Chavtowns

Crook

I can’t believe Bishop got in and not a word about Crook.

Crook Vegas as it is affectionately referred to is a bleak shit hole somewhere in County Durham. Pram faced locals descend on the town centre to visit Greggs, Peters or shoplift wares from the ‘Original’ Factory Shop. Many of them reside in the delightful and scenic ‘Gaza Strip’. At weekends the streets are patrolled by rabid, white lightening consuming gangs, many of whom have taken to wearing flat caps and rigger boots and calling themselves the CTC or Crook Town Casuals, perhaps the Crook Town Cunts would be more appropriate, or just cunts for short. These youths urinate in a phone box and boot footballs up and down the street, a highlight is going ’up the back of the doctors’ for a few cans or visiting Ronnies video shop for some kets. Countryside sports such as lamping are popular, along with shooting tramps and burying their remains at local sites of natural beauty such as Kitty’s Wood. The town boasts a scenic picnic area, which doubles as a dogging venue, trees by day, a fat lass’ arse pressed against the windscreen of a rusty Ford Escort by night. 

There are few shops, however it has numerous take away outlets and a surprising number of pubs. The Crown or Fraggle Rock is particularly lively on giro day. Standing proudly is the council building or pagoda, the vision was a modern and Japanese influenced stylish administrative centre for the now defunct Wear Valley Council, sadly it looks like a pile of shit, designed in lego by a retarded pre-school child.  The main street, laughably called Hope Street (no fucking hope more like) may well boast the highest concentration of betting shops in a 20 yard radius. Again, giro day is a busy period. Tanning shops help the women over 40 to maintain a healthy orange glow, with skin the texture of dry, cracked leather. They are easy to identify clacking down the street in 80s stilettos like a group of angry velociraptors.

Economic activity in the town is somewhat limited, although the local ‘fag houses’ stocking a wide range of snide, foreign smokes appear to have combatted the recession effectively. The once weekly market also thrives, particularly the 2 stripe tracky bottom stall and the jeweller does a roaring trade as locals trade in their Elizabeth Duke in time for the man from the provy or shopacheck to collect the next instalment of the substantial debt racked up purchasing a 50″ plasma screen to view Jeremy Kyle or buying there foul-mouthed toddler a Playstation 3.

Genuine citizens need no explanation as to the true identity of the Cheif, Tennis Man or Radio Roo. They refer to places as what used to be… for example the aforementioned Factory Shop- what used to be Presto, Crazy Jakes- what used to be Bob’s Bargain Centre or BBC (a sadly mourned local resource that proudly displayed its range of sex toys and hardcore porn amongst the household cleaning products) and so on and so forth.

Another key local event is Thursday noght Family Planning Clinic, attendance is not advised for the over 15s, as they may be intimidated by the ferral hoards of 14 year olds in tracksuits vociferously demanding clap tests. Since the sad demise of the Rainflower Arcade or ‘Chongers’ there is little in the way of entertainment, perhaps explaining the high teen birth rate and demand on council dwellings.

The once proud town of Bolton is now a sewer. No one sews any more as the textile industry was exported along with any other worthwhile jobs and all that’s left to knit lies festering underground. Even the soccer club ain’t in Bolton anymore, fobbed-off to some marsh probably owned by Council chancers before the planning permission, who them scooped up town centre property to build gentrified flats in the devastated town centre. Most youngsters spend their time drunk in Bradshaw Drain or drugged-out on the tributary estates. We have a university proud to be only the fourth worst in the country and a hospital climbing the high-death rate tables at a speed similar to that of the Wanderers’ demise.

Cesspit, shithole, cat-sick-slobber – there are many names for Crawley. Some call it the Armpit of the South, I’d go further than that. I’d say it’s the infected spot in the Armpit of the South. My two friends and I were so pleased when we discovered that Crawley had not been missed off the list of Chav towns – that, in fact, it had 3 entries! Three! So we thought we’d add a fourth. We thought we’d be refreshing and give three independant accounts on various areas with in the rank, disgusting and chav-infested hole. Make no mistake it is chav infested, it’s like looking what the cat coughed up and pissed all over at times. 90% of the population is chav based or related, the rest of us make do as best we can. And God do we try.

Account #1: The Park

Now as the oldest of the Crawleyites I would love to be able to say that Crawley wasn’t always this way, that it didn’t always have Chav Mecca – County Mall. But that would be a lie. A barefaced, stinking, stupid, shitty little lie. Crawley has been this bad as long as I can remember, there have always been squeaky voiced little boy chavs trying to look big for their five years underage slut girlfriends. ‘Tis just the way.

Arguably the thing that made Crawley famous was a little event in an area local to my house called Tilgate Park. A place where, shockingly for Crawley, there are very few council houses. Single mums teenage mums, however, are surprisingly enduring when it comes to finding a home. Anyway, some chavs who were feeling far more clever than they actually were hooked a moped up to a child’s roundabout. They proceeded to rev it and cried in youthful glee when the engine caused the toy to spin. Three Chavettes then seated themselves on it and the fun began. It spun so fast that the stupid sluts were thrown off and given broken limbs and third degree friction burns. This made NATIONAL NEWS and so it should. We should remember the amazing depths of chav idocy. We could scarcly believe it. Other chavs could scarcely believe it.

But that is only what the BBC knows us for – an event outside Tilgate Park. I now wish to talk about what goes on within it. I am of course referring to the ‘night fishing’. Ever wonder how our teenage pregnancy rate is so high? Well this is how! Chavs and their all-too-young chavettes go the the lake at night and do any number of activities at an interesting variation of volumes. Fornication, fighting (even though they may not have alcohol!), nude swimming or even murder. It is so very difficult to tell. The police don’t dare enter, neither do those unfortunate enough to live nearby. This behaviour is odd and almost bestial, just like the Pint&Fight phenomenon. Because of it we have an ever increasing number of the burberry wearing, sticky fingered, pissed off their faces, headache inducing, mugging, thieving, fighting, little bastards. Would it kill you to use protection? REALLY?

It’s not much to ask is it?

Account #2: The First Hand Encounters

As a local shop worker in a newsagent I notice something about my regular customers every so often and this happens to if not all of them, the teeange single mums and lay-about housewives will dissappear for a week or two only to reappear a few days later with another child, which would make 4, 5 now? I lose count. If I’m not being regailed with truly inspirational stories of how their wonderful lives fall to pieces when they can’t cash a gyro at the local post office only to get them selves pissed for another night at the local pub; I am met with the classic chav who comes in asks for a large Rizla just so they can get high for another night as they roll up in front of me.

And then it happens I’m invited to go out with a group of *sneer* adoring locals who wish to go to Bar Med (local Chav night out of choice for your classier chav) to which I laugh and respectfully decline for fear of being followed home and gang-raped. For as we all know Bar Med is one of the areas in Crawley which I like to refer to as ‘The Source’. From ‘The Source’ spouts all manner of things drugs, fights and the occasional - no thats a lie – daily occurence of the couples entering the gents; probably going to flush the chemical toilet and make more darling cherubs to brighten up my day. After all where would we be with out this stunning beacon in the middle of our town centre, it reaches to all races and cults of the Crawley area drawing them in from all over like goblins to get their usual fix? Where would we be?

A better place.

Now after hobbling out of Bar Med you would think they wouldnt get so pissed out of their minds they can leave with some diginity right? You would be wrong. They step onto the bus, refuse to pay, fight with the driver and then only find themselves on the floor of the bus or plastered to the glass sheilds, they will normally stay there till morning. This is no ordinary bus service; this is Metrobus and Fastway but that is a topic I shall leave for the next writer.

Account #3:

Crawley can only really be seen on a bus, and coming from Bewbush (the cesspool of the cess pool), I really get to see some…coulorful characters! I remember one experience on the way home through gossops green, minding my own business a brick suddenly found itself trying to break through the glass beside my head. Fearing it was the end and terrorists had finally emerged from the back of Ifield I thought I’d stare death in the face and give a well earned ‘fuck you’. Imagine my suprise then when the brick had been thrown from a bunch of kids no older than 10…just think, they lived so close to bewbush and they weren’t fathers of at least 2!

Although this point has been gone over so many times, underage pregnancy isn’t a problem, more like expected. If you’re bleeding from the vagina then it’s time to leave home and get yourself council house! Best way to do that? Shag in every back corner and have yourself and your wailing baggage shoved in Bewbush or Broadfield, or if you’re really lucky the hostel just by ASDA. Just think, the boozer across the road, the hospital down the road and the church graveyard a 5 minute walk away. Its like a neon sign BE THE SHIZ PICKLE YOUR LIVER INNIT!

Ah yes Bewbush, the part of Crawley no-one wants to be in…and the council accept that! they even try to solve the problem! ‘Try’ being the main word. The local pub got knocked down a few months ago and is getting replaced by, you guessed it, more council houses! They even tried to help the poor trackie bints with prams and gave them a park to go to…which then turned into another baby making spot. Oh and the leisure centre got knocked down and replaced by a sort of…sexual health clinic? No-one really knows what it is and the chavs, with top form i might add, quickly covered it in grafic graffitti telling them where to shove their advice up the backside.

The field on the back of the old leisure centre is another story entirely. A huge football field  on the back of the farer out council houses, is the prime vacation spot for all pickeys. I cannot tell you the joy I express seeing a nike covered gypo having a crap in the street. In fact, I think this is all chavs are ever good for in Crawley. If they see a pickey then all attention is directed at driving them away! It’s like a holiday from the constant shit they give you, instead of having them try and beat YOU up, the gypos get it instead! But then they leave and the chavs use it as the ultimate boozer. smashed WKD bottles…oooo yay.

We are three non-Chavs from Crawley and even we cannot escape the culture. If you ever find yourself in this God-forsaken spit of land then run, run fast and hard and don’t look back. Much as I hate to say it MAKE FOR HORSHAM. We don’t really like them on principle but they have one thing right. Crawley is a deadly place for the non-educated in chav ways. After awhile it gets inside you, it infects you. Soon you end up swearing and liking RnB.

Sad times. Sad times, people.