The North East

Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up on the north coast of Northern Ireland. A region recently made famous by the epic fantasy series Game of Thrones and the magnificent Derry Girls, my home town of Ballymoney was a predominantly sleepy, quiet place in which to grow up. A relentless drizzle and distant drum of tractor engines paint a pretty accurate picture.

2008

I headed off to university – bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and (as was alluded to in previous articles) a total dick.  I'd looked at York, Queen's in Belfast, Newcastle and Durham (my rejection from Edinburgh still hurts to this day) but eventually settled on the cathedral city sat on the River Wear. Durham seemed mythical, and despite being tiny, felt like a vast metropolis to someone who had grown up in a field.

University was an eye-opening experience. Despite what many unfamiliar with the institution think, Durham University gives you absolutely no insight whatsoever into North East life. You don't pick up the culture, you barely speak to anyone local, and you're lucky if you graduate having any idea what a pit yakker is.

Instead, it's crammed full of wealthy southerners playing lacrosse, comparing Spanish villas, and debating whose daddy succeeded in dodging the most tax. It was enlightening, don't get me wrong, but it is completely unrepresentative of the upbringing or world 95% of us inhabit day-to-day. I recall one particularly floppy-haired chap stumbling onto North Road in Durham, looking up, and exclaiming "My goodness! I thought places like this only existed on Skins."

I can only imagine what would happen if they were dropped into North Shields High Street on a Sunday afternoon.

2011

Having sobered up during the summer after my undergraduate degree, and having received a middle-of-the-road 2:1 in an arts subject, I was a little clueless about what to do next. London – the death knell for so many hopes and dreams – had lured many of my friends away, but it never felt like the natural next step for me. Returning to Northern Ireland in the height of the Great Recession was a no-go, and with job opportunities being fought over by hundreds of applicants, I decided to do a Master's. Beneath it all, I was a little cheesed off I hadn't got a first, and having eventually stumbled upon an area of history that genuinely interested me, it seemed to buy me some time before making an actual decision about my future.

2012

Despite getting a first at MA level, I still hadn't the first clue what to do next. My then-girlfriend decided she was moving back to the thriving metropolis that is Burnley, which didn't appeal to me all that much. The jobs market was slowly returning, and decided to stick around and see what came up. Taking a flat with a mate from uni in Durham City, and winding up being gifted a job at Costa (by virtue of the staff assuming I was unemployed given the amount of time I was spending there) I had laid down some kind of foundation. It was only then that I started to get a sense of where I was living, outside of the bubble of Durham University.

In effect, the North East was very like Northern Ireland. Where Northern Ireland had the legacy of The Troubles, the North East was very much scarred in its own way. Prosperity – and having it snatched away as the coal mining industry was shut down – was still very much in living memory. In fact, the two cultural upheavels ran more or less contemporaneously with one another. The pit villages of County Durham were – and most still are – images of decline. Crumbling buildings and shuttered facilities in the likes of Coxhoe and Bowburn very much echoed the towns where I grew up.

The people too were friendly. To a point. When I left Northern Ireland I imagined a tolerant, secular society where it didn't matter if you were Catholic or Protestant. As it turned out, it doesn't matter if you're Catholic or Protestant, but you better not be foreign. Where Northern Irish hatreds were directed at each other, there was an undercurrent of racism pervasive in the North East. I found it – predominantly in older people – in almost every workplace I came across. It never occured to me that the word "Irish" could be used as an insult, and yet it was. It was nothing in comparison to the bubbling resentment at increased immigration, something that would later go on - I believe - to contribute massively to the Brexit vote in the North East, whatever hurried denials are issued. It was far too close to the surface long before the referendum not to have been a factor.

The North East opened my eyes to the fact that no matter where you go, people will still find someone to hate.

That aside, on a day to day basis, I began to felt more and more at home. The Irish have a reputation as fecund, alcoholic, hard-drinkers. I can guarantee you, they have nothing on the North East of England. Northern Irish teenagers look like the thirteen year-old French girl having her first glass of wine with their parnets in comparison. In Sunderland, they're knocking back horrific drinks like MD2020, and where Buckfast-fuelled Antrim teenagers seem at least to grow out of it, the consumption of alcohol (in bulk) is engrained in the culture here.

2014

A tumultuous beginning to employed life, and an even more tumultuous living situation, meant resigning from a job and moving out of a home. Settling on a spare room on – wait for it – SpareRoom.co.uk was a significant improvement for my mental health, and a new job in Darlington allowed me to see more of the North East. I loved the cities, the countryside, the sea. Newcastle-upon-Tyne is probably my favourite city in the world. The buzz, the people, the electric feeling on match day. It's magical.

Even the less prosperous places - the Sunderlands and Middlesbroughs have their own charm and rich histories. Venture beyond Newcastle into the wilds of Northumberland, or south from Middlesbrough into the North Yorkshire moors, and you realise that the North East is an area wrapped in beautiful landscapes. The cliffscapes at Saltburn-by-the-Sea reminiscent of Portstewart on Northern Ireland's coastline, and the beaches by Bamburgh hark back to Downhill Strand.

Don't get me wrong, I will never find them as fulfiling or comforting as the Northern Irish coastline - truly one of the most magnificent, peaceful places on earth. My house in England is covered in pictures of Mussenden, Dunluce, White Park Bay – the places I will always call home.

2020

It's been twelve years since I moved to North East England. I know it pretty well – if you need to get anywhere between Bamburgh and Northallerton, I wouldn't need to check a map. I've worked in a few (very) different places, and lived in cities, villages and suburbs.

I feel like I've jumped in with both feet. I've been caught up in the infamous Newcastle-Sunderland derby riots, been to countless gigs and festivals, drank in hundreds of bars. There's been plenty of good times. Whether it's in the sunshine enjoying summer cider in the streets of Heaton, or watching Newcastle battle Benfica in the Europa League quarter final, or watching the sun go down over Durham Cathedral with friends I miss dearly, there's been plenty of experiences I will never forget.

There have been plenty of negatives. Having a rather mentally dispossessed former boss attempt to sue me, being assaulted by someone I had called a dear friend, having an engagement crumble and fall apart. Not ideal.

Will I ever call the North East home? I don't think so. I still think there's another move in me, in my thirties. I'm reminded of a decade ago, leaving university, where the world was wide open. It feels a little more closed, now, and a lot less pleasant. But I think there's one fresh start left.

The North East has given me a lot. Brilliant friends, a partner I can see a bright future with, and a career and experiences I'll always cherish. It looks like home, but doesn't feel like home – in the way a childhood memory feels like an imitation.

The events of the last four years have left me feeling far more like a stranger in a foreign land. I don't recognise myself as part of a country that voted for Brexit, or rejoice in the capture of starving migrants at the docks. My British passport expired in May. I didn't renew it, and instead applied for an Irish passport for the first time. While my accent has become more English, my identity has become even less so than the day I arrived.

I don't know whether the next chapter is a year away, or five, even ten. Life has a funny way of throwing curveballs at you, and you can only really see a few feet ahead of you with any certainty. I think, now much of the dust has settled, that I can say I'm ready for whatever that curveball might be.