Monday 6 May 2013

The dreaded question - "Where are you from?"

A very difficult question for me, which I am often asked when I meet new people, is "where are you from?"

Those of you who know a little about me will know why this question causes me trouble. If I answer "the world" people think I'm trying to be clever.

See, I was born in Berlin in 1989. When I say this people go "Oh wait, you're German?" NO! I was born in a British Military Hospital to British parents. This makes me British. My Dad was in the army, so we moved every two or three years, and so I have never really had a "base" other than the quite literal base I would be inhabiting at the time.

People often try to place my accent, which is an unenviable task given the nature of my upbringing. It's very strange when people to try to place me as "Northern" or "Southern" given that those words don't really hold any meaning to me. In fact, believe it or not, up until about 2 years ago I didn't really understand that there was any difference between "Northerners" and "Southerners", I wasn't aware that there was any animosity between the two. Having lived OUT THERE in the wide world, it seems ridiculous that one country should be divided in itself. Even more ridiculous is that I find that there are more divisions, between people who live ridiculously close together.

Take Warrington and Wigan for example. They are less than 15 miles apart. 15 miles people. And yet there is this huge rivalry. As an adopted "Warringtonion" I am supposed to hate the "pie eating Wigans" with fierce and amusing intensity. What baffles me is that we eat pies here too. We're practically the same. If anything, people from Wigan seem friendlier.

As a forces kid, I have no idea what to say to people when they ask me where I'm from. Is it the place I'm currently living? The place I've lived the longest? It feels very weird and quite disconnected to not really have a "from" for me. Some people suggest I'm from the places where my family live, but I only ever went to Leeds at Christmas to see family, and although my mother, and thus I, currently live in Warrington, I definitely have no connection to this place.

Where are you from?

I have no idea.

1 comment:

  1. Same problem, same reason, same confusion and therefore same response - no idea! ;)

    ReplyDelete