When it was announced I was moving to Manchester to become the Guardian's northern editor, the reaction of certain friends and colleagues was illuminating. "Did you, erm, want that job?" asked more than one, as if being dispatched up the M6 was tantamount to being sent to a Siberian gulag. Others, clearly struggling to think of something positive to say about what they obviously considered a hardship posting, fell back on a fail-safe pleasantry: well, they said, at least you'll live like a princess up there.

Money. That's what it all too often comes down to. How much is your rent? (About half of what it would be in an equivalent area of London). Do you have a spare bedroom? (Yes, and a room to dry my washing, the decadence!). Do you have to pay to park? (Not outside my house, no). Sometimes they ask about the weather, but mostly they just want to know how much stuff costs. They love the story about the time I went into a bakery in Rotherham during the byelection before Christmas and was astonished to be charged just 50p for a slice of homemade victoria sponge. I couldn't help myself, and told the lady she should demand at least £3. Her reply was chastening. "I couldn't, love."

I don't want to be that wally from London who struts around with her wallet open, telling people I could swap my one-bedroom flat for the manor house. Not everything is cheaper here, incidentally: petrol at my local garage in Chorlton is a penny more expensive per litre than it was in Clapton, not that I owned a car in London. Getting the bus from my parents' house into Lancaster, their nearest town, is twice the price of a single journey the breadth of the capital on a London bus.

But I didn't just move back because my money would go further. As pompous as it may sound, there was also a sense of duty. I felt compelled to ensure that a prophecy made by my predecessor, the beloved Martin Wainwright, would not come true: that his memoirs would be entitled "The Last Northern Editor". David Ward, northern correspondent for 34 years, once told me that when he joined the paper in 1974, there were 95 journalists working from the Manchester office. When Martin leaves next week, after 37 years inimitable service to the Guardian, I will be the only staff reporter in the north.

I was more than 20 years off existence when the Guardian lost its Manchester prefix in 1959. And though a Lancastrian by birth, I have been exiled in Edinburgh, London, Berlin and Delhi for the past 14 years. But I always defined myself as a northerner, secretly proud when my first Guardian editor once claimed to not understand my "northern patois". A joke, yes, but with a London-born mum I was always the one with the "posh" accent in the playground, and so I was glad my flat vowels had been noted down south.

Even after all this time away, I always felt the Guardian – despite the tireless efforts of my gallant predecessors – was not terribly good at speaking to its readers beyond the tube map. Whenever the Guardian ran a trend piece about how "we" are all now watching The Wire/eating baba ganoush/wearing harem pants, I always thought to myself: in north London maybe. No wonder the media, particularly the so-called "quality" press, misses important shifts happening among the majority of people in the UK, who do not live within the M25.

A year ago, covering a colleague's sabbatical from the Manchester office, I received unwarranted plaudits from my peers for correctly suggesting that George Galloway had a chance of winning the Bradford West byelection. "How did you know?" I was asked in the Guardian's morning conference, a few days after the Respect MP won a 10,000 majority. It wasn't rocket science, I said: "I was there." Or, perhaps more accurately, I had bothered to go. The prevailing wisdom from Westminster was that Galloway was a spent force and the seat would be an easy hold for Labour. But an hour on the stump with Galloway told a different story, and I wrote as much. I was rewarded with an email from a Labour lord chastising me for my prediction, and another from my colleague, Michael White, counselling me that it was a rite of passage to be dazzled by Gorgeous George, but that he surely had no chance (Mike later apologised in a typically generous piece).

Most weeks bring a new egregious example of Londoncentricity. In January, the route of the first three stages of the 2014 Tour de France had just been revealed. It was a red letter day for Yorkshire, which had been chosen to host not just the Grand Départ but also stage two; the result of a magisterial lobbying campaign by the marketing wallahs of God's Own County. And yet the headline on the first BBC online piece trumpeted the fact that the Tour was coming "to London" – which was true, at the end of stage three, when the peloton will speed into the Olympic park. But it missed the point.

When people back in London ask me about house prices and parking permits and the going rate for a pint, I get it. I just sometimes wish they would ask about the Manchester international festival, which those in the know consider superior to its Edinburgh cousin. Or the brine pool in Nantwich, which knocks your urban lidos into a cocked hat. Or the fact that the next Labour cabinet are almost all serving their time in northern constituencies. But they are more interested in whether I have a garden.