This is the last time you'll hear from me. In this capacity anyway, writing about whatever happens to me with the assumption that it's actually interesting or relevant.

I worked in the North-East for three-and-a-half years before coming down to London where my family is based. I was loathe to come down, traumatised in fact, when I realised I'd have to leave Darlington and come back to my home town which I'd left as an 18-year-old and never bothered going back to.

While everyone was desperate to get down to London after university, I went up to the North-East where it seemed a whole lot nicer. Secretly, I'd hoped that I'd ensare a gorgeous Geordie and never have to go further south than Gateshead ever again. But sadly that didn't happen.

When I did manage to tear myself from the life I'd made there, I was happy to keep writing this column. It was my connection with the place I'd gone to in order to train as a journalist, only meaning to stay a year, but had been surprised by how familiar it felt. Even now, when I hear a Geordie accent (I worked in Newcastle for a year) my heart melts and I begin to gush to whoever it is about my time living near Northumberland Street. They usually look at me as if I'm kind of crazy, but to me, it's as if I've met someone from back home. I react similarly to someone who's a British Pakistani from Lahore, where my mother was born, and where I've still got lots of family.

Although two of my years up North were spent in Middlesbrough, I don't feel the same rush of love for it. It has a kind of post-steelworks romance going on and the stunning Transporter bridge and all that, but I got a bit of an unwelcome vibe while I was there. It may have been the almost daily racist taunts of "Paki go home" by kids (you can always tell a town by it's kids, I think) or the fact that people just aren't as happy as the Geordies (but then who is?). But, even in spite of that, I still feel a connection with near strangers when they tell me that they come from Middlesbrough

You might think this is quite a shallow kind of identification with a town purely because I lived there for a few years, but I think the feeling runs quite deep. I lived in Edinburgh as a student for four years and I never warmed to the conservative, rather hoity-toity people.

Even now, I'm keeping a weather eye out for a Geordie who's emigrated to London who I could latch on to, on a marriage kind of basis.

So anyway, I left the North-East years ago and now I'm leaving this slot but I'm not sad. I took up writing this to keep a wee tenuous connection with the place and it's been good fun to write and it also served its purpose to keep me attached. But I don't need a column to keep me connected. I realise now the North-East runs in my blood, man.

Published: 15/08/2005