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A recent debate with a friend has left me wondering about the distinction between somewheres and anywheres as propounded by David Goodhardt in his book The Road to Somewhere. This categorisation has been widely used by commentators to differentiate between leavers and remainers in the EU membership referendum. I can imagine the glee with which they read about it, guaranteeing as it did that they had fresh material for several future columns. Or in my case, for a blog.Those of you who have read Where’s Sailor Jack? will know from the biographical notes and from the themes of the book that I have strong links with Lancashire, particularly with Poulton-le- Fylde and Bolton, the home territories of Bob Swarbrick and Richard Shackleton respectively. This latter surname from just over the boundary with Yorkshire was my nod to my own distant ancestry on the male side. To this list, I could add Southport, Liverpool and Manchester where I have either lived or worked. But I did spend the bulk of my working career in London, and I live in Home Counties affluence. I moved from living in a Poulton terraced-house with an outside lavatory as the war ended to going to New College Oxford, the Wykehamists’ college, in 1964. Such was the unique opportunity for the favoured few intellectually able boys (and just a few girls) at that stage.
I voted Remain for three separate reasons: the economic risks from leaving: the wish to avoid further European wars: my children were voting Remain. If I had my way, the EU would also have Russia in too for the second reason.
My friend pointed out to me, after my usual, tedious eulogy for 1950s Lancashire, that anywheres are also from somewhere, not that I had remotely argued the opposite. I think the main critique of what I choose to write about is that it is arguing for the past as seen from both a temporal and geographical distance. It would be fair to accuse me of having a love-hate relationship with the socially liberal London-based media, for whom my principal criticism would be that they don’t know their own country very well. They also irritate me in the way they inveigle themselves into the editorialising position at the end of every discussion. It’s a skill I wish I possessed.(I do actually have even more problems with locally-based authority figures who know their own domains only too well and as a result wish to impose petty controls.)
I’m a philosophic dualist accepting separate physical amd mental domains that meet in reality. In Physics we used to say that the field is fundamental. I expect I will continue to strive to be rational in the decisions down to me while otherwise remaining a northern, Anglican, Bolton Wanderers supporting, family-centred male from the Fylde, capable of voting for all three main parties depending on time and place. In life, it’s the story that’s fundamental. We’re somewhere any old how.