This Week... What A Time To Be Alive

Commentary

"The two most joyous times of the year are Christmas morning and the end of school." – Alice Cooper

"If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble." – Bob Hope

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

If there's one thing that northerners love, it's being able to say that they're northern. As a northerner myself I can say that. Of course I'm not as northern as someone more north than me, for example wherever the hell Kes is set, but give a northerner an opportunity to speak about the exact details of where the geographical location of their birthplace is, and why that is superior to any other geographical location south of that, then they'll grab it with both hands.

The north is a place of innovation, where any food stuff from pie to pig fat can be shoved between two slices of bread and heralded as a local delicacy. The further north you go the thicker the beer becomes. In Sheffield, you eat the beer like you would an ice cream, and in Newcastle nights out often revolve around drunk Geordies taking a pickaxe to a pint of ale until 3am. I could go on, but people speak of the 'northern powerhouse' as if it is a fable, but the northern powerhouse already exists. That was proven this week as a bunch of space enthusiasts in Wigan sent a meat and potato pie into space.

If there's one true representation of what it means to be northern, then this is it – someone attempting to be more northern than their counterparts while doing something related to a meat pie. You can be as northern as you like but nothing is more northern than space. There are no southern toffs in space and the moon is made of hard cheese, so take that Yorkshire.