Let’s get out of the NG9 postcode, and not merely to find our Beeston namessakes in Leeds, Norfolk Cheshire and so on, but worldwide. Grab your passport, get your jabs and lets go explore our top five places:
By Matt Turpin
AUSTRALIA: BENDIGO We start right around the world in Australia, where the former gold-mining town of Bendigo, Victoria* owes its city name to Beeston’s world-famous boxer. Bizarrely, its twinned with Penzance rather than us, but does have a famous tram system, built in 1890, at the same time a local newspaper titled ‘The Tram Ranter’ began, which has since descended into a right-wing mess of idiocy.
THAILAND: BEESTON CAFE We wrote about the ‘Beeston Cafe’ a few issues back, where a group of former Thai students had been so impressed with Beeston’s cafe culture, not least The Bean (see within) that they set up their own joint in Bangkok to emulate our little bit of NG9. We hope they continue the mission to Beestonify Bangkok by closing down all local shoe-shops and encouraging locals to moan about it.
USA: BEESTON FIELDS: Our own area of opulence has a twin over in Virginia, and it’s just as fancy. It boasts a country club, runs off a main road simply called ‘Nottinghamshire’ which also, quite wonderfully, boasts streets called ‘St Anne’s’ and ‘Bulwell Forest’. Confusingly, to the North you’ll find streets named after Somerset, Devon, Sussex and Hastings, while to the South you can visit the New England Scotland by travelling to nearby ‘Glasgow’ ‘Aberdeen’ and ‘Dundee’. Enough to make a UK-bought Sat Nav weep.
VIRGIN ISLANDS: BEESTON HILL. The choice of the discerning tax-shirking ex-Beestonian, this little hamlet is currently for sale for around £81,000. It’s rather pretty too. Anyone want to sub us ‘til payday?
GERMANY: Gütersloh: As we hurtle towards some form of Brexit horror in a few weeks, we’d like to remind our twin** city in North-Rhine Westphalia that an obligation of the twinning process is honoury citizenship towards your twin, which we’ll happily cash in when all we have to eat here is roasted blue-passport and crumbs thrown from Jacob Rees-Moggs table.
* sadly not named after the pub.
** Actually the whole of Broxtowe, not just Beeston, but we’re the biggest town so neh.