Portishead.  The band. Also a place. With a rather unique and confused bunch of chavs. 

 A bit of geography. Portishead is eight miles north of Bristol, on the muddy shores of the Severn Estuary.

 Pose yourself a question. What kind of house – and householder – would you expect to find next door to a grizzly coal fired power station, a phosphorus factory and a fertiliser processing plant?

 Now pose yourself another question. How happy – and how lucky – do you think that chav in their chavilla would be if the power station and associated heavy industry was to be replaced, over a ten year period, by a lovely spanking new marina, complete with bars, restaurants and fishing boats.

 Pleased? Happy that their £10,000 “more of an ensuite shed really” has risen in value by twenty-fold while they were lying there, slumped in the corner dribbling on their Donnay tracksuit?

 No. They are bitter. Bitter bitter bitter.  Their town, their lovely seething cesspit of phosphorus, ash and dust has been robbed from them.  And now there’s outsiders. And they don’t like outsiders. With their trendy eateries, with their yachts and their Audis. 

But fear not my Portishead Chavs. Because the planners are smart cookies and they’ve thought of you. You’ve got yourself a McDonalds. With a hundred metres of dual carriage way alongside – specially for you and your mum’s car. But wait it get’s better.

Do you remember where the phosphorus spoil heaps used to be?  The part of town that Ordnance Survey clearly label as “Ashlands”? Well the developers have, sweetly, renamed it the “Village Quarter” and built some lovely little sheds for you.  So now you can live next door to Bristol’s overspilling  nouveau-middle class – with their slightly superior taste in sportswear, unfettered racism and fixation with jet washers.

So there’s the Portishead chav – not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Loxton Drive had to be one of the biggest two-faced estates ever created. Full of alright people from numbers 32-39, the scum that filled this sh*t from numbers 20-31 and 40-51 beggared belief. Ford Fiesta cars parked in the car park for 2 years without being moved, simply highlighted the disdain of which the council viewed this little oasis of faeces. Like any other council estate (funnily enough, the majority of the houses in 2003 were private!) there had to be the customary sofa and kitchen set outside in the middle of the car park. Oh how the little shitbags loved to play in the freezers that were there for months. I myself used to be well involved in the delightful games of ‘pelt the car with walnuts’. That was so much fun. Ah, bliss. But then I realised when I was 13, that it’s time to move on. But not the real Loxton Drivers. No no.

The real Loxton Drivers are the people that ensure the estate stayed in the deep f**king sink it should be in now. I’m not sure, as I haven’t been back for 5 years. But Loxton Drive was special. Special in so many reasons that people now aged between 16 and 26 who lived on the estate in the late 1990s, I am sure have records. They’re probably there now training the younger generation up on how to deal drugs, get arrested 16 times before their 16th birthday and how to shag around the estate whilst catching as many STDs as possible.

I could name names. But I can’t. How overly personal that would be. Mind you, if the people that this was relevant for really did find this article, one would be flabbergasted at how such shit can access the internet. Funny how the poorest families always have enough for ridiculous luxuries. Can’t say I had an overly privileged background. But I did go to school. That’s the difference.

And here we are. The end. But if any of you ChavTown explorers wish to pioneer a cuddle-mission into this shit hole, then look no further than the glorious Number 5 bus. It is truly a reason to end all forms of public transport. First, I salute you for continuing to run the service. But not for hiking the prices on the Bristol-Bath train, which thank god I no longer have to get.

Goodbye Loxton Drive. I know it’s a few years late, but I am f**king glad you’re gone.

You will only know Nailsea if you have lived in or near there. I have lived in the village next door to it for ten years. It is a hellhole. It is degenerate, grey and the people are just disgusting. All thats there is a new look, a SOMERFIELD and a superdrug and oh yes, a TESCO. Everyone is either old or on benefits. Single mums galore. Everytime I go home from University, the very atmosphere makes me sick.

The desperate ‘alternative’ wannabes with their skinny jeans, dyed hair and h&m jackets, to the other extreme of ‘hoodies’ who hang around the town centre in an attempt to look threatening; in their dark hoodies, horrible hair, their tracksuit bottoms and their desperate air hanging around them, and in the meantime shouting obscenities at old ladies,  and living in the large proportion of council houses. Oh and a skate park, which you should only go to in the day unless you have a death wish. If you grow up in Nailsea, you will never leave. Ever.