Stoke. Ay up, duck. Bloody hell.

Stoke made the nation's cups and plates and still has the bottle kilns to prove it. Hanley's empty shops and derelict buildings, everyone's gone to Festival Park, and the buses between the six towns are rubbish. They'll still call you duck while you stand there taking it in.

Stoke sets fire to things at five times the typical town's rate. Mostly bins. Whatever doesn't get burnt gets dumped up the back alleys, where the council finds most of its fly-tipping. There are 13 places on the Heritage at Risk register, which is a lot of heritage to be letting go for a city that never shuts up about its heritage. The libraries have been shutting too.

There's rain on 152 days a year. A cold, wet night in Stoke is how football decides whether a player's any good. Stokies get that every week, and they have to watch Vale or City at the end of it.

The editor, who had an oatcake and left