I grew up in a shipbuilding town in the north. Barrow-in-Furness.
Bill Bryson described it as ‘the very worst town in England’. It brought with it a sense of community back in the day. I’m working class and I kind of bring my middle-class self to work.
My mother is only 18 years older than me. My dad worked in the shipyards. He was frequently on strike for months at a time. I remember one summer my mother, who was a lab technician and worked in a school, went to work in the fish and chip shop at the end of the street so that we could have dinner. I grew up in that kind of cauldron of crypto communism. I was disrespectful of authority for authority’s sake.
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