I have always found it strange this debate on the North/South divide. Having followed it for a number of years it appears to me that your DNA increasingly changes depending on how much further North or South you are from a horizontal line drawn on an imaginary map in your head. The line drawn invariably being where the imaginary line drawer lives. Sometimes other line drawers nearby reach a consensus as to what is to become a definitive division, and in accord a line is drawn in pretend crayon on a collective mental map to show this boundary. For some people this imaginary line hovers somewhere over the Thames, for others the Watford Gap or the England/Scotland Border. Generally the further north the geographical location of the person who identifies themself as a Southerner lives, the further north the little red, wavy lines of north/south divisiveness travel. The same is of course true in reverse for the people who think they are Northerners.
By the way isn't the Watford Gap a huge disappointment? I initially assumed it was a classic example of British understatement, and in actual fact it wasn't a gap at all, but a giant chasm separating both the North and South with a near insurmountable distance, to be only traversed by a single, spindly bridge, where vehicles would tentatively traverse its vertiginous span, their apprehensive passengers, hearts in their mouths willing their stuttering machines to the other side. As I said, what a disappointment.
I get the distinct impression that no matter where people are located they believe that by leaving their latitudinal zone of security they are entering a world of contagion to become infected by unknown maladies, a latitude sickness so to speak, like altitude sickness but with symptoms much worse. Even more worrying is the threat of mutation, where they would change into the opposite of what they perceive themselves to be. That is a Northerner or Southerner. As different from each other as Morlocks were to Elois. This would of course be the next big health scare after non-avian flu and the fact that our mobile phones are gently poaching our brains. Careful, they're contagious, they're from south of the river.
There is also a certain redundancy built into the debate, because as a species we tend to live in the parts of the globe that are reasonably safe to inhabit, Catford of course being the exception. Admittedly what humans count as safe can be rather contrary, what with volcanic eruptions, mud slides, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes taking place with alarming regularity near places with high population densities. Despite this, the vast majority of us do try and avoid a daily confrontation with Mother Nature.
The simple fact though, is that the most northerly or southerly points on the globe are defined by the poles, some of the most inhospitable places on planet Earth. Therefore we can take it as a given that despite the argument of who is Northern and who is Southern, you still live, generally speaking, and for the majority of the time, somewhere that is safer and warmer than the poles. This then means there will always be somewhere more Northern or Southern than where you currently reside at least for most of the time.
The simple fact though, is that the most northerly or southerly points on the globe are defined by the poles, some of the most inhospitable places on planet Earth. Therefore we can take it as a given that despite the argument of who is Northern and who is Southern, you still live, generally speaking, and for the majority of the time, somewhere that is safer and warmer than the poles. This then means there will always be somewhere more Northern or Southern than where you currently reside at least for most of the time.
Even in 2111 when as Nostradamus predicted, there will be incredible advancements in home building technology which will enable people to live at either pole in a reasonable degree of comfort, at a reasonable cost and in an ecologically sound, sustainable and vegan manner. Let us just also imagine that by sheer chance you manage by whatever skulduggery to own the house that straddled the pole, in pole position so to speak. Then from that point on you spent your days standing at the exact epicentre of your respective pole, revelling in the knowledge that you were the ultimate Northerner, so suck my toes you effeminate southern nonces.
There would still be a problem, there would still be something still further north than you.
There would still be a problem, there would still be something still further north than you.
Somewhere inside your body at some hypothetical midpoint would be a point even more northerly than the rest of you, some hardened, sub-atomic, Geordie Higgs boson of northernness, treating every other quantum particle, in its vicinity as a bunch of Southern poofters.
What is even more mind bogglingly disturbing is that according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and remember he wasn't that sure about it himself, you wouldn't even be able to observe this phenomenon as by observing, you would change the particle's behaviour and it would no longer be northern or southern. This would then prove once and for all that there is no such thing as north or south.
Now for all you people who have previously dealt in this black and white, monotone world of north-iness and south-iness. Now that I have proved to you that neither exist, prepare to have your mind expanded by adding subtle shades of grey to your palette of geographical references. You will now have to use the EXACT latitudinal addresses if you wish to refer to someone’s relative, vertical position on the planet.
So gather round all you people from 50°04'07"N to 58°38'24"N , and answer me this one final question.
So gather round all you people from 50°04'07"N to 58°38'24"N , and answer me this one final question.
Why isn't there an East and West pole?
