Liverpool V Bognor Regis (North V South)

I've been inspired to write a bit about where I am from, well I would prefer to say *where I was born*. I am currently reading a book a VERY interesting, funny and thought provoking book by Stuart Maconie called 'Pies and Prejudice. in search of the North'. In only a few days I am half way through it. I can't put it down. I've read his other book Hope and Glory and still have Cider with roadies to read and I believe there is another book too. I recently went to a talk he did and got to meet him and he signed my book! I have to say I came away with a slight crush on him. Anyway I've been spending many hours in coffee shop drinking too much caffeine.

Friends and people who I have met ask where I am from I

say Sussex (because I am slightly, dare I say embarrassed to say where I was actually born and spent my childhood and teenage years). Then they ask "but where in Sussex?". I say "oh Bognor Regis". Its seems every Scouser I've met has heard of it and seems to have visited there!

When I explained I've been living here since 1998, they sound surprised I've still got my Southern accent. I have to say this is one thing I would love a scouse accent. Can you have Scouse lessons?

I now admit to hating Bognor Regis? Why? It is a sleepy little seaside town, not much going for it except Butlins and that isn't for the locals. They've got a huge Tesco and if I remember one nightclub on the pier!

I really don't have any happy memories there school was hell and I spent nearly all my teenage years in my bedroom listening to music! My only escape was the start of a love affair with the Beatles in 1992. I always knew some of their music and my parents were teenagers in the 1960s so it goes without saying they playing the music of the era when I was growing up.

My first visit to Liverpool was Easter 1993 when me and my mum came up to visit. It was also the first time I stayed in a hotel. The Moat House (gone Liverpool One is there now). We visited all the Beatles places and I was so excited! We went

on a Ferry Cross the Mersey, I remember the moment I told my mum (on the Ferry). "I am going to live here one day". her reply was "No you won't".

To cut along story short in 1998 I got accepted on to a course at Wirral Met college to do a degree in Media Studies. I packed my bag and I've been in Liverpool ever since (well apart from my first 6 months when I lived in Oxton near Birkenhead).

I absolutely love Liverpool and its people and when I've been asked "Don't you ever go back to Bognor?". I say "No because there is nothing there for me. My last visit was 2008. my family have never been close and my mum now prefers to come and visit me".

This lands the place I love and here I'll stay.....