There are 3 types of old people in the UK.
- Those between the ages of 90-100; walking around with their mouths ******* wide open as if they’ve just been told the world is running out of oxygen.
- Those between 80-90; slightly more lucid, but incontinence has clearly taken hold as evident by the stench of urine that seems to envelop them day and night.
- Those between 70-80; Much more coherent, although unbearably self righteous and full of “you don’t know you’re born young man” type rhetoric.
Newent, a small market town in Gloucestershire of around 5000 people, is cursed with all three species of elderly.
If ever a town symbolised the ageing of Britain, it is Newent. To see anyone in the town below the age of 60 will lead you to question whether you are in fact hallucinating (highly likely due to the aforementioned urine fumes).
Newent is perhaps the only town in England where church attendance remains high, we all know how the old folk love a good Sunday service. The sight of Newents vast army of pensioners shuffling their way to St Mary’s on a Sunday morning is like a scene from George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Sometimes you can hear them discussing which burial plot they would like as they approach the church entrance through the graveyard.
The shopping in Newent is limited to say the least. Stores full of useless bric a brac fill the main street, adding to the sense of a town past its prime. One glance in the window of any of these shops is proof that black magic exists. What other explanation is there for their ability to stay open without ever turning a profit?
The new adult nappy emporium is responsible for most of the town’s income.
The onion fayre is Newent’s claim to fame. A festival celebrating the areas prominence as a producer of pungent round things that belong in the ground (I am referring to the onions now, not the old people).
The main tourist attraction lies just outside Newent town. A natural wonder on par with The Grand Canyon, Mount Everest or the Amazon Rainforest: May Hill, an ever so slightly elevated mound of earth with a clutch of diseased trees on top, offering wonderful views towards the crumbling grey housing estates of Gloucester.
Jokes aside, there is one redeeming attraction just outside the town; the International Bird of Prey centre. I hear they placed it by Newent due to the vultures preference for hovering above creatures that are nearly dead. With a town that is mostly pensioners, this does indeed seem like a sensible location.
Calling Newent boring is an insult to the word boring, but if you do insist on visiting the Gloucestershire branch of God’s waiting room, just make sure you don’t take your grandparents with you or they will never want to leave.
