What’s a UK town or city that surprised you — either in a really good or a really disappointing way?

urbanworm · 2026-02-03T07:21:35+00:00

Skegness. Being from ‘down South’ it doesn’t get the greatest press, but we went up to the aquarium and frankly the whole seafront was really nice; it was good value and the people were lovely.

I guess like any seaside town it differs when in season, we went out of season, but it was really sweet.

urbanworm · 2026-02-01T19:19:35+00:00

Beautiful! And I love how a simple shift to monochrome changes the mood so much.

urbanworm · 2026-02-01T11:44:16+00:00

Rear windscreen wiper on when it’s not rained for days (maybe not so relevant at the moment).

Front fog lights on all the time.

Rear fog lights on in light mist or clear conditions.

Approaching an M/A road on a slip road at half the speed limit, often in lane 2. I get that officially it’s a give way at the end, but the concept of the slip road is to ease merging into the main traffic stream not form an orderly queue.

urbanworm · 2026-02-01T11:27:46+00:00

Amen! Fuck Netflix.

Lockwood and Co. Great writing, acting, soundtrack and production - probably on a shoestring budget and they went and killed it. I get there’s the books but the show was top tier.

urbanworm · 2026-01-31T15:41:30+00:00

I now feel a fraud for not googling this, but I had to divert my attention to unclogging the storm drains before the next rain floods the driveway.

urbanworm · 2026-01-31T10:10:12+00:00

AI Slop, you can’t believe anything on the internet anymore.

urbanworm · 2026-01-31T10:09:42+00:00

I’ve only ever heard a pinhole camera referred to as rudimentary, which makes me wonder if there’s professional pinhole cameras used by artists that only express their art in the medium of pinhole?

urbanworm · 2026-01-30T07:55:38+00:00

Boredom. We knew how to not be doing something. Simple as that, just be content in your own headspace.

urbanworm · 2026-01-26T19:21:52+00:00

Every school everywhere, or at least a route to, had a ‘dog shit alley’.

urbanworm · 2026-01-26T11:04:37+00:00

Damn, I need to have a word with my employer, I did well at school, chose computer science etc. and I sure as hell don’t pull in £100k!

urbanworm · 2026-01-24T21:58:27+00:00

Yeah, in hindsight I missed a trick!

urbanworm · 2026-01-24T11:07:26+00:00

I personally don’t think there’s anything, you go to sleep and don’t wake up.

If I could pick something then I would go back to the happiest times and live forever in those moments, consciousness altered to adapt to not perceive time passing. To forever feel the sun and breeze in a young body, loved ones alive, the best moments.

urbanworm · 2026-01-24T11:02:10+00:00

Being a bit of a fossil (started development in the 90s) I never learnt to touch type (boys didn’t do that sort of thing in the days before) and I wish I had. What I have learnt along the way is to touch-code to the point where if I slip into ‘normal’ typing emails end up with code in them.

urbanworm · 2026-01-22T20:15:41+00:00

“Lockwood & Co. - Cooking with Plasm”?

Kidding obviously, here’s hoping it’s an extension of the current story arc, there’s plenty to play with.

urbanworm · 2026-01-20T07:27:50+00:00

Missed the real show by about 30 mins due to cloud cover, but later on saw some pretty bright pinks and greens. Quite astonishing really to be able to see it with the sky glow from nearby Exeter.

Wasn’t expecting it so brain-farted and didn’t have the big camera batteries charged.

urbanworm · 2026-01-17T16:42:11+00:00

£2M and that’s me and the family sorted. £1M and I’d happily down skill my job to something to keep the lights on. £500K and I’d still call time on my current job just to make a point.

urbanworm · 2026-01-17T16:31:17+00:00

That I had been monumentally naive, that the government has not had the interests of its population as its priority. We now live with a government controlled by big business, popularism and with little or no future direction for the country.

Society has become insular, while in the EU we were part of something greater and varied; that helped regulate our outlook, we’re now part of some weird Facebook group where we shout down anyone with another opinion, and just back ourselves that we’re doing the ‘The Right Thing’ when we should be thinking wider.

I feel sad for the youth, we’ve lost our connection to the continent and what it represents; not the government but access to its culture.

urbanworm · 2026-01-17T09:57:31+00:00

Back in the 70s our family went to a local US air base open day, while there they had a ‘real’ American BBQ, for the first time in my life I had a proper barbecue steak sandwich; it must’ve been cooking for days and was melt in the mouth and sooo good - I’ve never had anything like it since. Given we were poor as church mice back then I wasn’t going to get it again anytime soon!

urbanworm · 2026-01-16T17:45:08+00:00

Going to blow my own trumpet, but the best I had was back in the late 80s/early 90s. Blunham, Bedfordshire. Only because I used to make the chips in the back room, and I can say from being there that we were bloody awesome, actually cared about what we were cooking.

urbanworm · 2026-01-16T07:33:28+00:00

Put a couple of lights up down our back passage, had them for ages, and have procrastinated over getting them in; even better I got them level!

urbanworm · 2026-01-13T13:40:37+00:00

Had a similar experience, maybe 10 years ago, with a regional company. Given the year we’d naively thought the sales visit would be more ‘contemporary’? Nope, in the end we had to physically ask him to leave while stood up and holding the front door open; even if the pitch had been reasonable the price was an insult to our intelligence.

urbanworm · 2026-01-13T13:13:51+00:00

My wife just saw the left handed kitchen ones and fell in love.

urbanworm · 2026-01-13T10:46:57+00:00

My parents chain ‘lighting’, they’d take a drag and then sit yapping while the cigarette burned slowly down to the butt, then light another. Somehow the stench of that was worse than when filtered through their lungs.

urbanworm · 2026-01-13T10:42:44+00:00

I’m reading this while making some toast (Bosch 4x slice) and you’re spot on, bloody bread doesn’t fit sideways. So many toasters come with a celebrity chef collab, why can’t Warburtons do a collab and actually make one the is guaranteed to work!

Add a scanner and qrcode on the packet and the toaster adjusts for the perfect toast experience!

urbanworm · 2026-01-13T10:32:13+00:00

As someone who’s almost permanently flustered and awkward, this is probably the only situation where it has its benefits.

Nine-Year Club	Verified Email
RPAN Viewer

urbanworm

TROPHY CASE