WHEN I left my home town last summer for pastures new, it was a move made with some anxiety.

Like most people who live in the very place in which they were born and bred, I spent the early years of my adulthood trying to get out.

University provided

temporary salvation when a one-year course dragged me (not exactly kicking and screaming) away from the delights from the former mill town and into a slightly

bigger, more northerly former mill town. Out of the frying pan into the fire you may say, but a change was as good as a rest.

Twelve months later I was back. The course completed, my money spent, I was sucked back to knuckle down and get a real job. A stint at the local paper saw me rooted in my home town for a further three years.

Finally last year I left for good. I packed my bags and sailed off into the sunset and headed up the M6 to a place with a canal (but no mills). My pals had the same idea - one left for Derby, the other for Cambridge, leaving my family as the sole reason to go back, which I have done on a day-pass only.

Last weekend I spent two days there, which gave me the chance to sample the pubs and clubs for the first time in many months.

Now I remember why I left.

Half of the pubs I tried to visit wouldn't let me in simply because I was wearing

trainers. The skinhead in front of me in the queue was all right because, although he was stumbling around

cussing and cursing, he had made the effort to put shoes on. So he couldn't be a

trouble-maker.

When eventually I was let in somewhere, I wished I hadn't bothered.

There's nothing wrong with my birthplace as a place - it's a proud Lancashire town with proud inhabitants and has a great heritage - but to me it was depressing.

The taxi ride home from the centre was like a

chronological snapshot of my life. We went past the school where I spent my early years, the bingo hall where I got my first Saturday job, the baths where I dived for bricks in pyjamas, the youth clubs, another school, a rack of two-up, two-down 70s red-brick houses where my friends used to live, the fields where we played football, my first girlfriend's house, the pubs and finally back to my home.

I will always be fond of my town - there are too many good memories for me not to be - but last weekend

emphasised why I felt I had to get out in the first place.

Nostalgia may be a great thing when you are older, but I'm not yet ready for it. In years to come maybe I'll make the same journey wearing more of a smile.