Leigh is a small-ish part of the larger Southend on Sea district. Leigh people like to think of themselves as ‘better’ than the rest of the district, and yes, there maybe more money per person floating around due to many of the inhabitants being City workers etc. As we all now however, money does not buy class.
This creates a weird kind of ‘oh, you’re not from Leigh then’ snobbery.
Truth is however, Leigh is ****. During the day, the Leigh wives move from nail shop to hair boutique to over-priced tat shop, out of having nothing much else to do. There’s nowhere to park in the narrow streets where they all live, so this creates a haven of aggression on the roads, with BMWs and 4x4s all vying for supremacy on the tiny streets.
It’s at night that the true horror of Leigh manifests itself however, in the myriad of ‘bars’ that festoon the tiny ‘centre’. Coked up oiks and orange women all scrambling to buy Starapramen at £6 a pint and make themselves heard over the din of the sort of music that would insult the intelligence of a 9yr old, whilst eyeing each other up.
The main pastime at night is looking for people ‘who aren’t from Leigh’, in order to look down their powdered noses at them. Fights are commonplace, and the over-bearing atmosphere is one of joyless faux-snobbery. After 1am, local cab drivers prefer to avoid Leigh, due to the possibility of violence or being verbally abused for not being from Leigh. It is truly a horror, and, as someone from one of the ‘lesser’ areas you would not get me to live there for anything.
So Leigh then: it thinks it’s a glass of champagne, when really it’s a bucket of p*ss.
