RFI: Is The English Town Of Corby Actually "Grim"?

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I need to know for something I am writing. I have read that description of it. Is it famous for anything? Thanks! You guys are great.

Yours Truly, Scott "Set The Thames On Fire" Seward

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:12 (twenty years ago)

http://images.ciao.com/iuk/images/products/normal/655/product-5314655.jpg

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:13 (twenty years ago)

Bah! Beat me to it.

― lock robster (robster), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:15 (twenty years ago)

sonic boom lives there

― Adherents of the Repeated Kate (kate), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:18 (twenty years ago)

It is famous for British Steel (as was) and lots of Scottish people living there.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1311

http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1094

― Frank Widebottom, Friday, 8 April 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

Yes, it is. Corby is easily the worst town in Britain I've ever visited. The town centre appears to have been shut down, all of the shops have exactly the same decor as they did in the 1970s, and the populace have a ridiculously high unemployment rate for central England on account of the steel mills having shut down whenever they did. And, unlike Sheffield, nobody will ever "regenerate" Corby.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:23 (twenty years ago)

John Burnside's 'Living Nowhere' is quite a good book about growing up in Corby.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:26 (twenty years ago)

Okay, I get the picture. Actually, I don't think I really get mark's picture. What is that thing?? But I get the picture about Corby. I've been to towns like that here. There are a lot of them here. Why does Sonic live there?? Does he find it inspiring? He's probably inside hunched over an oscillator of some sort anyhow, so maybe he doesn't notice the view.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 8 April 2005 15:44 (twenty years ago)

Also, its bus "station" (not a station at all, actually just a concrete shell) looks a lot like Slade prison.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 8 April 2005 16:34 (twenty years ago)

The picture is of a Corby Trouser Press. I have one & it is very useful.

― Mooro (Mooro), Friday, 8 April 2005 17:06 (twenty years ago)

yes, absolutely awful - only spent one afternoon there.

Town Centre was a concrete jungle, with hardly any people shopping there.

buildings = Grey slabs of concrete, that were erected in the 60s?

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Friday, 8 April 2005 17:21 (twenty years ago)

Oh, of course, the Corby Trouser Press! I have two of those.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 8 April 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

Stoke-on-Trent's pretty grim, but good curries abound.

― andy --, Friday, 8 April 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

I've visited friends in Corby a few times and it is fucking awful. On the other hand, it's surrounded by nice countryside, so it's not unremittingly bleak.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Friday, 8 April 2005 20:20 (twenty years ago)

The band Raging Speedhorn come from there. You might like them

― DJ Mencap0))), Friday, 8 April 2005 20:43 (twenty years ago)

It's even better than that, there's a Raging Speedhorn tribute act in Corby as well.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 8 April 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

"The band Raging Speedhorn come from there. You might like them"

that's who i was writing about!

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 8 April 2005 21:06 (twenty years ago)

What ver Speedhorn sound like tells you pretty much all you need to know about Corby.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Friday, 8 April 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

sounds like it!

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 8 April 2005 21:08 (twenty years ago)

like being grim is such a bad thing. pfft.

― Kim (Kim), Saturday, 9 April 2005 00:53 (twenty years ago)

Corby's two most obvious characteristics - cheap post 40's architecture and almost total absence of an educated middle class. Whether this makes it grim depends on how much these things bother you. I had older (now deceased) relatives living there and visited frequently as child and adolescent. I loved it, especially as an adolescent, because the equivalent of my parent's generation had a hedonistic, live-in-the-moment attitude that was much more fun than their equivalents at home. I associate it with going to the bookies and drinking beer underage, things that would have had to be done surreptitiously at home but were accepted as perfectly natural by adults in Corby. And it was much easier to meet girls who were interested in doing the kinds of things I was starting to hope girls would be interested in doing, something else that would have been discouraged as dangerously precocious at home but was accepted as normal in Corby. I've not been back since I was about 15 or 16 so don't know what it's like now but I have fond memories.

― frankiemachine, Saturday, 9 April 2005 11:10 (twenty years ago)

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