Ojc
Member
Registered: 14th Nov 00
Location: Reading: Drives : Clio 197
User status: Offline
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Its a hellhole, it needs a nice fence with watch towers erected over it.
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SetH
Member
Registered: 15th Jul 01
User status: Offline
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PMFSL poor Luton,
How many of those crap towns are up north btw?
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Ally
Member
Registered: 2nd Jul 03
Location: Pontypool Drives: a Skoda
User status: Offline
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Most probably 
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Mad Moe
Member
Registered: 14th Jun 01
Location: Northumberland
User status: Offline
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Looks like theres more shitholes down south according to last years list
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Ally
Member
Registered: 2nd Jul 03
Location: Pontypool Drives: a Skoda
User status: Offline
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How many in Wales?
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Ojc
Member
Registered: 14th Nov 00
Location: Reading: Drives : Clio 197
User status: Offline
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Town/Village: Reading
Your notable idle predecessor - Jerome K Jerome - highlighted Reading's failings, in 'Three Men In A Boat', as a carbuncle on the Thames. However, even he had difficulty coming up with a suitable adjective to describe the grey/brown miasma that shrouds the town, suffocating its inhabitants.
Reading is of course famous as the unwelcome home of Oscar Wilde. No worse prison could have been invented for the man. In 'The Ballard Of Reading Gaol' he speaks for everyone who has spent time there:
"In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame"
Until recently, the only entertainment for a young boy or girl growing up in Reading was a set of benches outside Boots the Chemist. The place had a smattering of pubs, all populated by either violent rockers or even more violent men in yellow pullovers, white socks and toggled slip-on shoes ("The Casuals") or, the leitmotif of all provincial towns, the teenage gothic. The nearest functioning cinema was in Bracknell, the only clothes shop was a C&A, and the one "restaurant" a Wimpy.
Reading was but 30 minutes from London, yet it felt like a lifetime away. London has Soho and Mayfair; Reading defined itself with Smelly Alley - a fish market in the center of town - and the Butt's Center - a 1970's shopping concrete complex designed to attract glue-sniffers from throughout the world.
A statute of Queen Victoria has her back to the town, so much did she hate it. The other statute in the town is of a lion, but the sculptor designed the legs backwards then killed himself.
The people were oily thuggish and believed in queues above all else. Staring was considered a crime.
One story is of a teenager who stole a bag from the station, ran home with it, looked inside, discovered it contained a bomb and threw it into his own (Well, his Mother's anyway), garden and split before it blew. Only someone from Reading could steal a bomb and blow up their Mother's garden.
Nevertheless, it was a paradise in those days compared to what it is now. Benefiting from millions of pounds of renovation and a massive economic boom, Reading looks more like Bilbao. But insurance salesmen, estate agents, foreign exchange students and mobile telephone engineers populate it. Scum in other words. It is a shrine to par venue pretensions. It may be shinny and new, but the whiff of boredom, wretchedness and despair reaches the nostrils and reminds one of the acrid rotten foundations.
Kate Winslet, Tanita Tikaram, Kenneth Brannagh all came from Reading. Do they talk about it? I haven't heard them
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Cybermonkey
Member
Registered: 22nd Sep 02
Location: Sydney, Australia
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Ojc
Its a hellhole, it needs a nice fence with watch towers erected over it.
god i love you
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