I am a reasonably Scottish person. I have lived there for approximately 80% of my life, and I speak with a fairly broad Central Belt accent.
It therefore boggles my mind how often my nationality is mistaken. This usually happens with either Americans or people from the London area. Typically, I am mistaken for being Irish or Northern Irish. Not necessarily a bad thing, and probably fuelled by the fact that Boyfriend is from Belfast; people probably like to assume that since we are both Obviously Not English we must be from the same place.
This blog post is being written because for the first time in my life someone failed to recognise the Obviously Not English part and his wild guesses at my homeplace amused me terribly.
The offender was a young lad from Surrey, approximately 20 years old, has been living in the North East of England for several months now. He asked whereabouts I was from; I assumed he knew the country and prompted him to guess.
His first was Somerset. Second guess was Yorkshire.
Oh dear. How can people be so unaware of their country that they know so little about places outside a few miles radius of their home? Le sigh.
