this is what ‘up north’ looks like. Ooooohhhh, you think, that’s pretty. And green and flowery and big and nice. And very wet. Obviously. Pissing down. Up norf, innit. And the hotel we’re holed up in serves as a metaphor for all of up north. Looks great from the outside, but you really wouldn’t wanna go in. Nice view though. Its like someone took a national park and stuck it in the middle of Coronation Street. Out here in the countryside between Barnsley, Rotherham and Halifax. Not a premiership team between the lot of ’em. Its that bleak.

Never mind. Its not a holiday. We’ve come up to pick up the father-in-law from Leeds and bring him back to civilisation for a week. So we thought we’d do an evening in the Dales, or Moors or whatever they call big green stuff up here.

But first you have to get here. Ah, that’s easy, just get on the M1 and ‘sail’ up for a couple of hours and you arrive. In theory. In reality we hit four lots of roadworks. 50mph speed limit, ‘average speed cameras’, the kiss of death. Normal speed cameras you can ignore, but those muthas; at your peril. Oh, and one accident by Nottingham; 2 lanes closed. Nice way to spend 20 minutes in the East Midlands rain. Tempting to pop into Leicester and celebrate. Even though they’ve finished the celebrations there now and moved them over to Thailand. As ya do. When yer owned by a Thai.

Yet here I am, near Halifax/Rotherham/Barnsley, watching the end of the FA Cup Final. Used to be the biggest game of the year. Now its, kind’a ‘nyeahh’. Don’t know how that happened. Probably to do with football’s obsession about the new holy grail: the Champions League. And you get that by playing league games, not cup ones. Cup only gets you into the Europa League. And no-one wants that. Unless you’re in it then its brilliant.

Oh well, I suppose dinner won’t eat itself, even in Yorkshire. Work, work, work…

Happy Saturday

A xxxx