Are you nostalgic for the 1980s? Do you dream of the days when men were men and usually drunk ?. Then you my friend need a holiday to Carlisle the last city in England and the last city you want to live in.
Now don’t let the word city confuse you Carlisle is a very small place so small that people have to be small-minded just to fit in. The city’s main housing stock consists of gloomy ex council houses almost all of which are built to one of two designs and are most regularly found adorned with a generous application of st Georges cross flags. Popular garden ornamentations will be found to be the free range cream leather sofa and the knackered fridge freezer although large old type televisions are now increasingly seen in more upmarket locations. Pavements of course are traditionally decorated with generous helpings of dog **** to make locals and visitors feel at home.
But what of the City’s bustling centre? Well here we find such delights as “The Lanes” shopping centre, a glorious 1980s edifice which replaced pretty much every building of architectural merit and countless independent shops, with a soulless half empty block paved utopia.
Other buildings of interest are House of Fraser, a reminder of that great tv series are you being served and McDonalds, which boasts a covered lane to it’s the side where teenagers smoke **** and try to look hard by ignoring the ear splitting mosquito device there fitted. But let us not overlook the Civic centre. Carlisle city council’s very own ivory tower. Built in the brutal 1950s modernist style and the city’s tallest building, it affords those who have the ability to gaze down on those who have not, whilst also admiring their multiple failed attempts to attract tourists by connecting the cathedral and the castle, thus far the only two historic buildings they haven’t managed to level. These include the millenium bridge and underpass both constructed to allow pedestrians across the city ring road which began construction in 1971 ( as yet unfinished). Both of these structures are equipped with lifts that either never work or haven’t ever been cleaned for the total inconvenience of disabled persons.
So why not give sunny Carlisle a try, simply turn off at junction 42 of the M6 and hopefully no one will ever find out you’ve been.
