Norfolt in Ealing
Taken from Rockdoctor's post is a view of where i live. Stay with me it's a tad long but quite funny.

Northolt (or Norfol_ as pronounced locally. They don’t exactly omit the final ‘t’ but substitute it with a letter of their own making; a letter that makes the sound of a ‘t’ indolently dropped on a bed of fag ends,used condoms and dummies) is twinned with Hayes and the two deserve each other.

So banal a place is Northolt that there aren’t even any nearby Chav stores for them to steal from so they have to commute to Hayes for Argos, Wilkinson’s and the out of town retail park that includes Mothercare (staffed by Chavs) and the generic, cheap sports shop with it’s shelves stocked, briefly, with excellent Chav thieving ware.

Northolt does provide the occassional row of shops (’parade’ is too big a word for the derelict crud peddling outlets) for the burberry scum to hang about outside, spit and laugh at the simpering community police officers who might inadvertantly mince within a hundred metres of them, but in the main the dismal buffoons drift across the barren plains of Northolt on their way to Hayes or Greenford like (barely) human tumbleweed.

Borne on the wind like the spores of a particularly nasty fungi they drift together into the corners of the park in Down Way trying to out-spit,out-swear,out-drink and generally out-Chav each other. Or, if not there, then they can be found in Islip Manor park which is far more secluded and conducive to the joyless fucking that invariably produces more Schott loving sub humanity. They leave used condoms in their wake but what are they used for? It’s not contraception.
For a group that, presumably, choose each others company there seems to be a lot of hatred and aggression amongst them.

They regularly fight each other and the last such combat I saw was between two women; one of them had enough multi-coloured children with her to resemble a Beneton advert and the other one had a bare stomach that reminded me of an apple crumble. As they tried to tear each others hair out (impossible as they both had face-lift tight ponytails) their dull eyed brainless children looked on non-plussed by the spectacle of these revolting chain smoking, chain wearing crudlodites grappling sexlessly with each other, snot running from their in-bred noses into there bacteria harnessing dummies and down their vile little throats. The fight put me right off lesbian scenes in films.

Why do they do it? Why do they want to be clearly visible as Chavs? Have they no shame? Northolt has never been more than a large housing estate or a place for people to drive through on the A40 to be somewhere nice but the people living there used to be decent enough. Now these Chavvy scum have infected the place with their anti-social Von Dutchery to the point where it needs to be fumigated and then fumigated again, just to be sure.

I feel nothing but contempt for these parasitic, stomach churning, crisp eating, drug taking, endlessly procreating, fight starting, life negating thread worms in the gut of suburbia. Does that come across…?
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:51, 8 replies)

Swannage in Dorset
dead - almost a ghost town really. Beach is OK I suppose but that is it. That is all the town has to offer. Did some gigs there and the few people that were alive there turned up - nice enough I suppose but what a hole :P
( SiX and his hat, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:51, 4 replies)

How do Dundonians celebrate Hallowe'en?
Pump kin.

(Eyethangyew)
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:49, Reply)

Cullompton.
I used to drive back through it after nights out. At 2 in the morning it's full of people sitting on their doorsteps, sobbing uncontrollably. Presumably this is because by that time they've sobered up enough to remember where they live.
( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:47, 1 reply)

Nottingham
isn't there an area called St Anne's or something, where every resident has a stab wound?
(Lord Chode, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:46, 5 replies)

St Helens
If you've ever been there you'll agree the place needs to be nuked for the greater good.
I'm actually ashamed to say i'm from there... if people ask where i'm originally from i say "a town between liverpool and manchester.. you've probably never heard of it"

Let me start with the inbreds of the population, these guys:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lug43AMyG9Y
a grade A bunch of cunts if ever i saw any... i mean stealing a hat of an old man ooh yeah you must be hard!
They are just a bunch of unemployed 20 somethings who get off on intimidating innocent passersby and call themselves a "crew" to seem important. There are several "crews" around here, the parr boys are just the first youtube example i came across.
These "crews" like to think they're all the next eminem.

Now let's examine the female inbreds.
Morbidly obese who like to show off their stomachs, bright orange and like to think they look good in mini skirts or tight pants... if your stomach hangs over your leggings/jeans/skirt please dont wear a crop top you'll put me off food. The majority have katie price as a style icon. I was followed by three of these heffers one night who decided to throw straws at me...this was so feeble that i didnt even respond to them.

One day on the bus home there was one girl about 16 with two 12 year olds who repeatedly told me that i should die because im a "goth" and it was their mission to annoy me... 25 minutes into the bus ride (my head phones died so i had to listen to them) i told them to shut up when the harpy interfered saying she was going to "deck me cause they can say what they want" and that i was ugly because i had black hair and was pale. so i politley informed her that she was in no position to call anyone ugly... another passenger backed me up and the scum stayed silent for the rest of the journey.

There are a lot more stories of things i've witnessed. The most recent being some lads tormenting a mentally disabled man on a bus... what kind of wanker gets off on tormenting someone who cant even defend themself?
Why of course a wanker of the St Helens variety!

I do appreciate that there are some decent people who live there and i sympathise with them a lot. My encounter with the idiots have been far too many to ever inflict that place on my future offspring.
(stitched, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:45, 6 replies)

St Olaves
Sleepy little town on the Norfolk Broads. We were on a boating holiday and this was our stopping place for the night. The boat also needed the loos pumping out - vile job, but some bugger's got to do it, and there were some of said buggers in this town. Moored up for the night outside the pub, had good grub and drink and returned to the boat to sleep. Or try to. St Olaves is on part of the waterway where the north and south Broads meet, and is very tidal. The boat spent all night sloshing from side to side and hammering into the mooring. At 5.30am (the worst kind of 5.30), having finally got to sleep around 4, I was awoken by a tapping and odd croaking noise. I pulled the curtain aside to be faced with: a duck. Bastard Mallard staring in through the window wondering why we hadn't woken up and fed him yet. Go to the back of the boat to be mobbed by every duck in Norfolk, and all their swan buddies, before trying to get aforementioned pumping done.

Well, the buggers don't take card (and in fact gave us the look of 'arrr, what be that shiny thing. Plastic? What be that then?', only in a Norfolk accent). Cash point? What be that? Ok, we think, let's find a shop and see if we can get cashback. Two hours later, having wandered past a shop that put Black Books to shame (not just wasps in the window, but bees, flies, cockroaches, deathwatch beetle and a few insects that have been extinct in the UK for at least a century) we finally come across what vaguely passed for a petrol station, run by a woman older than time itself. 'Do you do cashback?' was met by a look of terror, followed by 'Err, yes, but you'll have to spend over five pounds.' Fine, we need biscuits. We grabbed biscuits and jam to a total of £5.70, and watched her ring up £10 on the till and give me £4.30 change....

'Screw this' we thought, 'We'll get to the next pumping stop. If we need to crap before that, we'll do it over the side....' On our way back at the end of our holiday, we broke the 'no motoring after dark' rule to get on to the next pub up river, and St Olaves is now not said in this house without being followed with a shudder.

Length? The Broads have at least 120 navigable miles of waterway. And I just discovered St Olaves is a village. Oh well, it's still a grot-hole.
(Mrs Trellis GIN, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:45, Reply)

St Neots
Just a few miles from Huntingdon - home of the once PM, John Major.

As such - Huntingdon has at least some amenities, while St Neots has - wait for it - fuck all.

OK, we apparently used to be in the Guinness Book of Records for the most pubs in a square mile (can't be bothered looking for proof of this), football coaches were banned from the town back in the late 70s due to the violence on the market square from them stopping for chips and daring to enter the Golden Ball (I miss that place...now it's the Corner House). Villagers come from miles around to the town centre on a weekend to go to the salubrious (Ha!) 'Priory' where they can meet fellow Neanderthals (at least they would be if they knew what it meant), get drunk on shit Stella, stare at (probably) under age girls on the dance floor, stick to the carpets, get beaten up by bouncers for not sharing their nose candy in the bogs, then contract food poisoning from the local kebab places...

And to end of a perfect night - join in a mass scrap on the square.

Lovely place St Neots...no wonder I go to the Tudor - great pub (possibly the only decent one in town), good people, good beer, great laugh...and no fucking arseholes (well, except me I guess) - they're too scared to step foot in the place :)

EDIT: Found a few links which mildly amused me:
Best things about St Neots
Worst things about St Neots

And I just love the last note in this article...I do miss the Golden Ball and Old Falcon *sigh*
( snee held his breath since, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:44, 15 replies)

I used to live in Barnsley.

( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:37, 3 replies)

Hartlepool
There is no reason to go there. No roads pass through it. Everyone marries their sister or their aunt. And no-one ever leaves.
(Waspard has your wank bank account details, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:29, 5 replies)

Kilmarnock
Was sold to me as being a quaint little village near the coast, and a lovely place to take my new girlfriend.

Rather a cruel lie, really.

It is also the first and only time I've ever stayed in a hotel that had a louvred door on the bathroom. Trying to restart conversation after listening to your new squeeze visiting the toilet - and, thanks to the iffy Chinese restaurant the night before, making a noise like a flock of geese taking off - added a certain something to proceedings.
(richardm, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:26, 4 replies)

Widnes!
Oh Widnes, birthplace of me......

FOr the past around 80 years it had a rendering plant that stank up the place! and i mean stank up the place! then when that wasn't running there was the golden wonder factory that made the town smell of prawn coctail! It's right on the edge of Speke (liverpool) so the kindly scousers will venture over once a week (usually a saturday or friday night) to kick the living shit out of the first person they see in the town for not being a scouser!
Its a dank geographical dump with all the charms of a oozing infected boil! It seems to be populated by hoodies on every single street corner, my parents still live there and there isnt a week that goes by that they dont get a letter informing htem of yet another hoodie winning an asbo to exclude them from the side streets!
The people who live there have a bizzare accent that turns words like "door" and "floor" into two silable words e.g. "dow er" = door or "flow er" = floor! hair is pronounced hur and everyone seems to end ever centance with "you know" and i've never been able to work out if thats a statement or a question!
I was so happy when i moved from there i did a little dance!
( tim1701 I have no board signature!!!!!, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:26, 3 replies)

Uxbridge...
...where dreams go to die
( Regger, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:25, 2 replies)

Coventry
I spent four years living in this miserable shithole. I could list everything that makes it purgatory's waiting room, but I think an anecdote will suffice for an introduction:

A friend of mine in "Cov" was a bigg-ish wheel in the stop-the-war movement (this was about 2002, and things were kicking off in Afghanistan) and organised, with a large number of like-minded people, a protest march through the centre of Coventry at 8pm on a Friday night, so as to cause as much disruption to complacent bourgeois capitalists living the high life whilst innocent islamic fundamentalists were being hurt, or something. Anyway, 200-odd lefties turned up, 8pm, city centre, and proceeded to march, spreading their message to...

...nobody.

As they should have known, Coventry town centre is a ghost town after 6pm. This city of 200,000 people has no nightlife whatsoever. Everyone, following a day spent in the call centres that constitute the only employment opportunities in town, slink home, watch the X Factor and try to think up reasons not to kill themselves. My friend and her lefty mates gave up after an hour and went home too.

Other reasons to hate Coventry include:

* No bands play there. The only decent concert venue, a club called the Coliseum, is located in Hillfields, a part of town that makes Kabul look des-res. Tour managers have boycotted the town ever since the Chili Peppers were shot at with an air rifle and A's tour bus had its tires slashed.

* It is (last time I checked) the second most violent town in the country after Nottingham. Hillfields and Stoke put places like Dalston to shame for their sheer psychotic violence and menace. I once read one of the regular accounts of the latest shooting in the Coventry Evening Telegraph (contents: violent crime and moaning about the shitty local football team), in which one Hillfields householder was quoted as saying "He rang my bell and asked me to call an ambulance because he'd been shot. I told him to get out of my house because he was bleeding on my carpet." Nice town.

* It's ugly, horrifyingly ugly. The Luftwaffe destroyed 95% of the old medieval town, and town planners replaced it with an undignified collection of concrete eyesores and, worst of all, the ring road, which is not only the second-ugliest structure in town (after the leisure centre next to the bus station)but also by far the most dangerous road I have ever driven on.

* The local accent, a particularly whiny, bored-sounding variation on Brummie that makes you want to poke the speaker in the eye with a screwdriver.

Coventry: Hey, at least it's not Walsall.
(Axeman Jim, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:22, 28 replies)

Glossop.
its wank.
(nappy rash, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:15, 5 replies)

Doncaster
I was born in Doncaster but my family moved away about a year later (to Walsall, of all places, but that's another story of its own). A couple of years ago, work sent me to Doncaster to write a training manual on how to use the computers we were installing for EWS Railways. I got there before 9 and got the job done by about 12:30, so I ambled back to the train station only to be told that my 19:30 ticket wasn't transferrable. I asked the lady behind the counter what she would do if she had seven hours to kill in Doncaster - she shrugged and suggested I got to the cinema.

So I went for a wander around the town centre, hoping the markets would raise my spirits. No such luck. I've never seen so much worthless tat gathered in one place and the people milling around looked like the survivors of a particularly nasty virus and a dirty bomb attack. In the end, I bought a Terry Pratchett from a charity shop and went to a pub, where I necked beers until it was time for my train. I don't think I'll ever return to Doncaster.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:11, 1 reply)

Reading the answers so far
I think I might end up making a point of mentioning at least one nice thing about all the places mentioned that I know.
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:11, 3 replies)

Aberdeen
inhabited solely by trolls
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:00, 3 replies)

Short and Sweet
Basingstoke.

Dante's Ninth Circle of the Inferno has nothing on this place. I really did think I'd done something seriously wrong to end up living in this shitehole for year.

Before, I was an innocent, naive young man. After, an alcoholic, penniless depressive on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Thanks, Basingstoke.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:58, Reply)

Scarthorpe
Scarthorpe is the sort of town where even the dogs carry flick knives, where there's only one road in and it's a one way street!!!

The sort of town where rebuilding means a new coat of paint and people queue up to queue up for a job.

Not many people ever come to Scarthorpe and even fewer leave.
(gordonjcp, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:56, Reply)

brighton
everyone thinks it's a mecca for liberals and teh gays, where the streets are paved with happiness and everyone lives in harmonious harmony, with happy students sharing spliffs with happy gays holding hands with happy coppers.

It might be like that if you live in a giant georgian house in the posh end insulated by money, i lived in a scabby converted shop in the laines on the seafront, what they don't tell you about brighton is the chav problem, there's fuckin millions of the scummy bastards all trying their hardest to attain the perfect stereotype. At kicking out time at wetherspoons or when that big club opposite wetherspoons empties you're better off staying off the streets.

we had a massive grill over the window on the street to prevent them putting bricks into our living room which only seemed to enncourage them to try and climb up the front of our house, we did consider electrifying it but were too stoned to actually do anything about it.

unfortunately my car couldn't stay off the streets, cue petty vandalism every. fucking. week. When i came out and only found the remains of a fish supper worked into the gaps in my wing mirrors i gave a sigh of relief, usually it was a selection of panels kicked in or tyres punctured.

The other sport is motorbike tipping, i nearly cried when the bakery owner next door knocked one morning to say they'd picked my bike up and presented me with a box of parts which had been smashed off it.

if you have to live there don't live in the city centre no matter how bohemian and exclusive you may feel.

and the police are shit, they're under the impression that they only have to stay on the seafront or the pier, at kicking out time for the club they all fucking vanish, cowards.
(amazinglasercow now sporting terawatt mining lasers, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:54, 8 replies)

High Wycombe
High Wycombe holds mixed emotions for me. I detest the town with a passion, but it’s where I had my first sexual experience of sorts, so all the old feelings and memories come flooding back whenever I pass through the town. The town itself is dirty, smelly and full of Jeremy Kyle guest types, and not even the recent introduction of a brand new shopping centre has done much to enhance the reputation of the town. Underage mothers, illegal immigrants and rowdy teenage boys mix in harmony and it truly is a horrible, depressing place to go and shop on a Saturday afternoon.

However, I still get that ‘butterflies-in-the-stomach’ feeling of nervousness and excitement thanks to seeing a naked girl in the bus station toilets. She was the first girl I ever got to see naked in the flesh, and was named Ebony; funnily enough, she was black (not that I have a problem with that – otherwise I wouldn’t have slept with her). I’d been to a Wycombe Wanderers game with my mates, and afterwards we walked to the dingy bus station so we could all get our designated rides home. I however, (unbeknown to me) was going to get rather a different ride that evening. Ebony was stood inside the bus station with 3 of her friends, sheltering from the rain and probably spitting on the floor. As my mates got onto their buses and disappeared to their homes, I was left alone waiting for my bus, feeling quite intimated at being surrounded by a group of girls. I sat patiently, head down, trying to keep myself to myself, but it was hard not to stare at Ebony. Whilst her friends were quite loud and brash, Ebony carried herself in a much more feminine manner. Not only that, she was stunning; like a young Naomi Campbell, minus the punching and violent outbursts. She had beautiful, big brown eyes, which provided the finishing touch to her perfect, pretty face. Although she was quite slender, I could tell she had an ample pair of love pillows, and looking at her got my teenage body quite excited.

After 10 minutes of being sat by myself, Ebony and her friends came over and made small talk. They weren’t the bitchy adolescent girls I’d imagined them to be, they were all very kind and asked what I’d been up to, where I lived etc. I mumbled my answers and felt myself getting red in the face, but I noticed Ebony smiling at me, which reassured me I wasn’t making a complete fool of myself. We chatted for a while when I realised my bus was due in 5 minutes. Needing a piss, I made my excuses and ventured to the toilets. Unsurprisingly, they were filthy; as I urinated into the metal trough, fag-ends floated down stream to the clogged up drain. I was shaking off, when I heard the door open behind me. Being young, I quickly put my cock away, expecting an older gentleman to come and stand next to me, and embarrass me with his bigger penis. I turned, felt a damp patch form on my cotton boxer shirts from where I hadn’t shaken enough, and there was Ebony.

Ebony smiled and pushed me into a cubical, switching the lock to ‘occupied’ behind her. I almost fell over, much was the haste that she led me into it, and I kept asking what she was up to. My rigid shaft stood to attention, but I was absolutely shitting myself. I hadn’t done anything like this before but Ebony seemed to know exactly what she was doing. She stripped naked, her labia was so smooth and delicate and reminded me of a Labrador’s mouth; dark and shiny but with a thin pink trim. As she released my rod from its lair, the pungent smell of urine filled the air, and a couple of droplets dribbled out of my foreskin.

“I…I didn’t shake properly”, I stammered.

With that, Ebony punched me square on the nose, and followed it up with a slap to the back of my head. It stung me, and I was in complete shock. Then, she bent over, (I noticed her arsehole widen slightly as she did so), took my wallet from my jeans, picked up her clothes and left me. I sat in tears for a good quarter of an hour, on the toilet, head in hands. I finally plucked up the courage to put my clothes on, and examined the damage in the mirror. It was nothing too bad, a slightly bleeding nose – it was my mascualinity and pride that had been hurt the most. To make matters worse, I had to scrounge 20p off an old woman so that I could ring my mum so she could come and collect me.

High Wycombe – do not go there
(Monkey the Chicken Twitter: death_stairs, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:47, 4 replies)

Bexleyheath
I believe this sums it up really!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=68tV37itjR0
(Mr Bojangles Of London Town, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:45, 6 replies)

This isn’t the shittest town in Britain
After a pack badly behaved soldiers garrisoned nearby plied her daughter with cheap Italian booze before having their way with the unfortunate maiden, one Queen Boudicca of the Iceni was understandably a little miffed and embarked on a stabby, burny frenzy razing the town of Camulodunum and the colonial latin speakers therein.

In an act of vile spitefulness that would be felt for generations to come, the town was rebuilt and recolonized at some point became known as Colchester.

Bloody Romans.

By Norman times, Colchester boasted a bloody great big castle which was built on top of the ruined Roman temple. Given that the local topography is flatter than a landscape vista of Kiera Knightly, the six storey building must have been the highest point for miles around.

I write in a past tense about the glories of Colchester Castle because it isn’t six storeys high anymore.

It’s three. Why? Because generations of ill educated medieval Essex wideboys filched half of it and used the spoil to build and furnish their own hovels. Moving forward in time once more, the Elizabethan witch finder general Matthew Hopkins grew up in nearby Manningtree and honed his deviant skills in the town before going on to achieve murderous notoriety amongst a wider East Anglian populace.

A quick glance around the town today reveals how little has changed. For example, it’s easy to understand Hopkins’ puritanical righteousness when you can wander along the high street and watch the toothless thirty year old crones attempting to barter their moth eaten booty in exchange for dubious cider outside the town’s very own Pikey Spar.

Friday night brings the squaddies out on the town. As a general rule, they’re far better behaved than their Roman ancestors, but you don’t have to venture too far into the local papers before encountering depressingly regular reports of violent rapes and assaults. During my student years, helping out by appearing Police identity parades making myself look like a squaddie was a valuable source of extra income.

Those squalid anti-heroes like Hopkins have modern parallels in the town today. Vomitous serial fiancée dumping reality television tit Darren Day is a native of the town, while one Virginia Bottomley studied politics there in the late nineteen sixties and therefore gives ample justification for having the university burned down along with everyone in it.

The surrounding soulless morass of identikit retail villages and painfully constipated traffic flow are enough to make one weep with relief upon finally reaching the A12 where one can make for the general direction of away.

So there is the elegy to the town of my birth, Colchester would be my choice for the title for the “Piers Morgan Lifetime Seediness Achievement Award” were it not for two things – namely the existence of nearby Clacton-On-Sea and that armpit of Beelzebub itself; Ipswich.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:44, 6 replies)

Taunton.
And I thought it smelled bad on the outside.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:42, 7 replies)

Camborne, Cornwall
www.knowhere.co.uk/Camborne/Cornwall/South-West-England/info/worstthings

This sums it up
( Peej, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:42, 4 replies)

Bowthorpe, Norwich
IF you thought Norwich was filled with inbred people, you havn't seen Bownthorpe which is just outside Norwich.. its virtually a town/village/cess pit controlled by chavs..

Now if only they would put a wall around it..
(RobbJ, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:40, 13 replies)

A Guide To Chinnor
MonkeyTheChicken's post was part of a 'home town guide' thing we did at work. Here is my (lamer) effort:

Chinnor is a large village lying at the foot of the Chiltern Hills escarpment in South Oxfordshire. Mentioned in the Domesday Book as ‘...a fetid sore on the rumpe of Southe Oxfordshire’, there is history of habitation since 1000 A.D. For most, the village’s singular claim to fame is being the point where the fated ocean-going liner Titanic met its fate, striking an iceberg near The Kings Head public house on upper Station Road before sinking, taking with it 1,517 souls in 1912. It was also the birthplace of U2 bassist Adam Clayton, whose house has become a shrine said to rival that of Elvis Presley’s Graceland.


The 320 races at breakneck speed past The Red Lion, the driver having selected the 'Not In Service' sign to prevent bellicose inhabitants boarding his public transport omnibus

Chinnor has a passing connection to the English Civil War in that Oliver Cromwell is said to have visited The Royal Oak public house, situated on Lower Road. Although records do not exist to support this claim, it is believed he enjoyed two pints of Greene King IPA and played a game of pool, and put Oliver’s Army by Elvis Costello on the jukebox.

Disappointed by the lack of demand for Asian cuisine, the once-popular Chinese restaurant, The Mayflower II, closed last year, to be replaced by a Thai restaurant. Meanwhile, the Indian restaurant, aptly named The Chinnor, continues to go from strength to strength, run as it is by erstwhile Bangladeshis. Indeed, its name oftern flummoxes directory enquiry services when one calls to ask for 'The Chinnor, in Chinnor'. Other minority cuisines are catered for with Kingston Fisheries, a fish and chip shop (which provides kebabs to the hungry Friday-after-work demographic as well as piscine and tuber-based dishes) and Godwin Bakeries which proffers ready-to-eat sandwiches as well as hot and cold pastries and a wide selection of delectibles, with world cuisines catered for in the form of their Indian Chicken and Italian Chicken sandwich fillings, as well as samosas. The local butchers, Plested, located in the High Street, next to the Church grounds serves a wide variety of local produce, with quality cuts of lamb, beef and badger meat being snapped up by greedy shoppers on busy Saturday mornings.

Sporting pastimes are abundant, with both Saturday and Sunday football catered for at Chinnor’s three different recreation grounds. The genteel English pastime of cricket is poorly-catered for in the Summer months at the main playing fields with the notorious slope of the “Tennis Court End” bamboozling many an opposition batsmen alongside the majority of the home side. Chinnor also proudly boasts a village-standard tarmac and net-fenced tennis courts and a shooting club (ie. guns) for big, posh sods who are prevented from pointing their weapons at helpless, small, furry or winged creatures during the hours of darkness.


Sporting fellows in Chinnor, yesterday

Chinnor has numerous public houses, the closures of The Chairmakers Arms (1930s), The Nelson (1950s) and The Bird in Hand (2000) notwithstanding. The Sports and Social Club, which sates the thirst of tired and weary Saturday and Sunday footballers after their gladiatorial contests, offers reasonably-priced alcoholic beverages served in a dilapidated and hostile 1960s setting, The Wheatsheaf at the Oakley or ‘arse’ end of the village offers South African cuisine and a warm welcome, and The Red Lion offers the olde worlde charms of traditional horse brasses, low-beamed ceilings, an open log fire (even during the summer months) and an array of award-winning, warm and flat real ales, including brews from the local Shawshank’s brewery such as Mild (3.8%) and Redemption (4.6%).

These of course pale into insignificance, when the annual Chinnor Beer Festival rolls into town on Bank Holiday August weekend. A staple in the Chinnor diary since 2009, the festival has grown in popularity, and is frequented by both young and old, with a profusion of tankards affixed to belt straps on display throughout the day. This year’s Beer of the Day winner was Frogman’s Rusty Bullethole (4.8%) – a kinky little drop, characterised by a redolent nose, hoppy notes and aftertastes of lead, mercury and battery acid.

As we say in Chinnor – born in-bred.
(SonoraAeroClub "OH SWEET HELEN OF BALLS!", Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:36, Reply)

Dunoon
Granted I was only there for one depressing night on work matters but that was more than enough for me and my coleague. Turning up at around 4 o'clock and finding a hotel near the bustling "Main Street" we dumped our stuff in the rooms, quick change and back out for a few beers on expenses. We stepped back out at 5ish only to find the Main Street devoid of any living soul, it appeared that Dunoon shut at 5. With only a few slower grey haired folk still rambling along past Superdrug (They needed some) we managed to find a pub that was open, we were the only people in, it stayed that way for at least an hour. On to the local Snooker Club/Bar thing round several corners, a few more pints and the odd strange look from some of the local folk playing on the 10p fruit machines we decided that the night wasn't going to get any better. Time for some snap, it was around 8:30 and there were some lights on in an Indian restraunt, we went in, we were the only people in. We could hear tins being opened in the kitchens in anticipation of a customer ordering food, we had a quick beer and left. Finally a "normal" looking restraunt near the hotel was also open, after perousing the menu the lovely old lady behind the counter informed us that the kitchens closed at 9:00, current time 9:05.
We finally found a dirty burger type place that also sold packs of beer, one rat burger with cheese and a 4 pack of Stella and it was time to retire to the hotel.

Dunoon - Open Mon-Sat 9:00 - 5:00
(Midamachewspageoshirkews We don't need another hero, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:35, 2 replies)