I come from the Isle of Wight.
It is a landmass of about 200 square miles situated just off the south coast of Great Britain. I think it is like the fifth or sixth largest island in the British Isles. According to some racist graffiti I once sprayed over in a Ryde bus-stop, “IT’S THE ISLE OF WHITE NOT THE ISLE OF BLACKS”. Actually ‘Wight’ is an old English word that means ‘people’; there are not many coloured people on the Isle of Wight, but that is less to do with racism and more to do with the fact that they are not stupid enough to move there. It is not the Isle of Wights as in Barrow-Wights, though that would be bad ass. The Romans called it Vectis, and the posh name for a native is a Vectian. There was a Vectis Independence Party in the 70’s but that was apparently an excuse for a bunch of local folk musicians to write stupid songs about stabbing the English with pitchforks and wear rosettes and get drunk a lot, not that anyone on the Isle of Wight has ever particularly needed an excuse to do any of these things.
Here is a psychogeographical map I have prepared in MS paint which shows how people on the Isle of Wight perceive the rest of the world:
But what are grockles and overlanders you ask? Well, Isle of Wight dialect divides the entirety of humanity into a distinct caste system, from best to worst:
Caulkheads: those who were born on the Isle of Wight, or in the strictest sense had both their parents born on the Isle of Wight. I am a caulkhead, and receive a free clay jar of scrumpy and a garlic clove on Whitsunday in acknowledgement of this fact.
Islanders: Those resident for a long time on the Island, or, if you hold to the strictest definition of caulkhead, those who were born on the Island but whose parents weren’t. Vectian taxonomy recognises the existence of no other islands, and never has. Thomas Hardy remarked as far back as the 18th century that “They call it The Island as if there were no other”. We still do.
Overlanders: People from other places who live on the Isle of Wight. Outsiders. Treated with suspicion and denied the best seats at witch burnings and the highest ranks of freemasonry.
Grockles: ‘Grockle’ roughly tanslates as ‘tourist’, but with an added depth of infinite burning hatred. Grockles come over to the island and gawk at people, and we sell them expensive ice cream and let them make a mess on our piers.
HISTORY:
The Isle of Wight was once a pretty big fucking deal. Queen Victoria loved the fuck out of the place and built a goddamn palace here where she sat crying and eating chocolates for like thirty years after Prince Albert died. Her presence and general assortments of nice beaches and bracing sea air attracted the cream of 19th century wankers. Tennyson wanked at length about the Isle of Wight, and we named a fucking heath after him. Julia Margaret Cameron took many pictures of wankers here, Karl Marx came to Ventnor for a brief wank, and Dickens wanked out much of David Copperfield there also. Marconi set up the world’s first radio station here, before moving out because of all the wankers.
Oh yeah and before all that happened Charles I was imprisoned here by the Roundheads and the French invaded a couple of times and we
personally kicked the shit out of them. But no one gives a shit.
More recently, The Isle of Wight was an unlikely centre of shipbuilding, aircraft manufacture, and general high-tech. The British space program was based here briefly in the fifties, The hovecraft was invented here, BAE and Siemens had factories manufacturing radar and electronic warfare equipment. Then everyone realised that the Isle of Wight was a fucking stupid place to do such things, and decamped en mass, leaving us with an economy that relies entirely on tourism and farming garlic. Seriously, garlic. We are fucking nuts about garlic. We have a two day cultural festival dedicated entirely to garlic. Would you like some garlic? Garlic ice cream? Garlic beer? Have some fucking garlic you grockle cunts!
*ahem*
GEOGRAPHY
The Isle of Wight is an Island, which means it is surrounded by the sea. This is where rich yachtie cunts employ local sailors to drive their ghastly sunseekers around whilst they swig gin and bray like fucked up donkeys. In the middle of this sea is the Island, which is mostly made out of chalk and sheep shit. Major towns:
Ryde: Used to be rough as fuck when I was a teenager. I saw a dude get thrown through a shop window, and a thirty man street fight involving chains and baseball bats in Ryde. It is the place I first had sex in a public toilet and the place I was first beaten up. Now a depressingly safe place to drink.
Newport: Where I live. Basically just a standard town. There is some really, really insanely ugly architecture from the 60’s that miraculously is always like one centimetre out of shot in every single photograph on the Isle of Wight Tourism website.
Sandown/Shanklin/Ventnor/Freshwater: The four towns on the ‘back o’ the wight’ (the south coast). Hellholes. This is probably where all the violence is now happening but the bus services are so shit I never bother going down to find out.
Yarmouth: The population of Yarmouth is kept naturally small by surrounding salt marshes and severe genetic deformities caused by rampant incest. Everything west of here is Deliverance country. They still have red telephone boxes out this way simply because BT has forgotten they exist.
Bembridge: Bembridge is like an elephant graveyard, but for terrifying old women. They come here to knit and die.
Niton: Has a population of 2000 but only gets four buses a day because the entire bus system is designed to give grockles nice coastal views.
Seaview: Not a real town, whatever lies they may tell you.
Godshill: Twee as fuck. More tea-rooms than shops, more coach parks than car parks. Not making this up at all, look at the fucking place:
CULTURE:
The culture of the Isle of Wight is predicated around four major activities:
1: Drinking
2: Music festivals
3: More drinking
4: Legal-high induced suicide
CONCLUSION:
MORE CIDERRRRR