I’m from a small town in the of Worcestershire called Redditch. Never heard of it? It’s got over 80,000 inhabitants, and one of the biggest indoor shopping centres in the country. It’s also bigger than Worcester, the county town, and is one of the first ‘new towns’ ever to be built. So why haven’t you heard of it? Because nothing or no one important originated there!
Here’s Redditch’s biggest claim to fame: Rik Mayall once went to school here. Others include it being Jacqui Smith’s (former Home Secretary) former constituency, a breeding place for all Mormons east of Utah and the world’s former biggest producer of needles.
Just to give you an idea of how sad this place is, here’s a link to Wikipedia’s article of Redditch in popular culture. See how ridiculously small that article was? Scroll down a little, and look at “Places of Interest”. Notice that? There are six places of interest in Redditch! Three of which aren’t worth even worth writing about!
If we leave off the whole “Redditch is boring and unimportant” part of the argument for a minute, there’s still plenty more to complain about. Arrow Vale Community High School, one of the local schools, in a recent inspection, turns out to have the third lowest grade average in the country! And don’t get me started on the *****!
Taking a walk through the estates’ centres is a pretty scary experience – especially Church Hill, Winyates, Woodrow and Matchborough. The ***** sat at the bus stops or in front of the Costcutter’s will stop at nothing to make your day worse.
The night life is lousy and the word culture doesn’t appear in the typical Redditchite’s vocabulary. There’s no library and a cinema was only recently put in, since the old closed down some ten years ago. The only semi-decent nightclub, Fuse, is still pretty rough and allegedly full of drunk *****.
The overall feel of the town is grim. No one ever seems all that happy, and the schools are *****. If it isn’t ***** that you find on the estates, it’s old people and they can sometimes be scarier than the *****.
In conclusion, Redditch is the mirror of many other new towns around the country: it’s grim, soulless, rough and smells of piss and old people. It’s no worse or no better than your average new town, but if you’ve ever lived in a new town, you’ll know that’s no compliment.
