I DID WARN YOU NOT TO GET ME STARTED!

Thanks to Kelly, an uneducated yokel without shoes who nevertheless does have a moonshine still in the wood behind her house(?), I was inspired to put pen to paper finger to keyboard.


An uneducated yokel? No shoes? Makes moonshine? Surely that's not a nice presumption to make about one of your best blogger buddies just because they happen to hail from Arkansas?


No it's not but as Kelly asks in the opening sentence of THIS (spiffing) POST  "What's the first thing that comes to you mind when I tell you I'm from Arkansas?"


Now to be honest, other than what Kelly has told me, I don't know a lot about the splendid folks of Arkanas but I do know that Americans fall into one of three groups just as I know that the Germans are .........., the French are ........... and as for The Italians? Well, everyone knows that they are ..........


Seriously though, it is terribly amusing (if not kind of frightening) the conclusions we leap to based on where someone lives, their names, their hair colour etc, etc, etc.


I mean take us English (Yes, somebody please take the English I hear some of you say) who according to the British Life and Culture site when asked  What are the first three things which come into your mind when you hear the word 'England' or 'the English'? answered ......

• Fish and chips (studies show 'we' actually prefer a curry), rolling hills and sarcasm (No, really?)
• A typical Englishman is a man wearing a bowler hat (Husband dearest won't put the bins out unless he's wearing his. Whoops, there's me being sarcastic)  carrying a folded up umbrella and reading the Times newspaper
• Warm beer (You should here what we say about lager), stiff upper lip, the weather (This one I'll give you as many of us do seem to have a strange preoccupation with the weather)
• (As you can tell from this post) Use the words 'splendid', 'terribly' and 'spiffing' a lot.

But I didn't really want to talk about the English, I wanted to talk about the stereotypes that people have about us Geordies.

OK, so it's nice that we are thought to be amongst the most friendly, the most splendid of people here in England and it's great that we are well known for our sense of humour and our trustworthiness BUT it really annoys me that whenever we are featured in a documentary or a news programme the makers seem to go out of their way to find the most ignorant, the most loud, the most opinionated of individuals.

Then of course there are the stereotypes of the Geordie as 

• Forever saying 'Wheyy aye mann' (Why-I-Man). Quite where this came from I don't know as I have yet to hear anyone say it other than for the amusement of someone not from the area who thinks we say it.
• A bunch of party goers (Tis true we are one of the party capitals of Europe), the women wearing next to nothing despite the fact it's snowing outside, the men in their short sleeved shirts, with not a coat in sight. One of those occasions when there is some truth in the stereotype.

Geordie lasses oot on the Toon.

(Geordie women out on the Town)

AND according to Yahoo!Answers who asked 'What stereotypes do you give to worr (our) Geordies?' people said ......

• Thought it was all brown ale, women with bricks in their handbags 
• Like flat caps and whippets (surely that's Yorkshire?)
• Unintelligible accents,  lot's of bright orange make-up
• Women who are good in a fight. 

Enough of  Geordies though. Just don't get me started on the presumptions people make of us Tracy's ........ thought to be stupid in the extreme, we are of easy virtue, have a best friend called Sharon and a boyfriend called either Kevin or Wayne and our outfit of choice is a mini skirt and low-cut top (always a size or two too small) and white stiletto sandals with at least a six inch heel. Oh, how I wish my parents had called me Carol as planned.

A typical Tracy..

Note the flawless make-up, the large chest, the tiny waist, the 'OMG' shoes, the fact that you can see her underwear.