Musicals vs People who think the north is rubbish

GOOD THING: MUSICALS
I was a fan of musical films long before Moulin Rouge, Chicago and The Producers, which either makes me avant-garde or incredibly uncool. The first film my parents took me to see at the cinema was Mary Poppins, an indisputable classic, and it snowballed from there. My dad took me to see an am-dram production of Calamity Jane when I was six, which my dad tells me was embarassingly bad, but which I loved. In fact, the following Monday, I wrote about it at school in my My News Today workbook. I listened to the Doris Day LP on a loop, and produced a series of wall friezes depicting scenes from the play, including song lyrics. I felt an affinity with Calamity Jane at that time, because we were both tomboys - though how I ignored the fact that she basically sold out and became all girly and submissive, I don't know. Anyway, there's definitely something great about the old-style MGM musical, from the barn-raising in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to the rooftop hoofing in West Side Story. Lots of people can't stand - or get past - the fact that the characters just spontaneously burst into song, automatically knowing the words and dance-moves, but they're missing the point. Musicals are supposed to be completely unrealistic - even when they're based on fact, like The Sound of Music. My childhood dream was to have a career in musical theatre, but sadly I've been hampered by a total lack of singing and dancing ability.

BAD THING: PEOPLE WHO THINK THE NORTH IS RUBBISH

...are mainly from the south. While at university 'down south', I was virtually the token north-easterner, and so was often treated with the same fascination as an extremely rare and endangered mammal. How did someone from a comp in Whitley Bay get into Cambridge University?, they wondered. Even though I sound nothing like Ant & Dec/Jimmy Nail/Robson Green, and in fact barely have a Geordie accent, I still earnt choice nicknames such as Geordie Whippet Racer. Despite never having been there, many of my friends seemed genuinely frightened of The North, believing it to be cloaked in a miasma of pit dust, where feral children and animals run wild and everyone is unemployed. The idea of actually going there was anathema - though one friend of mine who later passed through on the way to Edinburgh commented that Newcastle seemed "a nice city." Resounding praise, indeed. When I got a job with a literature development agency in the North East, there were countless jokes about people in the region being totally illiterate. Of course I've got a sense of humour about these things (especially as some of the cliches are, unfortunately, true), but what's so great about the south? Hose-pipe bans, high council tax, high cost of living, rude people (okay, not everyone) and close proximity to the French - all things that can often be avoided in the north. And it was gratifying to see a documentary that predicted, once sea levels rise, the first part of Britain to be irrevocably submerged by water will be the south-east - time to invest in wetsuits, folks!