The Road to Wigan Pier.

With apologies to George Orwell:

'I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, cris-crossed by the imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the 'flashes' - pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. But then, one day, we made our way to Wembley. And something remarkable happened. And now Wigan is beautiful again.'