10 points that prove you’re from Worksop

1) Your life ended the day Birds butchers closed down
Bridge Street, WorksopBridge Street, Worksop
Bridge Street, Worksop

It was a day like any other day. Stomach rumbling, you trotted down Bridge Place for your daily lunchtime cob from Birds and a bag of their famous tomato sausages to take home. You’ll never forget the broadening horror as you made your way to the entrance only to realise the shutters were down- FOREVER. Ok, so there’s the newly opened Crawshaw butcher’s and Fresh to Go round the corner, but will the Birds shaped hole in our hearts ever REALLY heal?

2) Worksop boasts some of Nottinghamshire’s most beautiful attractions- but you’ve never actually BEEN to any of them

The mysterious Mr Straw’s house, the elegant Hodsock Priory, the Priory Gatehouse, the Harley Gallery- yes, they all look fabulous and we WILL get round to visiting them at some point during our lifetime. Promise!

3) You’ll do anything to avoid parking at the Priory Shopping Centre...

Unless you want to enter the car park for two minutes to drop your nan off and incur a fine of £25,000.

4) You look down on people from Retford because their shops aren’t as good as yours

Haha, you lowly Retford folk can only dream of waltzing home with armfuls of posh yoghurts from Marks and Spencer’s.

5) COB COB COB

How many times?! Bread is NOT cake. It’s not a breadcake. Nor it is a barm cake, or a teacake. It’s a COB! Sausage cob, bacon cob. Cob.

6) And make that a large cob, please...

If you’re from Worksop, chances are you love your food- the hearty kind that’s not so forgiving on the waistline. This has been all the more proven by the fact the district was revealed to be the obese capital of the UK last year. Chunky but funky.

7) Being from the Midlands, you sometimes feel like you DON’T HAVE AN IDENTITY

The philosophical quest to determine who you really are continues as people refuse to acknowledge the Midlands even exist. You meet people from London who comment on your ‘Yorkshire’ accent, but are then shunned by people from Yorkshire who think you’re a weird Southerner because you refuse to call it a ‘breadcake’ (see point 5). In the end, you just end up whimpering, “I’m from near Sheffield.”

8) You’ve come close to running someone over on the pedestrian crossing between Bridge Street and Bridge Place approximately 45,687 times

Either people who use that crossing don’t know the difference between red and green or they simply want to die.

9) You refer to shops THAT USED TO BE THERE as landmarks

So many shops have closed in the town that when someone new in town asks for directions, you blurt out: “Erm... remember where Mcdonald’s used to be? Remember where Woolworth’s used to be? REMEMBER WHERE THE GAS SHOWROOM USED TO BE? OK. REMEMBER WHERE BIRDS USED TO BE?!” No, they don’t remember when it used to be as they have (very sensibly) never set foot here, ever.

10) You’re on the phone to the Council/the Guardian the moment the temperature reaches above -1 degrees to DEMAND that the Canch fountains be switched on immediately

But then regret it instantly when the fountains come on and hordes of topless men who really should never go topless descend upon the park.

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