Cleverly situated halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh in central Scotland, Falkirk is notable for having produced no famous people at all, unless one counts the largely unsuccessful pop group Arab Strap¹.

Falkirk's main features are The Steeple, a steeple with a remarkable clock, which often manages to display different times on each of its four faces; Brockville, the local football ground, which always looks as if it might collapse and spark off a major humanitarian disaster at any second; and the offices of the Child Support Agency.

The road system is remarkable in that it appears to have been designed specifically for the purpose of causing accidents. It features a spectacular one-way system, which culminates in a road where everyone in the right-hand lane invariably wants to go left, and vice versa; and a pedestrianised shopping precinct that you can still drive on if you want to, even though the council spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money paving over the road that was already there. But perhaps most terrifyingly of all, the designers have also perfected the art of placing pedestrian crossings within 50 yards of roundabouts, so when the traffic stops to allow Mrs X to cross the road to get to the bingo, it backs up onto the roundabout, causing congestion, great consternation, and a variety of colourful swearwords.

Those not interested in road accidents, extortion, rubble, or disproving the concept of linear time should visit Falkirk High railway station, where, with effort, one may alight from the Glasgow to Edinburgh train, cross the bridge and board the next Edinburgh to Glasgow train without spending more than four minutes in Falkirk. You may use those four minutes wisely by buying a picture postcard of Grangemouth oil refinery, or by worshipping at the second to last step on the bridge, where this researcher embarrassingly broke his ankle in 1993.