Middlesbrough

Amenities: The Malt Shovel – top pub

Not strictly a town, but it is undisputed armpit of the nation. Main toursit attraction? A transport bridge. Poisonous industrial fumes drift down one dismal, windy road. Outsiders will be lucky to leave unbruised.

Matthew De Abaitua

It is interesting to hear some of the misapprehensions that people Not From The North East hold of the area.
They may refer to a warm and friendly welcome. They may enthuse about the accent. Career-students might enthusiastically pipe-up on the topic of the cost of beer. Someone who has replaced their life with football might also interject, to inform you of its premiership-status team.

Unfortunately, with the immediacy of a javeline poked sadistically through the spokes of someone’s speeding motorcycle, this is where these facile and hopelessly optimistic statements must end.

#1 ‘A Warm and Friendly Welcome’
This is a notion you mightly idly allow to float around your head as you tread the broken and thoroughly animal-defacated paving-slabs of the town’s main High Street, Linthorpe Road. Maybe its the warm welcome Barry Scally has for you, as he politely requests “twen’-y pence forr the bus ‘orrm, me-ate.” A warm welcome may also lie in the bosum of Kelly Scally, as she inquires if you’re “lookin for buznizz.” If you’re really lucky, she might ”ave a meerrt ooo fancies you.”

I’m keen to point out that in fact, at least amongst strangers, the warm rarely welcome exists. I’ve been beaten-up for a
cigarette.

#2 ‘Nice Accent’
The real Middlesbrough accent it seems is the blighted child of a Scouse father and a mother who has mild traces of Newcastle in her accent. It is more evident in the younger generation what the true sound of the accent is , and it usually sounds like its going to scrounge a cigarette from you or steal your bike.

#3 ‘Cheap Beer’
If you are a student, then the University of Teesside’s Student Union (http://www.utu.org.uk) might be the place for you. Here you might find that the assertion of ‘Cheap Beer’ holds true. Yet this is not ‘Boro’, as it is affectionately known, itself.
This is a protective bubble, a false community of students, by students, for students. If you have a drink with student chums in the union, you are drinking Cheap Beer In The Union, not in Boro. Step outside of this bubble, and beer-prices are roughly in line with most of the North of the UK.

To drink in the town itself, at least as a student, is a risky affair. To drink outside of the town, is simply suicidal.

#4 ‘Good Football Team’
If you support a team that is not Middlesbrough, then you have two choices;
a – Don’t go to Middlesbrough;
b – Change your allegiance.

Mark Wingate

STICK TO THE MAIN STREETS

To begin with it is hard to argue with the state of Middlesbrough town centre. It is indeed a cross between Royston Vasey and a 1920 Pit village. However, Middlesbrough isn’t just the town centre.

In favour of Middlesbrough is its location. Middlesbrough is a short drive to the North Yorkshire Moors, including the picturesque villages of Castleton, Rosedale and Goathland (where Heartbeat and some scenes from Harry Potter were filmed). Without a doubt the North Yorkshire Moors has some of the country’s most beautiful walks and it this that attracts many people to live in Middlesbrough.

The intelligent inhabitants of Middlesbrough stay away from the scally’s of the Boro and live on the outskirts of Middlesbrough in the plush green suburbs of Nunthorpe, Marton, Ingelby Barwick, Stokesley and Yarm. Here the non-scally residents are shielded from the drug dealers, prostitutes and heroin addicts that frequent the back streets of the Boro. And who can name a town or city that does not suffer drug problems and prostitution?
Finally, Middlesbrough now has one of the country’s best managers helping to guide the Boro in the Premiership. Now that we have rid ourselves of the folly that was Robson, Middlesbrough FC is now seen as a rising star with its manager Steve McClaren strongly tipped as the next England Manager.

All in all Middlesbrough isn’t too bad. There’s worse places to live, but I would recommend that you stay out of Middlesbrough at night, and during the day stick to the main streets.