Chatham
Chatham! Chavham as it is proudly called by its alternative community. Just walk down the high street from the Gala bingo where the single mums crowd on a Saturday night to spend their newly cashed benefit cheques, you will pass almost 30 different fast food places from the major league artery cloggers such as McDonalds and KFC to a grotty burger trolley which sits outside the pentagon.
I guarantee you will only see 1 person for every hundred who is not a ****. It sickens me to see 15 year old girls pushing wheelchairs, with their screaming diseased children crying through their tiny lungs, damaged by smoke while they were still in the womb. Knowing these children will grow up into this horrible area where intelligence, creativity and individualism is looked down upon, where the local secondary schools offer 5 GCSE grade C’s average and even the grammar schools for the ones whose parents encouraged them to work and pass their 11+ are beginning to see more and more ***** who will not benefit from the education and take it upon themselves to taunt and bully people because they want a career and a good life.
But then as you walk past poundland, and on past Argos and another burger bar you see it in the middle of this awful place; a music shop, so tiny you could walk past and not notice it but its there walk in and you are treated to racks upon racks of CD’s by anyone you could ever want to listen to, posters for obscure local bands litter the walls, you buy anything you are loaded up with flyers for bands, poetry reading and art exhibits, go upstairs and there are drums, guitars, amps everything a musician could want walk further and you find Sharon music my own personal retreat from this terrible place, me and my girlfriend sometimes spend an hour in there talking to the staff about bands, music and the local rock scene. Safe in the knowledge that the streams of ***** we see walking past have an almost allergic reaction to the shop and will never come in
In Chatham there is a pub; the tapntin, a pub where the libertines played their first gig after Pete was released from prison, a place where on Friday nights the local rock community retreat to hold court, listen to good music and have a good night out. Nearby is the command house (my personal favourite) where they have once a week the smoking dog club; a night where the music is quiet, poets read, artists show their new work. But as with all good things in all towns suffering this infection all you need to do is walk 5 minutes away and see the pub to club bus full of already drunk 16+ year olds on their way to the nightclubs, the boys to fight and the girls to get laid.
Its deeply relaxing for me to know that even in this town where the virus was first seen blooming in the late 90’s there is still and undercurrent of culture, art, conversation and music all the things which a true civilisation enjoy.
So as you turn off the motorway and see that sign vandalised many moons ago to say chavham remember this may be where the infection began, but it is also where we few, we last few people who believe in this country and the freedom is gives are beginning to make our last stand
We are the ones who will take back this country for good honest people
We cannot fight it we must wait, and wait for the good decent people of Britain to be able to shine
T (Chatham boy born ‘n’ bred)
