EVER since I moved to Liverpool five years (or so) ago, I've been interested in the city's hatred and mistrust of anything to do with Manchester.
I know that in some ways this is just a British thing. We tend to hate any town close to us. Newcastle hate Sunderland. Ipswich hate Norwich. Portsmouth hate Southampton. Hull hate everyone.
It's not a football thing - not at all. It manifests itself in football, with derby matches being played out in a far more highly charged atmosphere than regular league matches, and I think that generally this is a really good thing. It's good to have rivals.
But the hatred of neighbouring towns has nothing to do with sport - it seems we just hate anyone within the area who aren't us. Ask a lovely little old lady, sweet as you like, standing on her doorstep in Wigan what she thinks of people in St Helens and she's probably reach for her stick and scream "Scum! The lot of them!"... "Why?"... "Um, well... Scum! The lot of them!"
It a weird one, and I wonder how long it's been going on. Forever maybe. But does it happen abroad? Do people in Milan, football aside, hate people in Rome? Maybe.
Anyway, I know the tradition reason for hating Manchester in Liverpool is the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal, which pretty much sewed the seed for the ultimate disintegration of Liverpool's docks. Bypassing them, goods could be shipped directly to the industrial centres of the North West without the need of unloading from ships.
That IS quite a good reason to have malice towards a city, but it's not the reason, surely, that the ill feeling exists today. I personally, as a proud citizen of Liverpool, think it's just jealousy on our part. Manchester has it's faults but in terms of regeneration it's about 10 years ahead. The whole Capital Of Culture malarkey might close the gap by a couple of years, but basically the IRA bomb in Manchester's city centre did more good than bad in the long run. And I mean that sincerely and with the greatest respect to those who suffered.
I travelled there this evening to meet my friend, A. A (and that's not her name. She's not being post-modern. Her parent's weren't hippies. I'm abbreviating all names in this Blog to make me sound cool and to protect their identities) is only ever to be found at work or play in Manchester's Northern Quarter, a collection of streets north of Piccadilly Gardens that form the city's cultural and alternative hub.
It's got it's good points. There's variety. There's some good music. There's the chance to see, drink, or eat something different. But Lord does it have it's desperate try-hards. You've seen them - the young, media sophisticates, wearing whatever they've been told to that month by some glossy rag. At the moment it's jeans slung ridiculously low. Stupidly, comically, low. I know this has been going on for a while in some cultures but it's gone too far.
There was this one lad playing pool in a pub called The Bay Horse. (The Bay Horse is at the epicentre of the Northern Quarter and plays host to the good and bad of this peculiar little kingdom.) His jeans were belted at the bottom of his arse, around his legs. The rest was just boxer shorts. I couldn't decide what was more ridiculous; 1. His stupid jeans, the idiot. 2. That no-one was laughing at him. Or 3, That I'm now at an age, 28, where I feel it's right and proper to comment on how the youth of today are deciding to dress themselves.
But it is stupid. I hated him and his jeans. What made it worse is that I actually played him at pool, played worse than perhaps I ever have, lost, and he was particularly ungracious in victory. If I were braver I could have turned around and said, "Oh, you've won, well done, well done, but LOOK at your trousers. Look at your stupid, stupid trousers. Look in the mirror! Everyone can see your pants! Are you an idiot?! One game of pool, so what? At least I can dress! I loathe you!"
Maybe that's the difference between Liverpool and Manchester. Stupid trousers. Stupid, fashion obsessed, moronic pond life in stupid trousers.
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