Northern Accents

My childhood best friend's family were from Devon,
And my Father's from the North East,
Berwick, and Durham and Newcastle,
And I want to say Whitley Bay,

At Junior School,
My friend and I used to stage mock arguments
About our identities,
Founded in the extremities of the compass,
In which we took imaginary offense at,
And traded in,
Regional based stereo-types and slurs and boasts,

My best boast was that my Northern blood
Enabled me to cope better in the cold,

We were both white middle class kids from Oxfordshire,
And at this point I had never even visited,
The places I alluded to as my ancestral heartland,

But my Dad was from the Northern most town in England,
Where he learnt to swim,
In north sea rock pools, once the tide had been in,
So far north it had a football team in the Scottish league,
It became a point of pride,
With a Dad from Berwick on Tweed,

Although I was only half Northern,
That half was of a superior quality,

My dad would sleep half naked, sheets thrown back,
With the window open,
In December,

Yes,
My half
Was twice as potent
As some people's whole.

I was at least as Northern,
As someone from somewhere like Manchester
Which was basically the Midlands
To someone like My Dad,
Or 'Me Da'
As I started to attempt to call him,

I also adopted the use of the word 'Champion',
Because my Granda' used it.
Because I wanted to be someone,

Anyone,
Who was from somewhere,
Somewhere else,
Anywhere
Other than here,

Because, I suppose
I suspected,
There was nothing special,
About here,
Or me,

So I stole my voice,
I used a borrowed Identity,
I could never hear my Fathers accent,
He was audibly invisible to me,

He had assimilated ,
Capitulated,
Blended,
Osmosis,
Not pretended,

It was not until many years later that I had learnt,
That he himself was being served,
By selective Identity,
He grew up In Newcastle,
Only moving to Berwick
At the Age of 13,
He was gone by 19,

But he never even mentioned Newcastle,
Only Berwick,

And so I settled,
as My Father did,
In my overlooked Mothers lands
Leaving and returning,
And embracing my southern twang,
Apparently there is a trace of farmer,
But I cannot hear it,
It is as invisible to me,
As my Da's Northern accent,