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)

Given that the local topography is flatter than a landscape vista of Kiera Knightly
Lovely! Just LOVELY!!! Clicks all round, sir.
( SpankyHanky, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:48, closed)

Somehow
despite all this, I still like it better than Reading.
(sailorspoon started wiping his own arse from, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:09, closed)

I always thought Colchester was nice
...from which you can probably deduce that I spent a lot of years living in Clacton.
( Dave McF wrote some words on, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 17:08, closed)

See my most recent post
You have my sympathies.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 29 Oct 2009, 17:28, closed)

It's not that bad really.
Although thinking about it there have been three murders within a half mile radius of where I live in Colchester within recent memory.

But its paradise compared to Romford.
(purple_gromit, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 21:56, closed)