To Hull and Back (In Memory of Gillian Hall)

Lucy Beaumont / Michelle Dewberry

 

 

I. 

 

Lucy Beaumont and Michelle Dewberry are the two women I love most on British television. The former is a comedian and writer, who once worked on the meat counter at ASDA; the latter, a businesswoman and broadcaster, who once worked on the tills at Kwik Save. 

Both are blonde: both are beautiful: both are smart, sexy, and successful - so what's not to love? 

 

However, the thing that makes them particularly attractive - for me at least - is the fact that they share a distinctive English accent, both coming as they do from the fabled city of Hull ...

 

 

II. 

 

Now, I know that Hull - or Kingston upon Hull to give it its royal name - is not everybody's favourite place on earth; Philip Larkin once described it as a fish-smelling dump full of drunken dullards. But even he came to recognise its charms eventually, including, perhaps, its cream-coloured telephone boxes [1].

 

I know also that not everyone finds the Hull accent with its amusing vowel sounds - including the letter 'o', which sounds as if it should have an umlaut over it - as alluring as I do, but there you gö [2]. 

 

I suppose, when I think about it, the reason I like to listen to Lucy Beaumont and Michelle Dewberry on the telly, is because their accent triggers a certain romantic nostalgia, reminding me of lost love and times gone by. 

 

Reminding me, that is to say, of Gillian, the beautiful young punk and self-styled scorpion goddess from Hull [3], with whom I was romantically involved back in the early 1980s and who introduced me to the delights of coition, as well as Humberside.

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Philip Larkin moved to Hull in 1955 to take up the post of head librarian at the university. He soon began expressing his negative feelings for the city and its people in letters written to friends: 'I'm settling down in Hull all right. Every day I sink a little further.' 

      However, he gradually found things to like about Hull, where he lived and worked for thirty years, producing most of his greatest poetry, including 'Here', which opens his collection The Whitsun Weddings (Faber and Faber, 1964): click here to read online. 

      Readers interested in the Larkin/Hull love/hate relationship might enjoy Stephen Walsh's article in The Guardian (30 May 2017): click here.

 

[2] Those who study this kind of thing refer to it as a metaphonic mutation. It means that whereas, for example, the word goat is pronounced ɡəʊt in standard English - and ɡoːt across most of Yorkshire - it becomes ɡɵːʔt̚ in and around Hull. 

      An example of the Hull accent can be found in the British Library's Accents and Dialects Collection: click here to listen to a working class teenage schoolgirl, named Jessica Hardcastle, speak about her family, friends and social life. 

      Readers might also find an article by Jasmine Andersson (23 Jan 2020) on the i News website of interest: click here. 

 

[3] As a matter of fact, Gillian was from Leven, rather than Hull; one of those isolate villages on the outskirts of the city, where lives are clarified by loneliness, as Larkin would say.