This morning the rats fled the city.
They swept past old men sobbing in gutters, and young children staring vacantly into the distance. They swept down the disappointing gradient of the-street-formerly-known-as-the-steepest-street-in-the-world and past the Mayor as he pleaded with the Guinness World Record Enforcers as they solemnly removed the sign “World’s Steepest Street” and set fire to the gift shop.
A great pile of souvenirs burnt outside, as the Enforcers ransacked peoples’ homes, emerging with great armfuls of memorabilia to add to the flames. Steepest Street tea towels and socks burnt next to tiny build-your-own replicas and mugs with 35-degree gradients.
A secret team was dispatched from the University with the aim of independently verifying the gradient of the street in Wales (which is probably not even a real country) or dying in the attempt. None returned.
Far out to sea the next cruise ship’s first mate sprinted out of the radio shack holding a telegraph in their hand. “Sir!” they called to the Captain, “Dunedin no longer has the World’s Steepest Street!”
“Argh,” said the Captain, “Dunedin’s lost. Our only chance to satisfy them,” he said, jerking his thumb at the tourists churning in the hold, “is to head to Oamaru instead. Hopefully the Steampunk Capital of New Zealand’s enough.”
The first mate shed two distinct tears, one for a fallen city, and one for the prospect of having to visit Oamaru.
How does Dunedin recover from something like this? It’s not just that a title was stripped from us, it’s that we never deserved the title to begin with. We have been betrayed by the thing we thought we could depend on; we have been betrayed by the very ground beneath our feet.
Our only chance is to erect some new miraculous feat. To recover from the failures and betrayals of the past we must look into a future of glory and blinding light.
We could tie all our albatross together wingtip to wingtip and create the World’s Widest Bird (Wingspan).
Perhaps we could flood the entire of South Dunedin and create the World’s Lamest Underwater City. Honestly, all we’d have to do is leave it alone a couple years.