What's in a Name?

"What is it about this seemingly blameless town that makes people act as if there is a huge 'Kick Me' sign plastered across its back?"

"In fact, 'slough,' which rhymes with 'cow' and means 'muddy quagmire,' is not the only cross Slough has to bear. The town has never recovered from a 1937 poem in which John Betjeman accused it of being full of 'tinned minds' and vapid materialism, proposing that it be bombed into oblivion. More recently, Slough was the sad-sack setting for the British version of “The Office,” cementing its reputation as a soulless national joke."

"Now along comes a new book picking on Slough for being a grim, cheerless wasteland, with gray buildings and gray, disheveled residents. And not just routinely miserable, but deeply miserable, a 'showpiece of quiet desperation,' a broader symbol of the sad British view that 'life is not about happiness but muddling through, getting by,' says the book, 'The Geography of Bliss,' a search for the happiest places on earth by Eric Weiner (an American)."

"Not surprisingly, officials in the town, who read about Mr. Weiner’s remarks when the national newspapers repeated them and weighed in with their own uncomplimentary opinions, are not thrilled."