Lewes
Lewes is a glorified town set in the heart of the conversely-named 'Downs' in the South of England.
The People[edit]
The people of Lewes are middle class, middle aged and superior to the rest of the country. Young people (under 35) flee to the sodomite-ridden metropolis of Brighton while the elderly (those over 50) are shipped off to sunniest care home in England - Eastbourne - where they spend the rest of their days writing to the Daily Telegraph about chavs, non-white people, and homosexuals, and enjoy riding mobility scooters around the popular sky-diving spot 'Beachy Head'. Meanwhile, those who are financially inferior are trussed up and sent on rafts down the River Ouse to the port of Newhaven, whose crime statistics make West Baltimore look like Butlins.
Socially Progressive[edit]
The people of Lewes are politically 'socialist', with MP Norman the Baker (sales assistant at Forfars) once their ideological figure-head but now disgraced and labelled a turncoat (following their disgust at the Lib Dems' betrayal, they promptly began voting Conservative). Lewesians like to display their radicalism by shopping at Waitrose, wearing T-shirts featuring pictures of Che Guevara and Banksy graffiti, and reading a magazine called "Viva Lewes"; presumably named in keeping with the South American Marxist revolutionary theme, in fact 75% of the weekly publication consists of adverts for local gastropubs. The traitor Tom Paine is revered as a minor deity in the town.
Lewes folk are in fact similarly disgusted as those of Tunbridge Wells (see: 'bigots'); a pre-requisite for those wanting to live in the area is to be placed next to the Dulux colour chart and to be somewhere between 'crushed cotton' and 'earthen cream'. Anyone outside this colour range is put on a bonfire during the annual ethnic cleansing festivities on November 5th. This also provides an opportunity for the people of Lewes to show how they are not only socially tolerant, but also religiously progressive, by burning effigies of the Pope and other people on the register. During these 'festivities' they show how knowledgeable they are (having all read The God Delusion) by proclaiming that Christianity is outdated and detrimental to independent thought, while chanting 'burn him', 'burn him', 'burn him' in unison. This is done in order to appease Gaia. The residents of Lewes have a curious fixation with drumming and torchlit marches and there are plenty of both not only on the 5th but at other rallies, or "parades" throughout the year.
The local planning department consists largely of Nazi war criminals. Any architecture deemed not in keeping with the town's character (i.e. not featuring a pitched roof and hanging tiles) is seen as foreign and communist, and is therefore strictly forbidden.
One group, based within the town and revered and worshipped by all is the Lewes, Glynde & Beddingham Brass Band. A group of musical individuals who were all involved in a nasty accident in their nearby birthplace, Beddingham, involving a vat of molten copper and zinc which spilled from a passing freight train during one of their practice sessions. The mix had the perfect ratio to create pure brass and the musicians remain coated in the metal to this day. This affliction has not hampered their success, becoming National Champions of Great Britain in 2013, although Bonfire Night proved dangerous because their metallic coating puts them outside of the Bonfire Celebrations' 'crushed cotton' to 'earthen cream' colour requirements (see above).
Education[edit]
The local comprehensive school is Priory School. Once run by a mysterious man who never left his office during his seventy years of power, the institution has now degenerated into a corrupt dictatorship. The new Headmaster has a a policy against unnecessary displays of creativity and believes that by the time students reach Year 11 they should not be allowed to act in any sort of school performance in fears they might express themselves. The uniform regulations are strict - the compulsory fur-lined purple blazer and feathered hat may not be removed even in summer. The uniform choices are devised under a strict policy of discouraging delusions of individuality among students who dare to wear something as controversial as a waistcoat or a bowtie. Any student disobeying the rules of the uniform policy risks being forced to take GCSE Statistics. Priory School has more litter per square metre than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, attracting malevolent seagulls who swarm the playground at lunch, carrying off year 7 students to feast on.
Priory School is named after the nearby ruins of the Lewes Priory, which was dissoluted by King Henry VII because of corruption in it's administration; the school is expected to go the same way in the near future.
There is also the local sixth-form college known as the Sussex Downs College. This is a major war front between the people of Lewes and the students who study there (also known as "those effeminate youths" by the natives of Lewes). Each day many people sacrifice their relative comfort as strange looks are exchanged over the field of battle, better known as the footpath to Tesco (or "That Place" to the people of Lewes). The aim for the students is to get to Tesco, buy a meal-deal for lunch and return back after eating their food on the bank outside the supermarket. The people of Lewes use Waitrose as their base of operations, sending out wave after wave of the most snobby social elite that they can muster to give dirty looks to the students whilst simultaneously stocking their cellars with premium champagne. The people of Lewes take heavy casualties each day, with at least 9 of them suffering from slight discomfort (known to Lewes people as "a fatal injury"). The students however manage to avoid casualties by holding up plastic bags with the Tesco logo or the logo of any value supermarket to eye level with their assailants, thus repelling them to a safe distance of 50 metres, 100 if it's a Aldi (which the lower class of the surrounding Malling estate have just opened in Lewes as a futile attempt to cast out the middle class) bag.
The local private school is called Lewes Old Grammar school or LOGS. Students from LOGS are inherently better than students from any other school. Comparable to the teaching styles of Plato and Aristotle, the Old Grammar provides the Elite of Lewes with a level of education previously thought scientifically impossible. Despite their undeniable superiority however, LOGS students live in constant fear of attack from Priory students, owing to the age old state of conflict that exists between the two schools.
Cultural activities for Lewesian teenagers include hanging outside Tesco(sorry that place) trying to find adults who will buy them alcohol, jumping the walls at Pells Pool and then going to the Downs and drinking said beverages (a curious place to get drunk considering the precipitous, unfenced cliffs.
Druids[edit]
The Druids proclaim Lewes as a naturally important centre of Mother-Earth-worship, because the people are mugs and can easily be persuaded that they are the most important in Sussex. They prove this by citing the high density of ley lines (see: 'fictional creations for the intellectually stunted') which converge upon the Castle.
Global Warming[edit]
The forward thinking religious practices of the Druids have also contributed to another fundamental part of life in Lewes: the green movement. This is largely an attempt to maintain friendly relations with Mother Earth, but is also a reaction to the actions of the council's residential planning department in 1976 which built vast swathes of suburban slums to accommodate the influx of socialist refugees from Thatcher's northern 'purification' schemes. Unfortunately, due to Geography GCSE solely consisting of learning how to use colouring pencils, the problem of flooding was not anticipated and thus 98% of the population is flooded every other week. Global Warming, a certainty in the minds of the population because the Daily Mail says the opposite, is a daily concern for those not residing in the Castle and so regular meetings are held in the town hall to discuss what should be done. These tend not to achieve anything in particular but maintain morale because everyone agrees with each other. In recent years a huge number of solar-panel companies have been springing up around Lewes in the hope of preying upon the environmental concerns of the people. This, however, although positive in theory, is somewhat setback by the fact that the last recorded day of sunshine in England was in Henry VIII's memoirs, but doubt has been cast even on this by several eminent historians who remind us that he was syphilis-ridden and obese. And you can't trust fat people.
Castle[edit]
The Castle, advertised as being built after the Battle of Hastings Direct in the year 0800 00 1066, was in fact built in 1973 by a visional manager of the tourist information centre to celebrate the visit of Genghis Khan. It was deemed a financial success after he was responsible for 3x Lewes' annual GDP through his outlay on ice cream and novelty key rings as a marriage gift for Katie Price (series 17 of 'Which Oaf Katie Married Next'). The Castle has since been branded a visual eye sore by the Council, who hope to replace it with another concrete monolith to house their increasing number of filing cabinets. (Bureaucracy is seen as a necessary and important part of life because it ensures that excess funds from council tax aren't wasted on petty issues such as violent crime, maintenance of roads outside of Lewes, or housing for Communists/poor people/David Cameron).
Independence[edit]
Lewes hoped to become a crown dependency by 2009 (discussions are currently underway to move this date to 2015). This is because it is better than everywhere else in England, and the people have become disillusioned with life since the Liberal Democrats attained national influence and Nick Clegg was revealed as a moron. The first steps have been taken towards this transition by the introduction of their own currency, named the 'Lewes Pound' after a £10 million branding investment. This has proved a huge success since the council has been able to convince tourists and locals alike that they need to buy monopoly money for the price of real money in a scheme devised by some disgruntled Scots. Plans to make Norman the Baker Prime Minister are underfoot, and it is hoped that they will correspond with the celebrations of Lewes' arrival into the 20th century in 2013. Plans to make Lewes an autarky were scrapped when it was discovered the town did not have the resources to provide enough organic houmous for 13 000 people on a daily basis.
Shopping[edit]
Although normally pacifist in nature, it is rumoured that guerilla-like groups are being formed in order to take the most extreme action possible against "that place" (commonly referred to in the rest of England as Tesco) which has proposed an expansionist policy into the nearby skate park. Speculation has arisen over the tactics that will be employed by the demonstrators, but the local police force are preparing themselves for the worst eventuality and have been enrolled in a Mossad training scheme. Critics have deemed this a waste of money which could otherwise be spent on bureaucracy since all that really needs to be done is to threaten the locals with an 'affordable housing project'. Should the boycott go ahead, it would be the third time in Lewes history that one has taken place: most recently against the intergalactic conglomerate 'Greene King' which threatened the local brewery Harveys and was deemed as blasphemous due to its lexical similarity with the 'Green Man' - a mythological symbol of rebirth popular with gullible Druids. Tesco is, unsurprisingly, deemed beyond the pale in Lewes due to its associations with the lower classes. Instead, you are much more likely to find the Barbour-clad locals in the aisles of Waitrose, or perusing the stalls of the Farmers' Market where they cheerily buy the same products wrapped in newspaper and sprinkled with organic soil at 8x the price.