DO you live in one of the hundreds of British towns neither irredeemably shit nor especially good? Is mediocrity the best you can hope for?
Derby
This East Midlands technically-a-city is the epitome of mid-table. Neither a slum nor a location anyone would ever choose to spend a weekend, Derby is sort of near better places but not really. Unlocatable by most, unmemorable even to residents, undoubtedly one of the UK’s shrug-inducing hotspots.
Aberystwyth
Welsh seaside towns can be lovely, but Aberystwyth is too big to be charming while too small to be any good. Placed with deliberate awkwardness near no major roads, possessed of no significant attractions, it would be a lie to pretend the five-hour train via Wolverhampton to get there is worth it.
Dumfries
The countryside around it can be quite spectacular, but the town itself inspires nothing but apathy. Robbie Burns died here, presumably for something to do, and it enjoys an equally lifeless centre, a few standard areas of deprivation, and a name familiar only from weather reports.
Southport
In an island nation some towns are by the sea not by merit but by default. Southport is one of them. Possessed of a listless beach, arcades that radiate that off-season feel and residents who count themselves lucky not to be in the twin sinkholes of Blackpool and Liverpool, Southport can be said to exist.
Kettering
No-one is out there banging the drum for Kettering tourism, but neither is it as nationally renowned for its shitness as Stoke-on-Trent. You’d be hard-pushed to form an opinion on it even if you’d lived there for 30 years. Its nearest big town is Northampton and nobody’s heard of that either.
Darlington
There’s a whole previously undiscovered conurbation up there in the North-East. To the rest of the UK Newcastle is Sunderland is Middlesbrough, despite them being technically separate places. Darlington isn’t even one of them. Trains go through it and the passengers don’t even look up.
Maidenhead
Being completely fair, most of the towns half-subsumed into London suburbia – your Sloughs, your Wokings – represent a flat peak of mediocrity. Sat right next to Windsor, Maidenhead is the average-looking middle sister to a stunning posho who has a Legoland.
