On speaking of the brassy actress Jean Harlow, Margot Asquith said: “The ‘T’ is silent, as in ‘Harlow'”. Just about says it all for a town whose only contribution to satire is to name one of its shittiest pubs…wait for it…hold those ribs…get ready with the defibrillator paddles…the Jean Harlow….with a silent T.

Where are the **** hangouts? ******* everywhere.

With a forces background, I have lived in many places…even military transit camps converted (just) from ex WW2 POW camps. I have also been to the third world…so I can speak with authority when I say that Harlow is the nastiest, meanest, ********* place I have ever had the misfortune to inhabit.

I work hard for a living…around my house appears to be a 5 mile exclusion zone of other employed people…scattered within it, like the remains of some post nuclear holocaustic sci-fi movie are a bizarre array of concrete bunkers inhabited by what appear at first sight to be Morlocks. As the incredulous camera zooms in…wait…no…they are almost human…those grey lumps are…HOUSES???….

I can only echo much of what other authors have pointed out…having actually done my research, (no, seriously!) much of the housing stock was award-winning in its time…when English architects thought concrete was a miracle material. Many of the methods and other materials were experimental. Problem is, no-one ever admitted when those experiments were stunningly obvious failures – by then it had cost too much. (And upper-class twats like architects never admit they are wrong anyway). They were designed to be cheap, easy / quick to build (can u see the problems and smell the mildew already?) to replace all the smog-stained slums that nasty Mr Hitler had bombed. Harlow is the first of the new towns, the first to be built to a great plan…it was designed FROM THE OUTSET as a chavtown. The very raison d’etre of the development corporations was “throw up some quick cheap boxes and stuff the poor and dispaced people in them”. Fact. Harlow is the granddaddy of them all. UberChavsville. I hereby nominate it as PEARLY KING of chavtowns.

What did they think? That these forelock-tugging flatcapped salt-of-the-earth cheeky chappies would inhale some clean air, spot a few of their first ever trees, lean back in their own postage-stamp gardens in their own NEW town and think: “Gawd bless ya, Harlow, me old son! I’m going straight from now on!”, maybe if they hadn’t crammed them together worse than bulimic sardines, made them so goddamned small, made them almost inaccessible other than on foot for the sake of “good design”…built in muggers paradise subways, shady paths, poorly lit alleyways between estates…maybe then they wouldnt have built a ****-producing machine.

Thet forgot the old adage “You can take the **** out of the estate, but you cant take the estate out of the ****”.

And the NAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!! “Little Cattins” WTF is a “Cattin” ??????? Hell’s Chance of working it out! “Brockles Mead” (known locally as “The Bronx”)…”Wedhey”…not “Wedhey Street / close / avenue” etc just the enigmatic and lonely “Wedhey”…or “Taylifers” or “wankbollocks” or “felmongers”…OK I made one of those up – the rest are real. The corporation must have been on Mescaline when they assigned the numbers…how about this for an ACTUAL sequence of houses which follow one after another on a main road: 258, 261, 259, 260. I kid you not. Whats worse is that their address isnt the road they are on, its the estate…things is they arent part of the estate…they are on the main road and architecturally different. the “idiot board” at the entrance to the estate, some 400 yards away…shows houses up to 257….find THAT, mr Pizza delivery boy!!! And believe me, that is only one of HUNDREDS of such insanities.

I’m not going to talk about the *****, you all know what they are like…there is a grim universality of attire and attitude in chavdom as they all aspire to be individuals….Im interetsed in the abject failure of a social experiment which has pretty much defined the environmental conditions for becoming a **** sausage machine.

I’d enter the XMAS lights competition, but I couldnt afford enough film, or a wide enough lens…have you seen Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation? Thats nothing! But hey, who cares about the cost when you’ve bypassed the meter? That cousin of his lives in almost every house in Harlow. Harry Enfield MUST have done his reserach for Wayne and Waynetta Slob here. I heard the council were thinking of padding the pavements to avoid being sued over all the scraped knuckles…..

What worries me is that they havent learned…Church Langley – one of the newest developments – has a higher housing density than a Guatemalan shanty town. The walls are about the same thickness too – when two ***** finish a shag in “Davenport”, two others light up a *** in “Elwood”. Yes, sadly those names are real. Where’s “Jake”, thats what I want to know ?????. As if to seal the town’s misery…its NEWEST development houses the one and only **thank god** Jade Goodie. Now if THAT doesnt say it all, and make Harlow **** Mecca, what else could?

Vote Harlow…or it’ll ******* glass ya

I know you’re thinking “what else could I gain from reading another article on Harlow?”, but trust me there is more. For a start, I’m not sure how many other towns could claim to have adverts warning of ASBOs on their bus services. The local authorities claim that only seven of these orders have been handed out in Harlow, which doesn’t sound bad until you read that at the same time, there was only one in place in Bishops Stortford, and only an Acceptable Behaviour Contract in Sawbridgeworth. Only a few weeks ago, the local newspaper ran a story about how two families were being evicted thanks to their **** teenage sons.

I suppose I should also talk about Occasio House. Now this place isn’t a bad idea in theory – apart from being a large, grey eyesore, it does provide needed housing for teenagers who have had difficulties at home and have been thrown out. The problem is, walking past this place is a nightmare – resident ***** will freely hurl abuse from the windows, if you can hear them over the ridiculously loud garage music. The abuse can be for all sorts of reasons – dyed hair (unless blonde), non-**** clothing, even so much as using a word with more than one syllable. If it marks you out as being not one of their own, they’ll gladly try to belittle you into conformity. In a way, I guess they’re like horror film zombies, only dumber and far, far more infectious – in those films, there always seems to be a way to escape the zombies. You see them ******* about in and around the place all day, and it’s situated right next to the taxi ranks in the town centre, for maximised opportunity to cause an annoyance.

However, another good place to find ***** is also around the main bus station in the town centre, and the nearby market (during the daytime) and newsagents (during the evening). During the daytime, the market square is perhaps the single most popular **** meeting area in the town. It’s close to the bar, the Post Office (so they can collect their dole money), the local Cash Converters and if that wasn’t **** heaven already, the market runs four out of five weekdays. Once these vital **** facilities have closed, they move on to the other side of the bar, where they can find an off-licence and over the road, the bus station. Now, by the time the shops are shutting, the ***** are usually quite drunk, so it’s not uncommon to find shouting matches and fights by the off-licence. The council has installed CCTV there since the **** outbreak. Perhaps the most annoying **** incidents I’ve witnessed happened in the bus shelter. THRILL at female **** of little intelligence sticking her mobile phone into her mouth so the polyphonic ringtone she downloaded sounds even worse! SPILL at ***** sticking chewing gum all over the seats! FALL ILL at the sight of one ultra-annoying ******** riding around the shelter on his motorised scooter tooting the insanely loud horn!

The sad thing is, I haven’t even touched upon the schools that house tons of filthy chavlings. One of them has recently had a police officer permanently stationed there, whilst another has had to implement electronic student ID cards. Whilst growing up, the phrases my mum often heard (and was often proud of hearing) was “your children don’t act like Harlow children” or “your children aren’t from Bishops Stortford, are they?”. The saddest thing of all is that the local council wishes residents to be proud of Harlow. But when it’s strewn with glass on the cycle tracks (one of which has the misspelt message “Harlow Police Suck ****” sprayed on), when it’s littered with shopping trolleys that were never intended to be returned, and when you can’t wait for a bus without some 13 year old asking you to buy them cigarettes, what have we got to be proud of?

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that Harlow wouldn’t be a bad place to live, if the population of the town wasn’t the worst example of **** **** I’ve seen.

This has to be the biggest hole in Essex. I swear, one look and all the teenage single mums from all over the shop come running to claim off the state.
If you can get through the Harvey centre without encountering some drugged up, 14 year old tart, *** in mouth, pushing her screaming brat along i a pushchair, then you must be in there before the shops open.

They think that they’ve got modifying cars down to an art. It certainly is art I’ll tell you that. If a Harlow **** (or Barry) has got his hands on it then it’s no longer a bloody car. I’ll give you a clue. Let’s take an H reg Nova, stick on some skirts, front and rear spoiler, stainless steel twin exhaust, tint the windows and then maybe lower the suspension. Add to this the sound system that cost more than a years rent on their council house and you’ve got it, the standard Harlow car. All that effort for a 1100cc.

McDonalds is the “trendy” hangout for these louts. They sit out there in their crappy cars, eating burgers and playing with their hackett t-shirts and burberry caps. Its a truly sad place, and it’s creeping into Epping. Thank god for Epping Forest!

This is the worst town i have ever had the misfourtune to reside in! Not only is the town overun by ***** but it seams that it was actually designed by them! For example, the train station is a 15min walk from the town centre to which there are only buses during the weekday rush hour! If you come here without a car you cannot escape! The town centre looks like a bomb has hit it
Back to the *****, it seems that if adidas or kappa made pushchairs they would be laughing!
Also this town has the scankiest street name signs which are a minging blue edged by a minging grey plastic, eughhh.
You do not fit in this town unless you:
a) are a pregant teenager or preferably a pregnant teenager in a tracksuit or wearing anything that is a size 8 instaed of maternity clothes so that the bump is visible!
b) a teenager who already has kids in pushchairs and runs people who dont have a pushchair over
c) wear a tracksuit 24/7
d) own a burberry hat/bag/scarf or all of them!
e) sport the latest ‘im addicted to tanning salons’ orange glow – this applies to men and women.
f) are incapable of walking in a straight line without swaying from side to side – again this includes both men and women!
g) find it essential to spit onto the floor for no apparant reason.

i can go on forever about this town is horrid, the best thing about it are the roads leadind out of it!
The council in charge of harlow have a lot to answer for, the town planning in this town is abysmal, e.g. the buses actually have to circle round the town centre before they can get to the road that leads to the bus station! this takes an extra 5 minutes if only they add a right turn!
Also it is impossible to walk anywhere in this town, if you dont have a car and have to walk, there are no footpaths on the main roads you have to go via crappy ubnderpasses which lead you out of the way making you think you have gone the wrong way, aryghhhhhhhhdkosefaskftuweluigt

thank god i am leaving, a year here is enough to send you mad, i have lived in many places all over the country but knowhere i have ever been is this bad, when locals travel to other places they must be amazed! why anyone lives here i do not know. (probably only pregant **** families as there are a million primary schools to send there **** babies too)

the epitome of “essex girls” and “essex boys”, mostly because it’s in essex. spawned the phrase “harlow facelift”, which is when the girlies pull their hair into a high ponytail so tight that the skin on their face is lifted up. they all wear adidas trackies (males and females), and every female over the age of 12 has children. note the plural for that.

the children tend to be called “cawt-nay”, “jaw-dun”, or “mee-sheow”. as a friend of mine once said, only in ‘arlow (as the locals pronounce it) can the only nightclub be affectionately referred to as “the dive”. if they aren’t at The Dive then the ***** and ********* of ‘arlow are lapping the one-way system in their **** boy racer pink cars with their badass sahnd systems and their pre-teen fiancees.

as elton john once sang, “saturday night’s alright (for fighting)”, and where better to see it than ‘arlow. because believe me, you will.