- Hey guys, I'm excited about this video as we are visiting
my childhood hometown. (sheep baa)
But we're gonna do it virtually because
non-essential travel currently not recommended.
But Google Maps is the nest bext, the nest bext thing.
which actually involves a lot less exercise for me.
So (laughs) I'm down for it.
So before I dip my toes back into the lovely
land of Rossendale, I got a lot of questions
on my last video about the two
snazzy Japanese posters behind me.
Well, my little friends, they are Displate,
who have kindly sponsored this video.
Thanks boys.
And for those of you that don't know,
Displate is a metal poster that you can stick
to the wall using the magic of magnets.
So I got two new ones, which I feel
are more autumn, winter vibes.
First one is the geometric wolf,
which I love so much, the quality is incredible.
And then one that I thought would look cool
with this is the geometric fox.
So let's put them up.
They look so good, I'm so happy with that.
It was really hard to pick the animals as well.
I think if I got more, they'd look
really good in a whole range.
So if you want to get some of your own,
I've made a list of these and some more of my favorites.
You can check out my link below.
You can also get this special discount.
Every Displate you get helps plant trees
somewhere in the world that needs them.
Hopefully my tree is just filled with geometric animals.
(coos)
Right, let's get onto the Googs.
(upbeat music)
I'm from somewhere called the Rossendale Valley.
Sounds a bit like Moomin Valley.
The ratio of towns to sheeps is quite small.
Compare that to London, which is just brown.
Anyway, go away London, this is not your video.
Let's get on my childhood street.
The yellow man's like, oh my God, what's happening?
Here we are, nostalgia just whacked me in the eyes.
Oh, it's so weird even to virtually be back here.
So if we go to the end of the street
there should be a building site.
Oh there is, yes, oh this was more open before.
They've actually built something now.
So yeah, we used to play as kids on this building site,
which was super dangerous, but this forest
brings the biggest (laughs) memory back.
So I was about 13, me and my friends found a whole load
of adult magazines shoved into a tree trunk.
Why were they there? I don't know.
Who's looking at porn in the woods?
This is weird, I guess it was in the time
of dial-up internet, so maybe some (laughs),
some guy was like, I just got to take it to the forest.
It was a weird find, and my friends were like, wow, boobs.
And I was like (laughs) yeah, yeah, I love that.
There was actually some dodgy mags in the builder's
port-a-cabin over there as well, which we found.
So generally that area, if it has a memory to me, it's porn.
So moving on (laughs), I didn't think
we were gonna be starting the video with that.
So if we go down this road, we will find
the biggest drama that ever happened
on the avenue, and that was this wall.
Wait, let's get a good shot of the wall.
This wall, you see how it's all mildly knocked down.
OK, right, me and my friend Jess
wanted to do a bit of Jenga, OK?
We pulled about three or four bricks
out of the wall and stacked them, that was it.
Just a few bricks, that was it, that was all.
Anyway, the next day, the entire wall has falling down.
It was great to see the, (laughs)
the lasting impression is still there.
Anyway, the lady that lives over here
had been stood on that balcony watching me and Jess
pull the bricks out, so she told my mum
that I was the wall perpetrator.
However, my friend lived here, that was his bedroom window.
He saw the lady's son that night had come home from a bar
and kicked the wall down. (clatters)
But she didn't believe that her beautiful boy
would be such a scamp, so she put all the blame on me.
And then all the moms got involved.
Was it Phil? Was it Tom? You should ground Phil.
He shouldn't be allowed near that wall again.
He's just gonna pull the wall bricks out
and take them home and make his bed out of bricks.
I mean, I didn't want the bricks,
why would I want the bricks?
Why would I want the bricks, Janice?
No, it was your son being a drunken mess, so fight me.
Anyway, that was a story (laughs).
The good thing about living up north
was this hill was epic for sledging,
and we got a lot more snow, we hardly ever
get snow in London, but here it was like snow central.
It was all the way up to this wall.
That tree does not give me good mems.
Fell right out about, from about up there,
and slammed my tailbone on the wall.
My ass has never been the same.
So I got off the school bus at that bus stop,
and then I had to walk home up this hill,
which is the steepest hill of all time.
It was the only exercise I got,
so it was probably quite good for me.
This hill reminds me of one of my first relationships
with a girl, I'm gonna to call her Susan.
I didn't know the etiquette of holding a girl's hand.
How long do you hold it? When do you let go?
So we started holding hands at the bottom of the hill.
She was coming to my house, and then we started climbing
the hill, and we'd been holding hands for about
two minutes at this point, and I was like,
I feel like her hand is getting really sweaty,
but I don't want to let go of her hand,
'cause then I don't want to be the guy that's like,
ugh, get off, so we just kept holding.
And then my hand was just getting moister
and moister ascending the hill.
This hill goes on for fricking ever, look at it.
It's just still going, it's an endless hill.
At this point my hand was wetter than the ocean.
And then we had a very (laughs)
romantic little kiss leaning against this,
what is this, oh it's a salt box for the road.
Back at the bottom of the hill from hell,
so this was where I got the school bus every morning.
And it was so miserable because there were so many kids
on the bus route before me, so when I got on the bus
it was always completely packed with kids,
and I had to get on and just be
pressed against a sweaty window.
It was like a 15 minute bus down this road.
Ah, I don't want to go in Vicarage Lane, get me out.
This road is reminding me of accidentally
mounting the pavement about three times during my first
driving test, and the instructor
just grabbing the wheel off me.
Like, what is wrong with you?
Look, the pavement is thin, it looks like the road, OK?
So a bit further down the road this is the courthouse,
which is where I had my school prom, which is really,
really weird, I don't know why we had it at the courthouse.
Anyway, I became the laughingstock
of my friends because apparently I was slow dancing with
my legs super wide open, (laughs) and I didn't realize.
I'm glad I can share these things with you.
Hopefully it makes you feel better about your life.
Now this is the Tesco that was down the road from my house.
This is where I applied for a job,
and I told them that I make videos and post them
on the internet, and they didn't call me back.
I wonder why.
It was also as a kid a fun place to go with my mum.
I just really liked going to Tesco with my mum
and putting a million Haribos into her trolley.
There was a massive mansion up this road to somewhere.
Me and my brother got to be friends with their two kids,
I'm gonna call them John and Ron.
Literally, I'm not making this up, when they were 11,
their dad bought them both a Mini for Christmas.
When they were 11.
And we'd sit in this Mini with the handbrake off
and push each other along like it was some kind of toy car.
Anyway, they tried to get me to smoke, so my mum
was like, no, you're not friends with them anymore.
Let's go down the road.
The one thing I will say about the Rossendale Valley
is it is very pretty, there's so much greenery.
I know I'm literally looking at a petrol station
right now, but you know what I mean.
And I love all the old stone buildings as well.
(upbeat music)
And then here's the bus stop, and then there
is my high school. (thunders)
I thought it'd be like, wow, it looks so small.
But it does not, it looks how I remember it.
Quite big and imposing.
Except for PE, which was a living hell,
I actually quite liked my high school, which is rare.
So I've got more nostalgia than dread.
This reminds me of when I was in year seven
and some year 11 lad had kicked his football over the grate
and it came to me walking up the hill.
And then I was like, oh no.
He was like, come on, kick it up, mate.
Come on, come on.
I was like, I can't kick it up,
I don't even know how to kick a football.
So I picked up the football with my hands
and just went, meh. (buzzes)
(laughs) Fully missed the grate.
And then their football rolled all the way down this hill
to the left and just kept rolling.
And he looked like he was gonna attack me,
so I just ran away before he could get over the grate.
I just ran up the hill to go to school.
That was a cringe attack I didn't think I was gonna have.
When I was in sixth form college, my friends Mark and Emma
worked at this pub called the Jolly Sailor.
Is it still here? It's still here!
So we used to go in there and they'd give us free chips.
And then around here there was always a dodgy ice cream van.
There's was always a rumor that if you said a certain
code word, he would put alcohol into your Panda Pops.
(laughs) We could never figure out what the word was.
This was my school area, I mean,
everything is so lush and green around here.
Wherever you look, you just see trees,
which is lovely, and I do miss that.
(upbeat music)
What is that? That was not there when I lived here.
Here is the town's claim to fame.
Britain's last original temperance bar,
which means basically a bar that doesn't serve alcohols.
They have like dandelion and burdock or cream soda.
There's a guy that worked there
that looked a bit like a wizard,
so it was quite fun to go in there when you were 14
and be like, yeah, I went to the bar,
when really you were just sipping
your cream soda next to a wizard.
Which actually sounds cooler in my head.
So this was about 10 minute walk from my house,
and this is the main street of the town,
which still has the old cobbles on the street,
which makes it feel very old fashioned.
They have a sweet shop now?
They did not have a sweet shop when I was there.
That's where I would have got all of my nutrition.
It's actually got a lot nicer in the last five years.
They're like, oh, Phil's gone, let's get a coffee bar.
I went here last year when I went
to see my friend, and it was so good.
If you're ever in the area, go to Siphon.
Do-Dah's, oh, I'm inside, it's so weird on Google
that you can just go inside a shop.
We should get ice cream.
Thunder 'N' Lightning flavor, what the hell is that?
Now I need to return and find out.
Did they know Google man was just like,
hello, you getting ice cream?
Let's go see my primary school.
I went to primary school in Helmshore,
which is just down here, and there's my private school.
Oh, that one does look small.
Then next to it was this hill, which looked like a volcano.
We called it Sex Hill because we thought
people would go there to have sex.
We didn't really know what sex was, but it was scandalous.
And then after school, age 10, I was allowed to just
leave school and then walk down here to my grandma's house.
I usually walked with my friend Chris.
And we were fine unless it was winter and dark,
because then you had to walk past this graveyard,
which absolutely terrified me.
I thought I was gonna get eaten by a vampire.
All the way down here, and my grandma's house, oh there is.
Oh, I'm quite emotional about that.
Oh, she loved that house so much.
She had lovely neighbors, and she made it all nice inside,
she had a little fiber optic Christmas tree.
So I'd go there every Friday and we'd play
Scrabble and she'd make me pancakes.
And then one of my friends lived next door.
He had a Sega, so I'd play a lot
of Sonic until they kicked me out.
And look how pretty that is, just at the end of her road.
So there you go, I think that's enough
of a walk down memory lane for today.
Having visited it, I do miss my hometown.
I don't think I could move back up north,
but there are some qualities about it that I did love.
So it was great, just, even with
Google, have a little walk around.
If you're missing somewhere, actually, just go do this.
So give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed this.
I could do it again with my university town
or maybe Manchester, so I'll see
how much you guys enjoyed the video.
Remember to check out Displate
if you want to get yourself a cool metal poster.
I've put the link below along with the offer just for you.
And I hope you're having a good day.
And I will see you very soon. Goodbye.
(cheerful music)