I grew up in Hoddesdon and as a child and teenager it was alright. Close to woodland and countryside, some reasonable pubs, safe town. I moved away for a few years before returning in 2007 and initially was pleased to be returning to the town of my youth. The novelty quickly wore off.
It took awhile for me to put my finger on what is wrong with the place. Then one day I was sat in a cafe there and looked around me. There was not one normal looking or acting person in there. It was a freak show and that is the issue really. The people.
There are some decent people living in Hoddesdon but they are massively outnumbered by a majority of either complete f**kwits or people so ch@v that they make Ali G look normal. It’s the latter that really get me; cocksure a**eholes that act like they are the next Ronnie Kray.
They all think they are proper criminals, some of them are I guess, but if you challenge them they all group together because literally none of them have any kind of muscle. Some of them are criminals, but just the rubbish type that would rob your elderly nan. Yet they all carry on though as if they were Scarface.
The pubs in the town with the exception of one, are just terrible. You go in for a quiet pint and you are just harassed inadvertently by the local ch@vs who act up to try and show some sort of ‘territory’. I don’t know where the influx of ner-do-wells came from because when I was younger, it was never this bad.
It’s got so bad now that stabbing and robbery are commonplace. Someone was even shot in the head a couple of years ago. You just want to grab some of these people and remind them that they don’t live in some Hackney estate, this is suburban Hertfordshire.
