Sheffield boy

This worked well.

Yep. That’s me.

This was an interactive quiz on the New York Times website, of all places. It asked me a few questions about what words I used for various things when I was a kid: infants, bread rolls, being grumpy and certain items of furniture, and then worked out where I was most likely to have grown up, given the dialect that I used.

Apart from being extremely accurate, it brought back some great memories. Playing Tiggy-Off-Ground in the school playground (that’s On-On to my kids now), for example. It was our standard go-to game before school started in the mornings (but only because you weren’t allowed in the back playground before school and you weren’t allowed to play football in the front playground, obviously).

And then there was that “being grumpy” question. To be fair, they could have pinpointed me with just that one answer. I really don’t think there’s anywhere outside Sheffield where “mardy” is a thing.

Made internationally famous by these guys, of course:

As the test was unfolding, I was wondering if I could fool it into thinking I was from Newcastle, and yes I surely could have done, but that was hardly the point.

If you’re reading this in the UK (and you’re from the UK), give it a go and let me know how you get on.

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