3 of my live away from the midlands. And soon I’ll have spent more of my life living overseas than I have done in the UK

    • Hey @myoldman, I am from Solihull too, around the same time as you by the sound of it. Parents still live just off Seven Star Road. That Pete Paphides book was quite the nostalgia trip wasn’t it? The first chip shop the family had in Acock’s Green was about 100 yards from my grandparents’ place.

  28. We moved around a lot when I was a nipper, so I don’t really hail from anywhere specific. My family background is heavily based in Bradford, with my all of my great-grandparents having moved there from Ireland in the 1850s. My parents moved away from Bradford in the early 60s – taking in Essex, Liverpool, Portsmouth and Surrey. I consider Woking my home town because I lived there from the ages of 10-19 and these are very important years in anyone’s life. There used to be a time when I couldn’t walk from one end of the shopping area to the other without bumping into someone I knew, but those days are long gone. After living and working in London throughout my 20s, I moved to New Zealand in 1999 and have lived in Auckland ever since. We have lived in this house for 8 years and there are no plans to move anytime soon.

    Last year I spent a couple of days in Woking with my Kiwi family. I really enjoyed it because it does have its own identity and although someone passing through may not see it as a remarkable, I think it has enough of a story to make it an interesting place. The surrounding villages are beautiful – which I didn’t really take in when I grew up there.

    Incidentally, we decided to have dinner in the now-famous Pizza Express. There are no references on the walls to Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. The picture frame next to our table was an artwork featuring the words “In the City there are a thousand things I wanna say to you”. Looking around, there were several pieces on display – all quoting Paul Weller lyrics.

    The Pizza Express alibi was an interesting thing to do. He remembers it specifically because it was such a strange place for him to go to. He talked of it as if he was visiting a yurt in Mongolia.

  29. County Down. Born in Belfast and we moved to suburbia on the South side of Belfast Lough when I was 5. Looking back, it was an incredible place to grow up; as kids our playground was the shoreline on the Lough. I was lucky – I had a really happy childhood there. When the Troubles got going we were relatively sheltered from it where we were but their presence and sectarian conflict were increasingly there in the background. My Dad got a job in Liverpool in 1972, when I was 15, and we moved to the Wirral where I spent my last few years at school before going off to Uni.

    So I’m from Northern Ireland, but Merseyside became my home as a teenager, and it’s where my parents remained for the rest of their lives. And it’s where I ended up working for many years in my final job before retirement.

  30. Bracknell. A town that is better than its reputation. It meant a childhood of playing in the woods, lots of children my age living in a new town that attracted our parents to buy their first home in the 60s.

    It was well placed for London, Reading was nearby and it had an excellent arts centre at South Hill Park which is still going strong.

    Schools seemed to be typical 70s comps. Some flourished, most survived and some didn’t.

    It was remarkably well placed for work though. Heathrow was nearby, Bracknell and Reading had lots of companies headquartered and the bit between Bracknell and Reading became something of a hotbed for booming IT.

    I moved away but not too far. I now live in Yateley. An unassuming town near Camberley, it’s big enough to be useful (I can walk to Waitrose!) but small enough that there is a sense of community.

    I do, secretly, harbour a desire to emigrate to Yorkshire and Booths though.

  31. Born in Leeds. Single mum. First lived in Harehills then moved to a new Wimpey estate in Meanwood. When I was 9 we relocated to a village called Wheldrake, near York. I was systematically bullied at school for the first time. My mother decided to send me to a boarding school in York to sort me out (I don’t think it did).

    She got married and went to live in Hong Kong, which is where I spent most of my school holidays. But it was never home to me really – I didn’t make many friends there or feel I belonged.

    I went to uni in London, dropped out, did various random jobs, got married and moved to the centre of Manchester in the late 1980s. We lived happily together in a tiny flat for 13 years before moving out of the city centre to Ramsbottom, almost, but not quite, in Lancashire. We’ve been here ever since.

    Don’t see myself as being from anywhere specifically. Effectively I left home at 11. Happy to be rootless.

  32. Poole Dorset, born and brought up. Decided to travel around Europe at 21, stayed a while in Norway and have been here ever since. Now have a similar relationship to Dorset to the one Beezer has for Northumberland.

  33. Born in Dublin. My father died six months before and I have no siblings. First 8 years or so in Clontarf, a one-room flat almost on the seafront. I’m sure my mother found it tough supporting both of us on a widow’s pension but for me it was idyllic. I now know that Phil Lynott lived on the next street for a year or two around this time, but I don’t recall ever seeing him – I’m sure he would have made an impression
    As I got older we moved to a two-bedroom maisonette in Coolock – something of a shock to the system after the genteel environs of Clontarf. But I learned to love it after a while. School in St. Joseph’s, Fairview where I did quite well for the first state exam but fell apart for the last two years. Just got lazy and cynical. Worked in the local Superquinn supermarket for a number of years, too many maybe. No ambition and no proper girlfriend. During that time I was in the infamous Stardust nightclub when a fire broke out on Valentine’s Day 1981 and some of my workmates were among the fatalities.
    By chance I heard that the Irish Airport Authority (Aer Rianta) were looking to recruit retail people for positions in a proposed downtown shop in Moscow, and thus my life changed. I took a six-month contract and stayed for seven years eventually, including a change of employer. I met my wife who was also recruited from Ireland by Aer Rianta. Back to Ireland where my lack of qualifications made it difficult to get a well-paying job, but I get by. I’ve worked in stock control, as a courier franchishee and now as purchaser / stock manager for a company in Ennis.

    We have three daughters, now grown. One living and teaching in Aukland with her partner, soon to move to Melbourne. One living in Bermondsey in London and working in The City, and the youngest living in Dublin and teaching in a private school. They are doing OK. We live in a small village called Quin in County Clare not far from Ennis and Shannon.

  34. Born Elderslie, then family moved to Newton Mearns (a bit posh), then to Barrhead, a satellite town of Glasgow which due to its proximity to Paisley had textile links. Other employers included Armitage Shanks which employed grandfather & uncle. Old man was a copper & we lived in police accommodation until a house was purchased on Paisley Road.

    Attended the local High School & did well there. Occasionally bullied because we were seen as swots. I suffered less due to being reasonably good at football. The town was like many in the more industrial areas in the Thatcher era, declining but less cruelly than the heavy industrial communities. Parents retired to the coast & I rarely go back or tbh have the desire to do so, although I did have a great visit to my old but newly rebuilt school recently when visiting Glasgow family.

    Off to Stirling Uni which was the making of me & left there to move South & the St Albans area which I really enjoyed although I fear it’s creaking a bit from an infrastructure pov now.

    End of marriage no 1 & new wife has led to a lofe in the Lincolnshire Wolds, which is great but makes cultural outings a long way & in need of quite a bit of planning!

    No desire to head back up the road, almost lived in England twice as long as Scotland. Miss seeing St Mirren & the national side live, but not the nonsense associated with the Ugly Sisters, of which I’ve posted in the past. After 20 years in the Shire, still an incomer & only one of three children humours me by supporting Scotland. Long drives & the bright lights of Skeg Vegas it is for me then!

    • also Plymouth (well, I was born in a Plymouth hospital but taken home across the bridge to a small Cornish town called Saltash (motto: “it’s not on the tourist trail for a reason”). My parents eventually moved all of about a mile, but that was enough to take them over the border back to Devon. That was when I was about three, and I stayed in Plymouth until I went to uni, and again for a few years afterward. VV is correct that it’s a good place to grow up, with beaches, moorland, and the sea all within ridiculously easy reach. The downsides are that it’s miles from anywhere – I didn’t get to go to any gigs until I was eighteen, and my trips to and fro university in the midlands took at least five hours – and that I have been lumbered with supporting Plymouth Argyle, but hey. It’s not the most genteel of cities – my two best friends when I was of primary school age both had drunken abusive fathers, for example, which I was completely oblivious to at the time, and the eighties hollowing out of the dockyard was socially disastrous in a similar way to the mining communities at the same time.

      Once I left I found job that had me moving around a fair bit – I’ve been in Derby, Cheltenham, a long spell in Portsmouth (essentially Plymouth without the cosmopolitan sophistication), Brighton, Basingstoke, a spell back in Plymouth (where I had a flat in Elliot Terrace overlooking the Sound with possibly one of the best views in the entire country), then Dublin, Cardiff, and Tokyo until I came to rest in Bristol where I have been for fifteen years or so now.

      • @kid-dynamite You’re right, getting to and from the delights of south Devon is always going to be a bit of a trek, which is one reason why I chose to go to Exeter for my university years – only an hour and a bit away by thumb.

        And, as you say, the Royal William Yard in particular got stripped of its purpose and dignity in the Thatcher years to the detriment of the whole city and surrounding area. My father, who worked there, was lucky to have retired just before the social vandalism, mere months ahead of its conversion into a paradise of fund-owned waterside yuppie flats and Jamie Oliver restaurants.

  36. Brought up in Sedgley, West Midlands, half way between Wolverhampton and Dudley.
    Right on the edge of the Black Country conurbation, from our back bedroom window you could see right across Shropshire, so fondest childhood memories are of endless playing in the fields and woods. As somebody else mentioned we were given a fair amount of latitude of how we spent our time as long as we were back for tea. So far removed from the lives of kids nowadays.
    Moved away to Kingston Poly in 1981 and stayed in SW London until late 90’s before moving to Belfast where I’ve been since.
    Parents moved to Malta in the early 90’s so haven’t been back to my old stamping ground of Sedgley for many years.

  37. Hertfordshire. Born, and went to secondary comp, in the county town. Lived in the same village as my grandparents, just north of what became the M25. Enfield (hooray) and Stevenage (urgh) both two stops away on the Moorgate branch.

    My father worked for British Rail so I had staff discount (75% off) rail travel, and thought nothing of taking the train to That London for record shopping, or to Reading or Sheffield to watch the snooker.

    Moved to North Herts at 17, Reading for three years of university, across the border to South Cambs after graduation. Due to “Silicon Fen” have never needed to move home for work.

    Trivia: on Sundays I used to cycle to the shop where Tracey Thorn worked, just to get out of the house and view the bright lights of, erm, Brookmans Park.

    • Lived in Enfield for 2 years in the 80s, working for Thorn EMI Ferguson as they were known at that time. I quite liked the place, I remember a colleague buying a house there for £45.000, his mortgage was £36,000. I thought he was crazy to spend so much!

      • The Chase area of Enfield by the station was (is?) lovely, and Gordon Hill station (by Chase Farm hospital) is the edge of the green belt. All within easy walking distance of the town centre.

        I could cycle to there, or to Potters Bar, to save the 12p train fair.

        Later, I had a friend from university who lived in Cockfosters, just the other side of Trent Park.

        • I was in or near Enfield Town, about 10 min walk from that station. I occasionally got the train to Enfield Chase in the early hours from Kings Cross, I think the one from Liverpool St that went to Enfield Town station stopped running earlier. Used to pick up the NME Tuesday evenings at Enfield Town station, and I drank at every pub going, some nice ones, some dives. I went back about a decade after I left in the mid 90s, it had changed a lot, God knows what it’s like now.

            • Saw many films there and we were once evacuated during Witness because of a bomb scare (fairly common in London at the time). We were let back in but we actually missed the murder (spoiler alert), was a decade time so before I finally saw that bit

    • As per the OP, in terms of “what was it like?”, I’d say an early example of gentrification.

      My maternal grandparents lived the other side of the village green to us and many of their neighbours had been there since WWII.

      Following the 1975 Moorgate crash, the train line was electrified, direct to Moorgate, and the village started becoming a commuter dorm. Elderly folks would depart their bungalows, city types would move in and flatten/rebuild or extend their new property. By the time I was old enough to visit the pub (underage) it was full of braying hooray Henry types. My bedroom window overlooked the first tee of the new golf club.

      By 1987, I couldn’t wait to leave. My gramps were not far behind.

      I drove through it a few years ago on the way to a cousin’s wedding. I barely recognised the place.

  38. Born and brought up in Bolton. Hindsight tells me that Bolton was in decline thanks to the death of the cotton industry but my young self was oblivious to all that. After school, I’d go round to a friend’s house or play football or cricket in the street or on local playing fields. In the holidays, I’d go out after breakfast to meet friends and return around teatime. Frequently, my parents would have no idea where I was. That was normal.

    After uni, I moved down to That London and have remained here. But I still feel I’m from Bolton. My parents never left the house they’d bought shortly after they married. They’re no longer with us but driving to the Lake District recently (to go walking with thecheshirecat) it took careful concentration to stay on the M6 and not head to Bolton.

  39. Grew up in Handsworth Sheffield, just round the corner from the battle of Orgreave which even now still gives me a hatred of the Tories

    Nice town Sheffield, the other side from where I lived. The bit I was in was far too rough for my personality. Left at 18 never to return…

    • You are me !!

      See my post further up, where I also mention Orgreave

      We were on Old Retford Road, just down from Handsworth. I left in 1985 to go to Uni.

      • Ha indeed very close. We probably even went to the same school if you lived there as a kid
        I lived down Handsworth Road. I also remember where Sean Beans house was

  40. Born Epping (home of the now infamous Bell), lived right by Epping Forest.
    I don’t know why this should be, but it was only once I’d reached my 30s that I realised we’d all lived rural lives, not urban ones.
    Our cul-de-sac was full of kids, about a dozen boys, just two sisters, and so summer holidays were spent on the green (football, cricket, American sports if one of the neighbours from a Norfolk airbase arrived) or in the forest, usually up a tree. I can’t remember ever carrying money, and trips to London were for football, cricket or Twickenham… and nothing else, until I discovered Red Bus Rovers… how brilliant were they, and then went everywhere.

    The other thread about school reunions made me think about whether I’d go to one – I’m erring on ‘no’ – and it is not without irony that my favourite part about school were those summer holidays. Come the first week of September I’d be in mourning for July 18th.

    Now live in the back of beyond in Cornwall. I don’t think I have the energy to revisit London, but I might arrange something around a couple of days at Lords (County Championship) one day. Expensive, isn’t it? Looked into staying at a Premier Inn… how much?!

  41. Bradford, West Yorkshire. A wool town – largely Victorian, still mill chimneys to be seen. My mum knew Hockneys brother when she was small, my brother lived for a time next door but seven to J B Priestly (a few years after JB had moved on, obv.)

    We were the first occupants of our house – an early 60s three bed semi, smallish gardens front and rear. Garage big enough for a car that we never had. My dad still owned it when he died a couple of years ago. Probably an upper working/lower middle class area, my dad fixed washing machines, my mum did all sorts of part time work but was really a book-keeper

    It was a good childhood – friendly neighbours, a big field nearby for football, cricket etc. Though to be honest we were as likely to be playing (‘laking’) on t’road as there were rarely any cars about.

    Local celebrities included the bassist from Smokie (before they became Smokie) and a Bradford City goalie who’d moved down from Scotland. He wasn’t very good and moved on after a season. A few years later we discovered that the Yorkshire Ripper lived on t’same road as Killer Whale (our school swimming teacher).

    I could walk to my primary, middle and upper schools. The primary school still had air raid shelters dug into the grounds, Middle school was a soot blackened Victorian building and upper was probably similar ace to our house. All three schools are gone now.

    There was a nearby pond for frog spawn/taddies. Bonfires were build on various fields and raided by rival gangs. You could slide down the hills on cardboard sledges in the Summer, real sledges when it snowed – a lot – every Winter. I used to have to help dig my dad’s van out at least twice a year so he could get to work… yet school never closed.

    I could go on Summer holiday cycling/walking adventures with mates to Haworth (6 miles away) or Ilkey Moor (a bit further). For family holidays we’d borrow a car and go to Whitby, Scarborough, Robin Hoods Bay when me and our kid were small; Scotland, Wales, Cornwall etc when we were older. Never went abroad, but we did get as far as Guernsey and the Isle of Wight. We went on lots of nature walks as a family – particularly interested in birds. Whereas I had posters of Allan Clarke, Billy Bremner, the Sweet and Mott the Hoople on my bedroom walls, our Phil had RSPB bird charts on his- II still text him whenever I see a species I’m unable to identify. He always knows what it is.

    Finally, Bradford fish ‘n’ chips – best in t’world.

    .

  42. Born in Chiswick in 1967, lived in Richmond till I was 1. Moved to Sunbury On Thames in 1968 and Mum still lives in the same house. I moved away to study in Eastbourne, Brighton and Portsmouth and then lived nearer home in Ashford (the one near Staines, not Kent) and then Chertsey, until Mrs L and I moved back to Sunbury in 2005.
    It was an ok area in which to grow up but not quite quick enough by public transport into London to prevent it feeling like a time consuming trek to go in for gigs etc. Didn’t stop me when I was young though. These days however I’m much more likely to drive to gigs, those a bit nearer to home anyway. Hate driving in London.

  43. I was born in Seaford, Sussex (equidistant from Brighton and Eastbourne) and moved to London aged 4 when my Dad got a job for a company supplying flags, marquees etc for the Coronation. We lived just off Tower Bridge and Shad Thames. Very busy during the week but a ghost town at the weekend. Then I got a LCC scholarship and went to Bancroft’s School near Woodford Green (the alma mater of Peter Perrett and Alan Davies). After that, moved to an Earl’s Court flat with my girlfriend (and now my lovely wife). Eventually moved to Watford where we spent most of the 70s and 80s. Then, after a spell of rural living in Cornwall, eventually moved to Exeter which we love.

  44. I am born and bred in Great Yarmouth. In the 1970/80s when it was a classic UK beach holiday resort where people would book the same 1 or 2 week holiday in the same establishment for many years.

    I worked at Boots in the Summer of 1986 in the pharmacy and was surprised at how many Scottish people suddenly appeared as customers in the last two weeks of August, this was their traditional holiday weeks and place. Later on as I worked as a pharmacist in West Yorkshire I was educated on the concept of ‘wakes weeks’ and got to see why this happened.

    Great Yarmouth has one of the best sandy beaches in the UK and that explains the attraction. It also has the usual coastal resort features of numerous amusement arcades and a very old amusement park called the ‘Pleasure Beach’. The roller coaster is wooden and still needs chap to be in the middle of it to pull on a break at certain turns – not scary and nostalgically fun.

    Today it is a depressing place to visit as it still has a vibrant tourist economy in the summer but outside of that the town centre is depressive and in need of development .Local salaries are low, there is a large Romanian presence that many locally despise.

    It still has the best chips in the UK though from the market.

    • The steelworks in my town had a shutdown the last 2 weeks of August. We would always go to the north of England where all my mother’s family lived (except her mother who anyway always spent months there in summer). A day trip to Blackpool was always included as a treat (to see the lights) and walking along the front my dad would be nodding or saying hello to multiple colleagues who had travelled there from Wales for the shutdown. There was no surprise in seeing people from 200 miles away, it was kind of expected.

    • @uncle-wheaty. I think you’ll find Gorleston (for those who don’t know, the jewel of the East Coast, it’s Gt Yarmouth’s genteel neighbour over the river.) has a lovely sandy beach these days too.

      Agree about chips! And pretty much everything you wrote

  45. Leicester. Left to go uni in Brighton in 1982, where I stayed for 14 years. Loved it. By chance met a bloke in the Cross Keys in Covent Garden (See ‘Pinball’ by Brian Protheroe) who offered me a job 30 years ago with the company I still work for. Through that job I spent a year in Cheltenham, and a year in Liverpool (living & working on both of their racecourses) with weekends off in London (Bow). Arrived in Sydney in 1998 to work on the Olympics, now live in Brisbane. Still visit family in Leicester, but it’s had a tough time due to industrial decline. I don’t miss it, but have more fonder memories of Brighton. It’s funny how a chance encounter like I had can change your life and destiny.

  46. South Shields. Famous for being the birthplace of Dame Flora Robson, Eric Idle, Sarah Millican and half of Little Mix. Also famous for its beach – probably the only positive thing about the place nowadays.

  47. Born and raised in Solihull in 1968. It was fine – very suburban, but you don’t know that at the time do you? Had a very suburban childhood and a very suburban coming of age before moving to Manchester to study in 1987. The world opened up before my very eyes. I still go back to Solihull regularly to see my folks, but moving away was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was nice, but dull dull dull.

  48. I’m originally from East Northamptonshire, having grown up in a couple of small towns there. Not really reflected on it until @dai posed the question, but I guess growing up there was quite good. We were never more than a few minutes walk or cycle ride from the countryside, or there were a few derelict boot and shoe factories to explore. The area started to feel like it had limitations in my teenage years, when I headed off to the bright lights of Northampton, Milton Keynes and Cambridge for gigs, or to hang around with friends.

    I moved out of home and the area at 16, initially coming back for college holidays, but now I can’t even tell you the last time I was in that area, probably on a country walk a few years ago. Can’t say that I miss it much.

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