diddy

Yep, I remember it closing. I used to work with a Gedge for a while.

They should close the rest of Ipswich now. Just put a big chain around it with a big closed sign on it.

gedge

We moved there about 8 months before coming to Oz. My previous company in sold out (see above) and I was given the option of transferring to new company based in Trowbridge. As I knew it was only temp, we rented a place in BOA a few doors up from the Bunch of Grapes. What a great time we had there, it was hard to leave. Now if I'd settled in Trowbridge, I'd of slit my wrists.

Larissa

Hi Petra
Just to let you know, some Australian friends of ours went to Pomey on Holiday this Christmas and loved it Mind you, he got pleurasy and ended up in QA hospital. I was a bit jealous that they'd made the Next Sale though ("Where's my bag then?")
Hope the job is going well
x
Larissa

renth

Where's BOA, what does it stand for?

Jonahs_mummy

Wakefield

Famous residents: The pop group “Black Lace”, responsible for such timeless gems as “We’re having a gang bang” and “Aggadoo”

Squashed like a Lamb’s testicles into the kebab of West Yorkshire is the city of Wakefield. Known locally (and somewhat confusingly) as the “Merry City”, this depressing abyss now passes its days as a staging post for the freshly paroled.

For the casual shoplifter, the city centre is an opportunity not to be missed, but If it’s bargains you’re after, why not try the “Ridings Shopping Centre”, the local containment unit for farting pensioners and pregnant toddlers. If that’s not your cup of tea you could always do battle with 2000 other nicotine stained fingers in the broken biscuit section of the “Food Weighouse”.

Street entertainment is varied yet painful, as the Bolivian foot-tappers are coined by pre-pubescent skiprats, abusive old women in Dunlop Green Flash hurl insults and beg for shrapnel from passers by… their cause usually aided by a broken Bontempi or keyless accordion.

The infamous “Westgate Run”, a crawl of over 20 pubs, takes in a number of semi-night clubs, including the exclusively titled: “Bitz”, “Toffs” and “Rumours”, all of which can be relied upon as a ticket to a quick knee trembler with Leanne or Donna and a certain dose of Yorkshire cock-rot!

and now do you wonder why we want to leave !!!!!! i don't want my kids to go to school with the future jobless breeders of wakefield who'll have 6 kids before they are 20 lol
steve

Clippy

I must be wearing Rose Tints cus Brum sounds good to me

Birmingham
How dare you suggest Birmingham.
In response to your complaints about Birmingham not being nominated:

The thing about Birmingham is that it simply isn’t crap. It’s a fun, friendly second city that doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s no lack of amenities and if something is in any way crap, then the council simply bulldozes it and puts something nice up instead.

Birmingham’s only failings are a few of the peripheral suburbs - Selly Oak, Tipton etc. which have had a mention on your map anyway.

I should like to add a vote for Bridgwater, Somerset though! Now there truly is a desolate hole of despair.

Adam Juniper

ANOTHER REASON TO LIKE BIRMINGHAM

I got very drunk one night and I f****d a girl who was from somewhere in Birmingham. She was called Yasmin I think and she went like the clappers. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I don't know who Yasmin is though - unless it's Yasmin Le Bon....

NickyP

Bradford on Avon just a stone's throw from Trowbridge but very nice none the less . It does tend to attract a lot of tourists but you can ignore them most of the time .
Unfortunately the house that we were going to buy fell through when the survey found that the previous owner had extended into the loft by cutting out all of the roof trusses (they do get in the way),had put an arch into a supporting wall with no support and had extended putting a sun lounge on the back concreting over a manhole :scared: .
The only downside to the place that I remember is that they try to make the council houses look like they are made from Bath stone by painting the breezeblocks yellow for that public toilet block look.
Nicky

artep

You mean to tell me they came back to Oz without a pressie from Next for ya?....sheesh...some friends!!

Poor bugger getting pleurasy tho.... Hope he's ok now.

sme

ST ALBANS

Having lived in St Albans since 1975 I have witnessed many changes to this historical and frankly suffocating satellite town.

We have no cinema and more importantly no hospital, courtesy of 52 years of Conservative local government.

We do have lots of pubs though: you can either drink with nauseating morris dancing CAMRA members or with drunken, violent polo-shirts and their vacuous harridens.

You have to be careful if you’re black or gay or look a bit weird though, because the lace curtains will be twitching and we don’t like strangers who talk funny and might damage our big cars (and smell of garlic).

Edward Bailey

‘MUSEUM OF BREAD’

I’ve got to agree about St Albans. The alternative community, if that’s not too nauseating a phrase, could pretty much all fit into one house. Which they often did. However, me and all my friends left all in one go as soon as we could afford it and moved onto more exciting locations.

I would like to make special mention of a few stalwarts who flicked the ear of mediocrity whilst I lived there - particularly a couple called Dave and Dawn, who were both fine art students. Their house was blessed, as a former shop, with a large display window, into which Dave and Dawn would place a different installation every month or so. Their supreme triumph was the ‘museum of bread’ , a display which featured dozens of different kinds of bread, rolls, toast and other dough-based products, all neatly labelled and artfully displayed.

So successful were their efforts that soon after they put this wheeze up, they began receiving mail addressed to the ‘museum’ and regularly turned away disappointed visitors who wanted to see the ‘rest of the collection’.

Tim Wild

Idler roving reporter goes to St Albans

So, maybe it was a bit unfair of The Idler to give St
Albans such big billing in its Crap Towns section.
After all, it’s an undeniably attractive place and is
probably great for most of its residents.

However, while the reality of life in St Albans is
nothing like as horrific as suggested in the accounts
in The Idler (which are obviously exaggerated for
humour), I stand by most of the essential criticisms
they raise.

It’s definitely a lovely place to visit. I had a fine
day walking round Verulamium Park and visiting the
Roman museum. I also liked the Bee-hive and particularly admired the fact that it’s got a table-tennis table in the garden (such a great idea, and so rarely done!).

However, visiting a town and living there are
completely different experiences – and there were
plenty of things that would put me off the latter. for
instance, there were more lace curtains than anywhere
I’ve been in my life. I found it quite unsettling; it
surely suggests something ominous. The Porsche per
capita count is also disturbingly high – what are they
all compensating for?

And, most noticeably, - Bee Hive aside - there didn’t
look like there was much for anyone under 30. While
drunk teenagers didn’t exactly “pave the streets” as
it says in The Idler, there were loads of bored
looking youths hanging around. The thing that
confirmed it for me was going to the party in the park
with Aaron. It was fantastic – and made all the more
enjoyable by the setting – but I lost count of the
number of people I heard saying that they couldn’t
believe that kind of thing was happening in St Albans.
Everyone was surprised by how much fun they were
having there – and that can’t be a good sign.

Still, it’s easier to get to the centre of London than
it is from most places outside Zone 2 on the tube map
– and having lived in Tooting for a year, I know which
I’d prefer: St Albans, it’s crap, but it’s nice.

Sam Jordison

From The St Albans Observer
By Aaron Batemen
If the town you had lived in most of your life
was suddenly and ignominiously decried as ‘crap’ you would expect to feel a rising swell of indignation and resolve to prove the ingrates wrong.

But when last week I discovered St Albans’ nomination in The Idler magazine’s infamous Crap Map my first reaction was not to scream and shout but to nod my head and chuckle in recognition at some of the complainant’s grievances.

For those of you who don’t know it, The Idler’s Crap Map is a list of reader-nominated towns which are routinely and somewhat uniformly lambasted as dull, insufferable little settlements which seemingly exist only to squeeze the life out of their younger residents.

Any readers under 30 will, I’m sure, have just shuddered in
recognition at the above sentence, but it still won’t do to have other people mouthing off about my town’s deficiencies - that’s my job.

Although it’s not The Idler lampooning St Albans, but people who actually live or have lived here, when I got a call from a member of staff at the London-based magazine offering to pay us a visit, I knew that I would be determined to show him St Albans was actually a thriving city which does not
leave its youth forming an orderly queue for the scaffold.

Thank God then for GetUptoGetDown in the Big Top on Saturday evening. Promoter Hansi Koppe’s occasional fandango at The Horn was transplanted to the specially erected marquee in Verulamium Park as part of the St Albans Festival and was an unqualified success.

Having spent the day showing off St Albans’ merits to Mr Idler, namely Verulamium Museum and my front room, I felt I needed a big finish to prove once and for all that St Albans was a cool place and I got it.

The £14 entry fee to the event was a bit steep but it’s not every day you get to party in such idyllic surroundings. With the sun setting over the lake in majestic fashion we sat just
Outside the entrance to the Big Top enjoying a cold beer and listening to DJ Seen warm up the crowd with a finely crafted set of laid back breaks and beats. Even better was to come, with a great set from Hansi, who played as well as I’ve ever seen him.

As darkness fell and I surveyed the scene before me I realised the incongruity of several hundred revellers dancing for their lives where normally there would be nothing more strenuous than the odd dog-walker pooper-scooping.

The energy in the Big Top was frenzied by now, with the youth of St Albans relishing their chance to unleash their party spirits. The five-deck mixing of The Drunken Allstars, a threesome who are surely destined for bigger things, was the perfect warm-up for the main event – an hour of mixing genius from the Freestylers.

Mr Idler had long since departed for the last train home to London and so missed the highlight of the night, specifically me dancing. But, by then, I think he’d seen that St Albans is a gem of a place.

Future organisers of the St Albans Festival should take note and make sureGetUpToGetDown is top of next 2004’s agenda.

Young people here feel let down that there is so little for them to do. Something good happened on Saturday night. Don’t take it away.

© 1993-2005 The Idler | Designed by Noble Savage




This is so true....but I do like living in St Albans

Larissa

Funny though, you could really slag off anywhere so it's all pretty meaningless.
Take Perth for example -

PERTH IS DULOC

Welcome to Duloc, such a perfect town
Here we have some rules, let us lay them down
Don't make waves, stay in line
And we'll get along fine
Duloc is a perfect place

Keep your feet off the grass
Shine your shoes, wipe your...face
Duloc is, Duloc is
Duloc is a perfect place

Yes, Perth is rumoured to have inspired the writers of Shrek, with it's oh so perfect Malls and maincured lawns. London Court, is the world's tackiest imitation tudor mall. If you don't die of boredom you will fry in the 40 degree heat.
I couldn't think of writing anything else because, well that's all there is to say
BTW I do actually love it here, just having a sarcastic day plus Perth *really* is Duloc.

herrchook

Here's what it said of Edinburgh where I grew up....

A city where many buildings look as if they have been deliberately sprayed with a thick coating of grimy soot and where a bone-piercing wind blows along Princes Street more chillingly than do the winds in Wellington, New Zealand, and that’s saying something.


And then I moved to Broxburn......

Football
addicted
bigoted
grey
wet
cold
post
industrial
unemployment
nightmare.

and then to Glasgow.......

If there is a more miserable, brutal, godforsaken shithole on the face of this planet, then the human race might as well let the ants take over now.

I can still recall the utter astonishment of the taxi driver I tipped last time I was there - he was clearly expecting to be robbed as usual.

The streets are paved with vomit, the inhabitants are as vicious as they are stupid, the weather is as vile as the architecture and the transport to civilisation, (i.e.Edinburgh) goes via Inverness.

:scared:

Should show this to the in laws next time they ask why we want to emigrate

Wendy

PMSL It's so accurate it's spooky!



Bradford
Grey, squalid , dark, dirty , poor. It’s role in life is to make everywhere else look better in comparison, as Bill Bryson once remarked. It does this with flying colours.

Plagued by unemployment and full of single mums and slightly demented old people who have nowhere to go, it will make even the chirpiest optimist lower their heads and shrug their shoulders.

Bradford is marked by the boredom of poverty , as well as the obligatory bad housing and dirty, litter-strewn streets.

And if that wasn’t enough, its most notable hero was Titus Salt, a god-fearing , bible-bashing, teetotaling nineteenth century entreprenurial industrialist.

Edward Cardale

BRADFORD DEFENDED

Poor old Bradders is undeniably crap. However, with so much deprivation and hopelessness it cannot fail to be interesting.

Indeed, Bradford has carved a niche for itself in British society, providing many important cultural influences. These include our very own serial killer, popular prozza show, Band of Gold, rock and roll stars, Terrorvision and New Model Army and several high profile riots.

My favourite part of Bradford is Shipley. With its monolithic 1960s clock tower and charity shop epidemic (where all the
posh people from Ilkley dump last season’s Jaeger), Shipley has several colourful residents. These include the Shipley Cowboy who stands at Fox’s Corner gurning and shooting his fingers into the air, and The Monk, who rambles throughout Bradford, rain or shine in his habit and sandals waving at cars.


This guy has walked around bradford for the past 30 years :scared:

Vash the Stampede

Let's chav it up for Walsall!!!
So true... oh so, so horrifyingly true...

When I first visited Walsall, I truly believed I had stepped back in time to the Dickensian era. The sheer filth and decreptitude of the place is gob-smackingly bad - even by Birmingham standards.

He's dead right about the bus station; it's a poxy muddle of cheap concrete, glass and steel. Hopelessly impractical, pedestrian-unfriendly, and astonishingly inefficient. What's even worse is that they built it slap-bang on the doorstep of St Paul's - which is utterly gorgeous, tastefully and intelligently refurbished (having been partitioned inside, with a chapel, a cafe and a small group of shops) and an absolute joy to visit.

As for the accent... thanks to their slack-jawed regional dialect, none of the locals can even pronounce English properly, let alone read or write it.

The local greeting consists of "Orrrrrlroit, arya?" or sometimes just "Orrrroit?" if the speaker is in a hurry. You will hear it at least fifty times a day, and it drives me insane; after a mere 15 minutes in town I am usually on the verge of screaming, and have to take refuge in the library to calm down.

In Walsall's defence (yes, there's light at the end of the tunnel!) I must say that I have visited the new art gallery, and it's actually pretty good (though hideously ugly from the outside, as most modern British buildings are.)

Walsall also has a handful of very decent independent shops and businesses, whose proprietors serve you with courtesy, speed and genuine smiles. I just wish I knew what they're saying.

Perhaps I'll get a Black Country phrasebook one of these days.

angel17796

These are classic lol

Glenrothes
Situated in the arse-end of nowhere (or ‘Fife’ as it’s sometimes known).

My sole experience of the town involves changes busses while travelling from Glasgow to St Andrews. I have a strong feeling that this comprises the town’s whole function.

Even if you’re heading West and hit the town after forty minutes, after a few of Glenrothes’ thousands of roundabouts, you’ll be sitting in the bus station with your head between your legs and breathing deeply, believe me.

For those travellers sturdier than myself, I assure you that the town itself can take the shine off any day. From the buildings ripped straight out of the ‘How to Build an Ugly New Town’ manual to the oddly bone-structured inhabitants so pale that they’re practically translucent, the whole thing resembles Milton Keynes as designed by H P Lovecraft.



This was the nearest one to where we used to live.

wmoore

http://idler.co.uk/crap/?page_id=119

Scarily accurate.

"The real Middlesbrough accent it seems is the blighted child of a Scouse father and a mother who has mild traces of Newcastle in her accent."

Sadly true. I'm glad I never actually lived there (I was born within spitting distance of Ayresome Park but lived 8 miles up the road ). The Boro accent is absolutely shocking and should be shot at birth.