Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Yellow fever

If you're wondering why SWSL has been rather quiet of late, it's because I'm back home without easy and regular internet access. I'm realising quite how attached I am to many of my regular blog reads - plus I've just discovered I've been missing out on all the rumpus surrounding Belle De Jour and the Guardian award.

Anyway...

It’s good to be home – the reassuringly cold weather, the prevalence of black and white striped clothing, the barely comprehensible mutterings of shovel-handed men in the pub, the ubiquity of yellow-faced women…

“What?!”, you might well be asking. Have you heard of the Orangemen in Scotland and Northern Ireland? Well, here in the North-East we have the Orangewomen. It’s a phenomenon I’ve only noticed fairly recently, prompted by the observations of a friend who’s just married into the Geordie race. Whether it’s due to the rashly liberal application of fake tan, or inadvisedly long spells under a sunbed, or an outbreak of jaundice somehow confined to this region and to only one gender, I’m not sure. What I do know is that there are so many part-bronzed women everywhere that it’s like inadvertently walking around a sculptor’s studio. Perhaps fellow blogger and resident of Morpeth Sarah might be able to shed more light on the matter – she’s far too sensible to have succumbed to the yellow fever herself, I’m sure.

Time for some blatant comments-whoring: do people in your part of the world seem to have any strange collective tastes / foibles / mannerisms? This could of course turn into all-out inter-regional warfare, but we’re all adults, aren’t we? Aren’t we?!

No comments: