Columnists

COUNTRY BOY

By Editor-in-Chief ⋅ February 4, 2008 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

James Proctor

If, like me, you’re a small town country boy, then life at university may be somewhat daunting. I myself am from the town of Penrith in Cumbria. It is a bit of an everywhere and nowhere kind of place. Penrith resembles many towns of its size throughout the country but seems to hold a certain air of isolation, where the definition of homosexual is someone who spends more than four pounds on a hair cut. It has a few night spots which appear to be stuck in a time warp, think The Blue Angel but substitute the bright happy young punters with ugly country boys who look on with expressions of disgust to anyone who may suggest self betterment or just wants to leave the town in which they grew up. It is for these reasons that I decided to get the hell out as soon as possible. When I first moved to Liverpool, I was regularly discovered by my friends, wide eyed and incoherent, rooted to the spot on street corners in a crowd-induced trance muttering “wow look at all the different people”. My status as a small town boy is not all negative; girls seem to love picturing you as some Huckleberry Finn-esque naïve farm boy, a fantasy I have no problem fulfilling. So, if you are a small town boy in a big city like me, then take pride in your hometown – unless it’s Stoke.