Have you ever been to Grays? Along with Gravesend, it must be one of the most appropriately named places on the face of this earth! Just up the road from the exotically but misnamed Stanford Le Hope (it should read No in the middle), Grays is only a desirable address if you have the misfortune to find yourself living in Chafford Hundred. Even Dagenham and Basildon are bourgois compared to Grays and this thoroughly ugly corner of Essex! If Kent is the garden of England, Grays and its environs must surely be the outside crapper!
The appointment of Dicks must be the ultimate marriage made in Hell. I really do wonder which is the uglier, the town of Grays or Julian's mug. I wish him all the best but Dicks in Grays is not an image to inspire poetry!
2 comments:
Hammersfan, i read your blog on a fairly regular basis and usually find it amusing and topical. I rarely post anything however, as i suspect my opinion will be received about as well as shouting at the telly.
What's different today, you ask?
Well i thought that someone needed to point out to you that you have just disrespected and alienated a district of West Ham heartland. Grays is very much a part of the East London overspill and has a community akin to the industrial class & culture that comes with it. Grays Athletic is at the very heart of that community with local people and businesses coming together to try to give the place, that you rightly refer to as undesirable, something to be proud of. These people know that they don't live in Hampstead and don't need you to remind them of this fact.
I wonder what Zola thinks of Upton Park? My guess is that his dignity even before his working class background would prevent him from making public judgement.
Fair point ORMR. But it is not the people, it is the town I knock, and I'm sure most residents of Grays would agree that the best thing to do would be to flatten it and start again - except that the Essex planners would probably then build another Chafford Hundred, a place that makes even Milton Keynes and Stevenage look quaint. There are nightmare towns and cities in our country: Gravesend, Thamesmead, Chafford Hundred, Dagenham, Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Stanford No Hope and Doncaster amongst them. I know many people are born there and many lack the means to escape but that doesn't all the fact that they are hideous places. Dicks is an ugly bugger and Grays is an ugly town - thus the marriage made in Hell. I did wish Dicks well - and that goes for the team too! As for the residents, I hope they can tunnel their way out at some point. Surely Colditz would be an improvement!
Post a Comment