Sandwich. Parking. Second mortgage.

Emsworth is pretty. Mill ponds, harbour walks, Georgian streets, boats. It used to be famous for oysters, until the sewage got into them and that was the end of that. The storm overflows round it still spilled for 1.7 times as long as the typical town's, so nobody's learned much.

Then you try to park. The car parks cost so much that people dump their cars on the residential streets, where they block the bin lorry, so the bins don't get emptied. A quick trip to the shops costs more in parking than the shopping, and it's charity shops, over three times the typical town's per head. There's 1 hairdresser for the whole town. Everyone's growing it out.

The editor, who paid to park for a sandwich