Arriving in Yorkshire

When I arrived in Yorkshire over three years ago my original plan was to be back on the other side of the Pennines by now. However I find myself still living in Leeds and still enjoying being in Yorkshire. I originally fled my Stockport roots to study Media at Leeds Metropolitan University and found that I settled in straight away.

Navigating my way around a new city was aided by many other fellow foreign students who had travelled far and wide from places including Kendal, Bath and Sutton Coldfield. Tasks such as decoding the Yorkshire dialect could be tackled together making the process of acclimatising much easier.

Although less than 50 miles down the M62, differences between Cheshire and Leeds were immediately apparent. Take for instance when settling down in front of the telly, something seemed odd, the weather girl was stood on the wrong side of the map, I could no longer see Stockport’s rain cloud. North West Tonight became Look North, Granada became Calendar and I felt obliged to keep up with Emmerdale and Corry.

 

After a few civilised evenings on the town, it became clear that Yorkshire men were a breed in their own right, banishing my pre-conceived ideas that all men are the same.

Exemplifying the disparities was a proud Loiner who took it upon himself to act as my guide to ‘his’ city. After learning to understand his thick Leeds accent we discovered we got along rather well, I was willing to ignore his innate frugality for the time being as I quite liked his straight talking and down to earth sense of humour. Over three years later and I’m still here, having just about become accustomed to tea like treacle, less rain and daily gale force winds. Question is, will I still be in Yorkshire in another three years?

posted on 25 January 2008 10:12 by Web Editor

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# Arriving in Yorkshire - Keep our children safe!

06 February 2008 11:06 by Nicholas Fulton
This week from our humble farm house on the outside of Harrogate, the new born Lambs are grazing on the fields under the watchful eyes of their mothers. I was thinking at how they don’t have to worry about the future and in my environment Technology. Computers now are a daily part of life and can bring us wonderful ways to interact, like blogging but it also presents a danger, it’s gets lost by government organisations, people use it to harm one another but more importantly it harms our children. I help local people understand their technology should it be the Internet, Computer or iPod you name it! When being called out this week to a home in Kirk Deighton because they we worried about their child crying on the Internet and wanted to know what caused it I was horrified. The poor child was signed up to Facebook and was being bullied through instant messaging and emails, having restored a few and passing them to the child mother the pain in eyes nearly made me cry. Then after the upset anger came in trying to protect her child she demanded I printed them all off and off she went to school armed with her evidence. It’s been a few days now and the mother has had chance to calm down and the bullying is being confronted at school. But I ask all of you to watch out for strange signs with children using the Internet, in the press recently tragic things have happened and what makes Internet bullying the worst is how easy and facebook opppps i mean faceless it is. Young children should be monitored using the Internet and if you are suspicious the computer should be in a public place, cast a watchful eye of your children’s Internet friends because nobody know if they are what they say they are, and meeting up with them can have ghastly consequences. One way to get your control back is to add parental controls to the internet, sounds too technical? Get in touch and I will walk you through it!