Split in half, stuck on Whalley Road.

Clayton's tiny and still manages to split itself into the top end and the bottom end over a canal bridge. Top-enders and Bottom-enders treat the bridge like a border. Both ends then sit in the same jam on Whalley Road, in the rain, which comes down on 172 days a year.

There have been 53 serious pollution incidents in and round Clayton since 2016, 25 of them major, the worst kind. For a place this size that's going some. Deliberate fires run at nearly five times the typical town's rate and anti-social behaviour at two and a half times, and the sewage goes in the canal. They shut the library. Great Harwood sneers at the lot of it, which is rich, coming from Great Harwood.

The editor, who crossed the canal bridge