Robot Reindeer

As a city of the future, today, Bracknell is always ahead of other towns in Britain and this is particularly true of Bracknell's Christmas decorations. So proud is the town of its unique way of celebrating Jesus's birth, that it begins to do so in mid November. From about this time, the town council unleashes its famous robot deer, which, as can be seen in the picture, dash, dance, prance and vixen all over the shopping centre. Their ambitious designer, anxious to make his mark, fitted them with anti-gravity hooves allowing them to climb walls and spring from car park level to elevated walk way like demented and very large, metal squirrels. By the first of December the Bracknellians are understandably irritated by these clanking deer-like automata. This explains the second part of the season's town centre festivities which involves gangs of dangerous dog owning residents pursuing the reindeer until the latter's batteries run out on or around Christmas day. The robot deer are then unceremoniously dismembered and dumped outside the council offices. Don't worry, they'll be back again in time for next year's celebrations.

Flying Hovercars

The use of the nuclear powered moon scooter as the chief method of getting about in Bracknell is well known but it could so easily have been different. This prototype flying hovercar was one of the most hotly anticipated items ever to be featured in the Bracknell Forest Standard. Disappointingly, like so many other seemingly ace ideas including the Sinclair C5, the flying hovercar was critically flawed. Keen to reduce the weight of the thing in order to enable flight, the designers decided to omit any fuel storage, preferring to rely on mains power. This meant that upon take off, the range of the flying hovercar was limited, in the case of the pictured prototype, to the 36 inch length of the flex between the craft and the mains socket.

Bracknell's Unique Festivals

As residents of a unique and forward thinking community, Bracknellians enjoy a number of seasonal events that are, sadly, absent from the calendars of most other towns and cities. Unlike the rest of Britain, Bracknell has not embraced Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving or Independence Day, preferring rather bizarrely not to pretend to American. Bracknell's traditional and unique events include: Walking Afternoon, when huge numbers of Bracknellians struggle from their nuclear powered moon scooters and enjoy as briefly as possible the novelty of getting about without assistance; and Dangerous Dog Week (unusual in that it is celebrated every week for 52 weeks per year), during which the owners of these canine maiming machines congregate in the town centre at Bar Torino to smoke and stare at passers by. This picture shows Bracknell's annual Festival of Polythene in full swing. For reasons unexplained, in addition to the wrapping of the entire town centre in plastic sheeting, this most enduring of festivals also involves the decapitation of every tree in the vicinity.

Links with Ancient Culture

The origin and nature of this extraordinary object in the shopping centre is the subject of energetic debate among Bracknellovians. Some believe "Cube Henge" or "Henge Squirt" to be a gift from Bracknell's twin town, Moonbase Alpha out of Space 1999. More eccentric residents believe it to be as old as the shopping centre itself. In any case, evidence including the concrete chunk's proximity to lay lines and relative position to other concrete chunks in the vicinity suggest that it may have been used by the ancients to tell when the shops open on a Saturday. The latter theory is supported by the recent discovery of objects made out of precisely the same concretey stuff in Basingstoke, another city of the future with a shopping centre. Local historian Burt Reynolds claims that as Cube Henge is too big to get into a Ford Escort, even one with a sun roof, a group of Bracknellovians must have transported the concrete mass on rolling logs, pulling the back one out and sticking it to the front again, you know, like that. Mr Reynolds is certain that the difficulty and danger involved in such a task would have resulted in several deaths, especially as those involved must have been absolutely shit-faced on a Saturday night to even think of trying it.

Retail Marketing

Long before electronic tele-shopping and shops with catalogues in the front and all the stuff hidden away at the back, Bracknell's retail outlets were marketing and selling ranges of things that, even now, Amazon and Argos can only dream about uncomfortably. Incredibly, these eye-watering images were taken of a single shop window in Bracknell's shopping centre. This shop may be small but it succeeds handsomely in supplying everything the space age shopper could reasonably want. Yes, whether it's Zippo lighters and Ronsonol lighter fluid you need; or perhaps some toilet paper and a Chelsea Football Club leather wallet, cuff links and key ring gift set; or may be some empty boxes that used to have things in and hookah pipe charcoal; or even a "Forever United" cigarette tin and a range of language learning DVDs (including Dutch, Bengali and Hungarian); this shop has it all.
Just as with everything else, Bracknell leads the way in retail.

Motoring in the Future

Bracknell's residents are committed to the future and sustainability but, for reasons nobody really understands, they drive everywhere in gargantuan four wheel drive machines designed for jungle warfare or the lower slopes of Icelandic volcanoes. Such vehicles are therefore unsuited for urban roads and car parks but this doesn't matter to the driver. It isn't clear whether Bracknell's love affair with the nuclear powered moon scooter came before its obsession with armoured personnel carriers. One popular theory is that the increase in the number of pedestrians and cyclists suffering from collisions with the absurd vehicles caused them to use moon scooters while recovering from injury and they never went back to their original means of perambulation. The other theory is that the feeling of invulnerability enjoyed by drivers meant that having descended the steps, onto the running board of their bloated vehicle and then down to planet Earth with the rest of us, they were simply unable to cope with the fear caused by the absence of artificial elevation and reinforced steel plus airbags. In any event, here are a few pictures of the sort of psychopathic behaviour that driving one of these monsters can cause in otherwise well adjusted human beings: in this case, parking as inconveniently for everyone as possible.

"Retro" Architecture

Just like the famous concrete cows of Milton Keynes, almost everything in the future will be pretend and designed to look like things used to before everything became a bit rubbish, really.  As you'd expect, Bracknell is a pioneer in this field. Visitors to this shopping centre in the middle of the city of the future will be amazed to learn that, despite being directly beneath one of the most medium-sized shopping centre roof structures in Berkshire, the escalators and the upper floor are entirely for show. Reliance on nuclear powered moon scooters means that Bracknellians are subject to the same limitations as daleks when getting about and so escalators are redundant. As a consequence, although Bracknell's residents have long since abandoned walking as a means of travel, for nostalgic reasons they like to be reminded of what it was like to do stuff that past generations enjoyed: to stand two abreast on escalators blocking people who want to walk on them; to throw litter from the upper floor on to passers-by below; and, to have to walk half way round the centre trying to work out how to get from one floor to another because of the deliberate misalignment of the escalators.

City of Tolerance

Two veteran Bracknellians exchange views having seen the shockingly primitive behaviour of the walker to their right. Younger Bracknellians tend to find walking amusing or endearing but, as is evident from their faces pictured here, older residents regard those who eschew the nuclear powered moon scooter with suspicion.

Space Age Shopping

In the future, almost all shopping will be virtual and Bracknell has embraced this inevitability with conviction.

Large areas of Bracknell's shopping centre are thus reserved for shops like these which act as blank canvases, allowing shoppers equipped with special goggles to browse their imagined shopping destinations of choice. 

Religion in the Future

Bracknell's religious community has a very progressive approach to retaining its membership. As a result, Bracknell is the envy of the rest of Britain with weekly church attendance remaining remarkably consistent since the introduction of the current strategy.

Bracknell in Bloom

Following the resounding success of last year's inaugural "Bracknell In Bloom" campaign, Bracknell Council has thrown its full weight behind this year's entry into the Royal county of Berkshire's initiative. The result: residents flock to enjoy another sun-soaked shopping frenzy among the flowers in the boulevards of Bracknell.

Getting About in the City of The Future

This Bracknell resident sips coffee as he cruises about in his nuclear powered moon-scooter from pound shop to charity shop. He is shielded from the searing heat by a thin cling-film-like membrane that allows him to remain at a steady 74 degrees Fahrenheit (that's about 22 centi-Euro-litres per kilojoule), which is proven to be the perfect temperature for maintaining an acute sense of paranoia.

Transport and Café Culture

In Bracknell, city of the future, walking is a thing of the past. Residents prefer to get around the extensive shoppers' paradise by means of nuclear powered moon-scooters. This scene shows Bracknell's most sophisticated, affluent residents enjoying the continental piazza culture of the Royal county of Berkshire's most precious jewel: Bar Torino at the boulevards of Bracknell.

Leisure and Relaxation

Its commitment to the future means that Bracknell is inevitably a fast paced and changing environment. The city boasts plenty of spaces in which the busy and active residents may take a few moments of well earned refuge from the maelstrom of commercial activity in order to relax and bask in the permanent sunshine.

Community and Recreation

A group of Bracknell residents enjoys the traditional lunch time game of "catch the shopper" in which the hapless victim is ensnared in a huge length of rope and, after hours of hilarious taunting, is hanged by the neck from the nearest tree.

Dining Out in Bracknell

Bracknell is blessed with myriad opportunities to enjoy a dazzling array of cuisine. In a typically idyllic setting, this happy Bracknell couple enjoy their American fast food lunch off of a rubbish bin in the town centre.

Beautiful Bracknell

Beautiful Bracknell: The boulevard of decapitated trees, flanked by empty shops leading to a faceless, monolithic tower block. Ah, life is good in the city of the future.

Space Age Bridges

In 1999, as well as wearing belted trouser-suits and eating only vitamin pills everyone will get from building to building on space-age concrete bridges like this one. Separate trousers and shirts, solid food and walking on the ground will be a thing of the past.

Skyways

Bracknell's council offices look out over the most extensive, complex and pointless network of elevated walkways (known locally as "skyways") in the world. Residents enjoy seeing them criss-cross and snake above but, since all twelve members of the Thorpe family have been missing since 1978 when they were seen trying to work out how to get down to Burger King, nobody has dared to use a skyway.

The Hanging Gardens of Bracknylon

Bracknell: city of the future. This is the top floor of the truly incredible Hanging Gardens of Bracknylon. Shoppers saunter nonchalantly about their business, unaware that owing to the extraordinary height of the tower, they are closer to the sun than any other shoppers on earth.

Bracknell's Ministry of Books

Bracknell, city of the future, has facilities that are admired and envied worldwide and its library is no exception. This extraordinary building not only won the Flash Gordon Design Award 1975 but also accommodates the largest collection of celebrity biographies in the world.

The Vacant Sky

Everyone knows Bracknell is a space-age city of the future. What is less well known is that this huge tower, which doubles as a luxury hotel for dangerous dogs, actually generates the conditions under which the lucky Bracknell residents enjoy permanent blazing sun shine. Here we see the enormous structure viewed from Bracknell's extensive council offices, as it stretches thousands of feet into the soulless, vacant, azure sky.