Hertford is a small satellite market town in the heart of the Home Counties. It conjures up images of The Archers on Radio 4 in the minds eye. Mature oak trees, winding country roads, grandiose stately homes and plush green fields surround a quintessentially English aesthetic complete with a river that is flanked by beautiful swooning willows and verdant spaces. It sounds like the idyllic town, and its residents know it!
The air is fetid with the haughty stench of smug self righteousness that can only be attained when the towns poorest are segregated into a desperate estate awash with all manner of opiates, fatty foods and feral children. Said estate comes equipped with its own school which is a [alleged] perennial underachiever due to [alleged] years of mismanagement and ‘devil may care’ parenting. These poor souls will replace the generation before it as it traverses the same worn path to addiction and imprisonment. None of this matters as long as the local supermarkets in town can keep a steady supply of Foie Gras and Venison.
The town is generally quiet during the day as its residents flock like migrating hornets to Central London for another day of selling arms to Middle Eastern despots or gambling taxpayers money on the international markets in exchange for bloated salaries. Logic dictates that one then must deposit their **** offspring at a private school, where they can leave with GCSE’s in narcissism, nepotism and the kind of ‘revolutionary’ politics that will make Daddy’s blood boil with incandescent rage. A bittersweet irony when later in life they leave a top ten university to indulge in lackey positions for Conservative councillors thanks to Daddy’s boardroom connections like the duplicitous b@stards they are.
An evening in Hertford will consist of the basest of human activities whether it be eating or drinking, the nightlife is utterly bereft of imagination. If you can pronounce Duck Confit with a French accent you are entitled to sniff with pomposity at other dinner guests because they are probably too poor to spend the summer in Paris or Provence. If you can stand in a bar as Piers, Toby and Quentin highlight before you the plight of poverty stricken children in Zimbabwe while sending texts messages on their latest iPhones subsidised by Daddy’s buying and selling Zimbabwean blood diamonds on the stock market, then you have the patience and self restraint of a true saint.
