Matthew Syed writes on the tearful resignation of Michael Vaughan, England’s cricket captain. Being a big girl’s blouse is all right for southerners, but not for a Yorkshireman, who shouldn't flinch, even when the ferret in his trousers starts to bite:

Getting in touch with your feminine side is all well and good, but let’s admit that it really works only in the right accent. We don’t mind a Leytonstone–born David Beckham figure, or a Devon-born Phil Vickery crying his eyes out: that is what is supposed to happen amid the cosmopolitanism and general emotional incontinence of the urban South….But can we please get a grip north of Watford? It simply doesn’t do for a Geordie such as Paul Gascoigne to lose it in public, as he did at the World Cup in 1990. What is being a northerner about if not having a stiff upper lip, a hatred of emotional exhibitionism and an all-round contempt for southern namby-pambies?

I’m not sure that the stiff upper lip begins to quiver as you pass Northampton. It's a generation gap rather than a Watford Gap: I am softer than my parents and grandparents because I have an easier life. Then again, even in their day there were softies living in the posher parts of Cheshire.