Seconding the motion for Gravesend, Kent.
I'm originally from the Medway towns *cough* Strood *cough*, the home place of babies, rabies, scabies and other infectious diseases, but moved voluntarily via an 8yr stay in Student Land aka Canterbury (for love rather than money) up to Gravesend just under a year ago. Where do I begin explaining the crapness of my newly adopted home?

It's a festering sore of a place, full of the obligatory knuckle dragging chavs and the youth of the area's main aim is to either get sent to prison at a younger age than their brothers or for the girls to have a baybee as young as possible so they can get a flat and a package of benefits. The area is suffused by a god awful smell known as the "Shorne Stink" which often permeates the place either from rotting paper pulp placed on the fields or if the wind is right from the sewage works near the Thames itself. I like to think of it as the town's own brand of brimstone infused flatulence.

The local populace are mostly clothed in Primarni and George at Asda's finest, or stuff purchased from certain outlet type sports shops which have just opened in the area - One charming example of local fashion trends is clad head to toe in a dayglo green and red triple striped adidas track suit which he thinks makes him look the dogs doodahs, proving that chavs will buy anything provided it has a brand name label on it. People are that cheap that the local charity shops have their donations nicked from outside their shops on a daily basis, same with dustbin day, leave anything out that looks interesting or may contain old clothes or metal and you can guarantee it'll be nicked that evening by individuals of an Eastern European slant and the local plod do nothing about it.

Gravesend has its own quasi ghetto environment, and the usual estates where you don't go unless you're related to half the families there or if you do make sure that you don't make eye contact unless its construed as looking at them funny and requiring a beating. Where the boys still stuff tracky bottom legs into the tops of their long socks because David Beckham did it for footie training a decade ago and the girls wear matching cheap and brightly coloured towelling shell suit things purchased from a stall in one of the shopping precincts that are covered with colourful studs with the boutique's name on it and that are always two sizes too small or falling down on them. And where a certain proportion of the local Asian population ("the GravesIndians" would happily join the BNP without any sense of irony as they're some of the most racist bastards around and give the members of that party a run for their money.

There were plans to blow £6 million on the local Prom and park and turn the beach (read muddy hellhole with rusted trolleys and scarcely any pebbles) into a proper shingled tourist trap which seems to have died a quiet death at the moment along with the original plan to spend millions building the Gravesend Tower - a luxury apartment block and rent out flats from it at 2 grand a month per one bed apartment, totally forgetting that half the population are on benefits of some kind or another and would never afford it even with Housing Benefit. People who even dare swim in the river either come out glowing or not at all sucked in by the river mud and poisoned by the chemical detritus of the industrial areas plus I'm assured by a local that plenty of people may have gone swimming in concrete overshoes in the past as well. If they were to dredge the river properly, well, it'd be amazing how many skeletons and cars they'd find. It was no surprise when that whale got lost up the Thames a couple of months back, that it only managed to get halfway between Northfleet and Greenhithe before suffocating. They ought to be concentrating the money on regenerating the ghost town that is the shopping arcades and encouraging people to shop there rather than hop on the bus for a half hour ride up to Bluewater.

The only bonuses of living here are the closeness to London and the entertainment value of the weekend drunken fights in town. When we've got the money we'll be escaping hopefully. Until then, why bother with Jeremy Kyle when I can walk down the high street and see it first hand?

Apologies for length.. My fiance was worth it.
(ameythyst_rune, Wed 4 Nov 2009, 17:49, 1 reply)

My ex-wife wasn't.
*clicks*
( Ping_Pang_Piddley_Dee couldn't give a big shiny fuck., Wed 4 Nov 2009, 18:47, closed)