The 25 Mile Accent Rule....by Sheila Claydon

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So I got it wrong! My latest book, Many a Moon, Book 3 of my Mapleby Memories trilogy, is not due to be published until June. I said April in my last post. So what to blog about? The April 11 blog by Karla Stover, a Books We Love fellow author, soon gave me a topic.

Karla has written a very entertaining piece about an English TV series, Midsomer Murders. In it she wonders, tongue in cheek, how true to life in the UK it is. As an English person who has lived in a number of different parts of the UK I can assure her that some of it only too true while other bits are vastly exaggerated. I will leave you to read Karla's blog if you haven't already done so, to decide for yourself which is which. All I am prepared to say is that nobody in the UK would dream of moving to the fictional village of Midsomer because of all the murders that take place there. Apart from Oxford in the Inspector Morse series if you have been lucky enough to see that, it must be the most dangerous place in England.

However, her blog made me think about the background of other TV series and remember Ted Lasso, one of the most enjoyable I have watched this year.  It is about an amateur American baseball coach who somehow ends up in England coaching a poorly performing football team. Watching him slowly become an honorary Brit is both engaging and, at times, very touching. Learning to drink English tea for instance! Facing the fans when he visits the local pub after his team has lost! Making friends as he walks to work through narrow cobbled streets...often in the rain! Learning how reserved many English men are emotionally. Accepting the quirks and humour of some of the very English characters.

These are things that are a small part of a much larger story, but for anyone who is interested they certainly highlight the peculiarities of life in a small English town. The characters, who apart from Ted Lasso and his sidekick, are all British, are often larger than life, but only just. There is a kernel of truth in every relationship and behaviour. And Ted himself gives the English viewer a very heartwarming view of an American who wants to fit in and eventually manages to do so. 

Then I thought about other UK TV programmes. Series set in the North East of the country, in Yorkshire, in Shetland, in Dorset, in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, in Liverpool, and London, and how they are all fairly true to their roots. Not just because of the different accents and an occasional word of local dialect but because of the different attitudes, geography and lifestyles. 

Although the UK is geographically small, the ancestors of its modern population arrived around 10,000 years ago and for thousands of years lived scattered across the land. During that time each tribe or group developed its own language and dialect and it was only when people began to travel that a more universal language evolved. Even today people from different parts of the country still have to concentrate hard to really understand someone with another accent and dialect. In the UK accent and dialect changes approximately every 25 miles, which is an almost unbelievable statistic in the modern age. Living where I do, close to Liverpool but in a small seaside town that still likes to think of itself as a village, it's not unusual for me to hear at least 9 different  accents in one day from the visitors who travel from nearby towns and  cities.  And I add to them because I'm a southerner, or a blow-in as I'm known locally, so my accent is very different from those of my northern neighbours!

Because I've lived here for a long time, however, I have adopted quite a number of local customs, words and phrases. Some, however, are impossible. For example, I cannot conceive eating chips (fries) with gravy, or having what is known as a chip butty, which is thick fries in a  heavily buttered bun (also known as a chip barm, chip sandwich, chip cob or chip roll depending of which part of the country is selling it) Why? Because although in recent years it has started to travel, it is not a southern thing so I never had it when I was growing up. To me chips (fries) must be dry and salty.  On the other hand I have learned to abandon my southern reticence and, like most northerners, talk to anyone and everyone, and what a joy that has proved to be.

Many of the series on UK TV portray just how different every part of our small country is which has made me realise how much we unconsciously learn from fiction, not only as viewers but as readers and writers too, because most of those series are an adaptation of different books. 

That got me thinking about my own books and how amazing it would be if someone discovered them and decided to televise one of my stories or, even better, all of a series. Pie in the sky of course but it does no harm to dream. To know too that all the best writers work hard at making the background to their stories authentic even if, at times, the story is fantastical...unless, of course, you believe in all those murders.  In which case, keep well away from anywhere in the UK that resembles Midsomer.