The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has begun construction of a full-size, working replica of a 1990s suburban street in a disused quarry in the Midlands, which every British resident under the age of thirty will be legally required to visit for two hours each week in an effort to restore their mental health.
The site, named the Nostalgia Training Facility, includes a functioning Blockbuster Video, a bus shelter with a timetable that is always wrong, and a permanently jammed ice cream van that plays a single distorted note of Greensleeves. Visitors must queue at a working phone box, purchase a can of Lilt from a replica corner shop, and sit on a wall until an adult tells them to come home for tea.
«We have identified three factors harming young people, and the first is that they have never experienced the specific boredom of a Sunday in 1996,» said Professor Eleanor Vance, the project's clinical lead. «The second is that they cannot remember a time before the internet, and the third is that they keep being recommended Creed's Higher on Instagram. We can fix the first two with bricks and mortar.»
Attendance will be enforced by a new agency, the Office for Youth Emotional Restoration, whose officers will issue on-the-spot fines to anyone found enjoying themselves too quickly. A spokesperson confirmed that the replica will be expanded next year to include a working Wimpy and a field with a single aggressive goose.