Alderley Edge- welcome to your dystopian future- have a nice day!
Thin overworked countryside lies limp between town and motorway, scrubby fields overlooked by hundreds of identikit double-glazed window eyes from developments called The Larches but where no no Larches remain and soon even that tree, the one over there trying desperately to be all tree like despite its tattering leaves of Matalan bags will be gone. Maybe the developers will name the new estate after what it once was.
Ballardian buildings of glassy sheen, opposing angles and empty bulk sport unknown logos, sinister in their obscurity.
Bad driving of expensive cars seems to be A Thing.
Welcome to Alderley Edge
I only came for the charity shops.
‘Well, what can you do? They just steal stuff and walk out. You can’t even say ‘Oi! Come back here, thief!’ anymore’ someone behind the till says to someone else in such world weary resignation, I nearly fuck off with the till.
The much discussed in the Daily Mail designer bounty of the charity shops of Alderley Edge gave me the impression I would be swaggering home looking like Beyonce- sadly I fall between the demographic of neon stiff mini-dresses in size six and bobbley navy Jaeger in size 16.
Men in upper management’s pulling shirts are expensively lurid and Posh Spice remains nowhere to be seen.
‘It’s wonderful here, isn’t it?’ a woman beams at me. ‘ Look, a Jaeger skirt!’
There are no pubs but there is a place called The Bubbles Room. Fairy lights, spas and stupid shit twee quotes on canvas abound. There is a business in the middle of the high street dedicated to age reducing plastic surgery-of the hand. Of the hand.
No homeless people clutter up the doorways of Alderley Edge. I suspect if one did appear, they would be cutely ruralised with a scruffy suit, winsome eyes and a faithful battered saucepan and puppy.
I decide to keep things real and walk to Wilmslow. Wilmslow, the paean to obsolete eighties glamour. A fucking Jaeger shop! A Bang and Olufsen shop, a ‘luxury’ travel agent because just going abroad for a fucking holiday isn’t luxurious enough. Still no homeless people but at least there is a Greggs. Even the people walking into Greggs have a suspicious all over luxury holiday sheen.
And housing developments are named after the countryside that isn’t there anymore and plastic bags like bird’s wings flap in a grotesque parody of flight. ensnared in the remaining trees, overlooked by the encroaching tide of mundane excess.