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?!