Hilary and I celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary tomorrow, and (I think) we are both looking forward to turning 50 in the coming months. Time is, inexorably, moving on.Last weekend we went up to Northumberland to join one of our oldest friends at a party to celebrate her 50th. As well as seeing Karin, we also caught up with a couple of other friends - Michael and Judith - who we have also known for more than 4 decades.
As we chatted over a beer or two in the wonderful microbrewery at Matfen, just off Hadrian' Wall (http://www.highhousefarmbrewery.co.uk/), we reminisced over things that happened as we were growing up in Durham in the 1970s: favourite teachers (Mr Young for Geography, Mr Watson for Physics), great parties (199 Gilesgate in particular), the 4th year school trip to Paris, gigs (Focus at the Mayfair in Newcastle, Domefest http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/durham-dome-festival-1973.html ), former boyfriends and girlfriends. Of course we talked about other things - careers, holidays, children, the achievements of some of our classmates (one climbed Everest a couple of years ago, another recently released his second CD of ragtime and blues guitar) - but we kept going back to our teenage years in particular.
Driving home to Scarborough that evening I started wondering why it is that I still identify so much with the North East of England, despite not having lived there since 1978. I have been lucky in recent years that my consultancy work often takes me to the area, and my position on the Dean's Development Committee at Durham Cathedral means I get to return every couple of months to the ecclesiastical (and former political) heart of the region. And of course we still have family in the city itself.
Perhaps one never fully leaves the place where one has those first, life-forming experiences. I certainly still feel an afinity with the region, its cultural heritage, landscapes and buildings that surpassess anything I feel for other parts of the world I've lived in and visited. And every autumn (and although it's only the 4th September it already feels like autumn) I dig out my old Lindisfarne, Arbre and Jack the Lad albums - there is something comforting about listening to music that has a strong regional identity when the wind is howling and the rain is lashing against the window. What confuses me though is that my family has no roots in the region at all - one side is from the Midlands, the other from London and Norfolk. And keep it under your hat, but I was actually born in Windsor. I only moved to Durham when I was six years old, and by then I had also lived in York and Glasgow.
So what is it that has made me feel this way? A former colleague at Frontline - a weegie in fact - once asked me if I was proud to be English, as he sure as hell was proud to be a Scot. I remember telling Iain at the time that I didn't think of myself as being English at all, but that I was proud to be from the North East, and that being a Geordie was good enough for me. I still feel that way. I have pride in my region: where it has come from; what is has given the world and what it continues to do.
And so back to tomorrow, and our 22nd wedding anniversary. We're off to a restaurant that serves the best food that North Yorkshire can offer (http://www.thestaratharome.co.uk/star_welcome.htm) and that, like High House Farm Brewery in Matfen, provides a great example of how good quality tourism facilities can stimulate local economic development. It's a shame its 30 or so miles outside County Durham's boundary, but I suppose God's own country can't have everything!
