Personally I have some wonderful friends from uni, all of them southerners, all of them lovely.

But it's only with hindsight I really realised how much I moulded myself into a "Northerner Lite" to fit in.

Now I'm back in Manchester, my accent has returned with a vengeance, and that's quite nice ☺️

It is genuinely jarring to see how
a) many of the privately educated southerners speak about locals and northerners amongst one another and TO YOUR FACE
b) they get a kick out of your accent (cue one fella asking me if I think he "sounds posh to me", so what did I sound to him?)...

What @robynvinter.bsky.social so brilliantly recounts is something I can remember vividly, but then when you go home you get told how posh you sound, and you feel a sort of shame amongst your fellow northerners.

And as a Uni of York alum, someone who chose that uni to stay closer to home...

Or better yet, ask ANY WOMAN EVER since 97% of women have experienced a form of sexual harassment!