15 Problems Only People From Stoke-On-Trent Will Understand

15. You Have To Keep Explaining That Stoke-On-Trent Is Really "The Potteries"

The first thing that everyone from outside Stoke-on-Trent gets wrong about the city is that it's actually 6 towns called the Staffordshire Potteries. Those 6 towns are: Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. In fact, the modern invention of "Stoke-on-Trent" only dates back to 1910, which by British standards is half-past yesterday teatime. The main reason why the 6 different towns remain critically important to this day is that each town has different, highly useful shops. That means that in order to get the weekend shopping done, inhabitants of the city are forced to travel to multiple town centres, which takes FOREVER and makes the already tiresome chore feel like a pentathlon. Not that visitors call the city "The Potteries" or "Stoke-on-Trent"; no, they think it far more amusing to call it "Smoke-on-Stench" or "Stoke-on-Bent". What's worse is that particularly lazy jokers can simply leave the "S" off the start of "Stoke-on-Trent" to poke drug-related fun. Some residents are trying to encourage the use of "Snog-on-Bench" as a less offensive joke name but it's not really catching on.