Nowt But Sun

A rainy Manchester makes the city much more familiar to me. Heavy, grey skies instead of the blue.

And we can’t complain, this April just gone being the sunniest one on record. And the irony on me, as a fan of non-league football, is not lost. All through Autumn and Winter, match after match was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

Since attending matches at this level, I’ve never checked the weather reports so much than since I was a postman.

Then, once all football had been cancelled due to this pandemic, of course, we have had nothing but glorious weather.

“Every single match would have been on,” my son, James, lamented.

What days out we would have had. Days out being currently denied us. But such are the times.

Then, from local weather and local football, to local vernacular.

I spotted this recycling bin in the centre of Leeds.

‘Empty plastic and cans, nowt else’

It’s the use of that word: nowt

This is a word that we use in Manchester, too.

Is it a Yorkshire word that slipped unobtrusively over the border into Lancashire? Or did it take the other route, from Yorkshire to Lancashire? Arriving unheralded and, without us realising it, becoming a part of our everyday vernacular?

I looked it up.

The word nowt is a Northern English dialect term meaning nothing, none and no one. This local dialect word is in common usage among the people of Northern England, predominantly Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. Nowt often features in the dialogue of the TV soap, Coronation Street.

Well, Corrie is a Manc soap, but, coming under the umbrella of Northern England, I reckon it’s a word that we can both lay claim to, Yorkshireman and Lancastrian alike.

Nowt wrong with that.