It depends where you live

Sounds like a Brit version of clafoutis - a batter with fruit dropped in it and then cooked.

Well I hope it's not such a dirty town now janea although it still has areas not so nice,but I believe she came from Hazel Grove and chose her name from Bakewell Road very near to me, where she grew up, and strove to lose her northern accent when she went to Cambridge,However we are trying very hard to lose the image of the cloth caps and the whippets and call mushy peas petit pois puree now.

I know it's not ann but it certainly was in the 50's when I was growing up!

She was married to Michael Bakewell Ann.

I know janea I do know what you mean. Just the name Stockport sends out a seedy image but we are trying hard to overcome it.

I love it really, Ann. If I ever leave Northumberland it will be to go back to Cheshire

I know some of the seamier side of Stockport but great efforts were made to improve poorer areas with money from EU Social Fund (that's what it was called at one time anyway). It's a very paradoxical town, with affluent, leafy suburbs rubbing shoulders with Manchester overspill estates. However, there is a good deal of green space and award-winning parks. And I don't even live there any more.

It is unfortunate that people in other parts of the country still struggle to shake off the cloth cap image of the North. We have had people visit us here who have said things like "I didn't think there would be so many trees!" as if it is some barren planet in the outer solar system! As anno says great efforts have, and are being, made to improve former industrial areas and brownfield sites in these great Northern cities.

All these gritty northern TV dramas seem to perpetuate the notion that its relentlessly grim 'oop north'. Happy valley for example.

I was at a family dinner party last night and we were laughing about this 'oop north' thing that abounds - this, as we were sitting outside looking across the golf links, past a beautiful lake, towards the hills of the Peak District, with glimpses of red deer moving across the landscape (Lyme Park, if you haven't already guessed, you local Gransnetters) - in Greater Manchester. Denigrating anywhere north of Watford tells me that the people who utter the words 'oop north' in such a negative way know little about the north. Like the south, there are pockets of great wealth and utter deprivation. We don't all sit in tin baths wearing cloth caps with a whippet at our side!

Nowt wrong wi' whippets whenim64, or cloth caps for that matter

I'm afraid it might have been my dirty old town remark that has sparked this defence of the North as it is now.

Being serious, the dirty old towns were the powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution. While we may regret the conditions our ancestors had to endure in the mills and factories, it's part of our heritage and we shouldn't forget it.
And while we may bemoan modern health and safety regulations, they were born from a need and desire to protect workers from unhealthy and dangerous working practices and conditions.

No, whippets are beautiful graceful creatures, JaneA. It's the stereotyping that bears no relation to current day. Northerners don't harp on about the oppressive deprivation further south, as described by Charles Dickens, but for some reason those stereotypes arising from northern mill towns and industrial factories still have resonance. Most of the factories and their chimneys have gone long ago (or have been grade 2 listed) and many of the factories and mills are urban loft apartments nowadays. The 'grimy' back streets of Manchester city centre are gentrified and occupied by city workers, with tiny terraced houses converted to look like the interiors in House Beautiful and more pedestrianisation has reduced traffic pollution.

Stockport city centre looks quite sad these days - nothing to do with dirt or industrialisation, more to do with failing businesses, permission for fast food and betting shops to line the streets, as in towns across the country. Go 2 or 3 miles in any direction, though, and there are thriving shopping areas and busy communities which have grown as Stockport city centre has struggled.

Stockport town centre, not city......

We've just spent a few days staying in Middleham, near Richmond, in the shadow ofthe castle, and I'm of the opinion that it's the most beautiful place I've ever been to, as well as being the friendliest. We took my whippets little travelling rug everywhere we went and she just lay there looking very elegant wherever she was [lots of oohs and aahs from people]#ifonlytheyknewwhatshewasreallylike

Don't tell them all please ,we want to keep it for ourselves.

That's sad to hear when. I wonder if Stockport council are doing as much as they can to encourage businesses?

I spent a couple of nights watching the curlews up on the moor. Wouldn't like to be there when it's cold, though.....[will that put people off ]...

They are trying,*Janea*. It didn't help having Mary Portas being brought in to make a documentary based on her claim that she can turn high streets around. Stockport town centre is a mishmash of quaint old streets, ugly 60s multi storey car parks and abandoned stores. If they hadn't 'developed' it, it would be such a lovely place.

I used to go riding [well, more falling off really] at a stables in Stockport when we lived in Manchester. Sad to hear of it's demise .

Stockport's development plans:

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/in-your-area/stockport-council-gives-itself-planning-8501472

One of the saddest things about Stockport, apart from the dismal Merseyway shopping centre, is the decline of the market which used to be popular and busy three days a week. I wonder about this new cinema and leisure complex which is only about a quarter of a mile from the existing Grand Central complex which also has a multi-screen cinema and a first rate swimming pool which has been home to many Olympic swimmers - even medallists.

The Mary Portas effect - not sure this was as effective as she'd hoped. The old town/historic market area is really good, but then it always was.

www.skportaspilot.co.uk/?cat=3

Apparently the market hall has taken on a thriving artisan and vintage persona now, anno DiL was there the other day and says it's vibrant and interesting again.

This emphasis on the gritty North gets on my nerves. A few years' back Michael Portillo took part in a 'live like a poor person' TV documentary.

As the former MP for Kensington & Chelsea, believe it or not he had plenty of single mothers, who work in Asda, have three children and live on a very low wage in a deprived neighbourhood, to choose from.

Not everyone who lives in K&C has a Richard Curtis film lifestyle.

North Kensington, despite being cheek-by-jowl with Notting Hill would have been rich pickings for the programme but where did the chosen poor family live? Merseyside.

I hope the authority that runs your market anno has a bit more foresight than ours. They knocked the old 1960s concrete indoor market at one end of the city centre down, to rehouse it in a lovely, modern, state of the art building at the other. They were also aiming at attracting more artisan traders alongside the usual traders who had agreed to move to the new building - not all of them wanted to. It worked ok for the first year or so after it was opened, with subsidised rents and a shuttle bus service to get people there. Then they decided, as it seemed to be thriving, to increase the rents and, strangely, do away with the bus! Result - new traders whose businesses were still finding their feet started to struggle and close down, and the established businesses struggled from loss of footfall as people found it difficult, or couldn't be bothered, to get there to shop.