The Idler is putting together a book about crap British towns. Metafilter (I wish I could post, it’s a good site) has a discussion on the topic.
Quite a few people dislike Coventry*, which is understandable, but Nuneaton is mentioned twice, and then Atherstone! I’m a little startled that someone in the somewhat exclusive Metafilter site mentioned Atherstone - it’s a town smaller than the nearby village I grew up in:
“Also not mentioned, and less exciting even than Nuneaton, is Atherstone, an intensely uninteresting yet mildly spooky backwater where I once spent the better, or should I say longer part of a year.”
That would be it. I was once chased by an Atherstonian primary-school-aged child wielding a knife (I was 19), but that was in the ‘bad’ part of town (two or three streets). There are some very nice people there, and a real community, but there’s definitely something odd about the place.
*In Coventry’s defense, it was extensively bombed during WWII and then rebuilt by idiots. It still isn’t as grim as Gateshead city centre.
