An Apology to all Northerners

April 5th 1994.

Life was simple and my world was a town.
Despite what was going on outside it, life was for living, everything made sense in my little bubble.

But everything was about to change and and i was about to give birth to an irrational predudiced hatred.
An apology for which i feel is in order.

Unemployment was huge, inflation high, oil prices were soaring and Britain was run by a grey apparition of a man who claimed to be Prime Minister.

The boogeymen of the last decade had been forgotten.
Aids was now an indigestion tablet. Walls had been demolished, metaphorical and brick.
One typically dark skinned disneyesque villan had been replaced with another, in the shape of the elusive Saddam Hussein who somehow
managed to escape the obscene carpet bombing of the places he had invaded.

Not that i cared. I was young and alive and drunk.
But sat in one of the only Pubs in central Torquay that hadnt been hit by the recession, the main street resembling a shoddy wallpaper
attempt, all white washed windows and yellowing paper displays, i was about to meet my nemesis.

A cloud of cigarette smoke blurred the overhead screen that was providing a soundtrack to my day. This was my favorite era for music.
Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and Nirvana to name a few of the bands that i heralded as genius.

My attention was suddenly aware of something irritating coming from the speakers.The source of this irritant was Liam Gallagher lead
singer of Oasis swaggering around on the screen with all the oikish confidence of a football hooligan singing their debut single
Supersonic.

The Manchester scene had arrived and i didnt like it one bit.
Bunch of dervitative Beatle impressionists.

Gallagher's whinging vocals were suddenly cut short.
Breaking News flashed across the screen interupting normal Transmission.

Kurt
Cobain
found
dead
shotgun suicide.

Each word like a slap in the face.

Noooooooooooooooooooo!

The rest of the afternoon was soaked in Jack Daniels and left to dry out on the bar as we grieved the loss of this tortured poet taken
so young with so much to give, the world was suddenly a darker place.

Stumbling home that night I was aware of the world around me.
The shut down shops, the hooded addicts in piss drenched alleyways, 3rd world civilians blown to pieces for corporate greed. My little
town had become different, there was something i hadnt noticed before.

Northerners.
Yes they were to blame, them and that gobshite Gallagher.

Everywhere i looked, tracksuited Oasis wannabes lurched around like monkeys looking for someone to rob, or somewhere to shoot up.
Communicating with their guttural drawl and lazy grammar.

My bubble had been burst, and probably by a knife weilding Manchurian.
So began my Northernism.

I blamed them for everything, and all of the nineties ills. Society was crumbling around me and Northeners were to blame, chipping away with homemade shivs whilst singing the latest collection of noises on offer from 'that band'.

If i had it my way they wouldve been demoted to second class citizens. Made to travel on separate buses, their right to vote removed.

Sound familiar?...

Now im not a bigot, far from it but i was certainly behaving like one.
Hatred had been evoked in me and i blamed strangers and a culture i didnt agree with or understand.

It took me a few years of predudice toward these new comers to the Bay before i realised what a prick i was being. Tony Blair inviting them to number 10 didnt help a few years later on either.

These people were no more to blame than i.
It became obvious that in times of social depression it is easy to point at minorities.

They did it!... Look everyone Its all their fault!

In times of trouble a lot more could be achieved, if we all forgot our differences and excepted we are all in it together. I sound like an out of touch hippy, but its true.

I was reminded of all this whilst walking through a garage forecourt last week as a transit driver pumped in 1.40 a litre diesel.
On his dash board lay a copy of the Sun, its headline drooling.
'1 immigrant arrivng in Britain every minute!'.

Im no statistican, but you do the maths. Something doesnt add up there, and reeks of irresponsible scare mongering.

I would like to take this chance to apologise to all Northerners and state that i dont really hold you responsible for the collapse of the world monetary system, warfare, drugs, crime rates or teenage pregancy.

I do still hold you responsible for Liam Gallagher, but i will get over it.

Martin Luther King famously said
"Men hate each other because they fear each other, and they fear each other because they don't know each other, and they don't know each
other because they are often separated from each other.''

He was obviously spared the horror of listening to Champagne Supernova..

No really im over it.