Home again...

I've been really rubbish at keeping this blog up, but I've got my excuses at the moment. I just moved from Lancaster back home to Liverpool, thus straddling a few miles and several decades.

It is a little bit odd moving back, not least because it doesn't feel that odd. Whenever I was away and told people that I came from Liverpool, I had to explain why I didn't have that accent, for a start. Strangely, people who live here seem to know that not everyone does.

This is a fact not always noted by those who live just outside the city boundaries of Liverpool- who often seem to sound more like scousers that scousers do. I've lost count of the number of bartering competitions I've got into with people from the Wirral who find a desperate need to prove that they are far more scouse than I could ever be.

Let me explain a little. I come from Crosby, which is quite a nice area on the northern edge of Liverpool. They are right- I'm not strictly speaking scouse. I don't come from near enough to the centre of Liverpool, and to be honest I don't give a toss about football at all, never mind which team you support. This is like being the only atheist at a christening service in the American bible belt.

So saying I'm not scouse is fine. Unless, of course, you come from that peninsula across the Mersey which I can see-opposite me- from the beach in Crosby. So distance from Liverpool is pretty much out.

So what makes you more scouse? It might be the accent (although as half my family is from Anfield and have no accent, I'd say not). Apparently, it pretty much depends on how near the stereotype that everyone else appends to Liverpool you are. Did you go to a rough school? How rough is rough? Like, a bit scruffy rough? A bit fighty rough? More fighty than the Eastenders Christmas Special rough? Are we talking fistfights? Are we talking any added extras to help the matters along? Before you know it you are into ridiculous tales of bloodbaths in the maths class and anarchy in the drama room (actually, the last one might be true).

There is also the famous Liverpool predisposition towards labels. Is that a label? Is it a genuine label? Even better, is it from the market and still a genuine label? Does it still have the label in it, or has it been obliterated by some marker pen? If you are going to barter with me on that one, by the way, I'll win.

That said, don't even talk to me about the one about scousers being thieves (the above does not count as thievery. That counts as a bargain. And they aren't usually off the back of a lorry). Seriously, my surname is Crook- I've heard them. All of them. Repeatedly. And strangely enough- despite this image that many Liverpool public figures like to join in with (because we have to prove we can laugh at ourselves)- I never heard it here. No one ever said 'Your name! How hilarious! You must become our emissary!'. So, all-in-all, it's nice to be home.