Words | City Jackdaw

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.

Recently I came across this extract from Australian composer Baz Luhrmann’s iconic 1999 song “Wear Sunscreen”, and thought it sounded like the perfect attitude to stick with as I enter this new decade and my middle years:

“Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind….the race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the Funky Chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either, your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Be nice to your siblings, they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand your friends come and go but for the precious few you should hold on to.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old and when you do you’ll fantasise that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.”