Crap Towns

[TANGODANCER]

Not been back here in years, but Halliwell was a great place to live back in the day.I was born there and lived there for 19 years. It was clearly defined by the bus destinations: No 24 was Eskrick Street, 25 Halliwell ( turned round at the Ainsworth Arms terminus) and 26 was Smithills. Nothing went up Moss Bank way or Barrow Brige and you got to those via Elgin Street and Church Road up to the Heaton terminus at the cricket ground on the No 1, ( or Captains Clough Road) then walked. Smithills is clearly as flexible as Heaton now where estate agents and property selling are concerned.

[Zulus Thousand of em]

Mrs Zulu hails from Walsall and has a sister living in Willenhall so I will maintain a dignified silence here.

feck it! Not possible. Willenhall is a complete shithole. There, I've said it.

I wrote a 'community play' for Willenhall... Basically, a professional team of writer, director, musicians, designer etc etc go to a particular community (often, as in this case, a deprived one) and recruit local people to act, sing, play music, make costumes, build sets, sell tickets etc for a play about their community...

In the end, in some way, or other, several hundred people are brought into discovering a creativity, hobby, passing interest, whatever, in something they didn't know they had - and have showed it off to a couple of thousand others from the place they live... A kind of irrigation of creativity of a place where it's hidden and needs to discover an outlet...

The play was called 'Humpshire', the local nickname for the town, and was performed at the Willenhall Community School...

I went onto write a second for Walsall called 'Junction Ten'...

I really enjoyed doing both and, in both, discovered I really liked Holden's beer - especially, the 'spesh...'

I agree about the beer Will. There's a couple of decent beers to sample there.

[bwfcdan94]

what is the worst town you have been to?

burnley

[Leyther_Matt]

Motherwell. There's the winner right there.

Agree with that. Although, worryingly, it reminded me a little too much of Leigh.

Think you're all being a bit harsh on Whitehaven and Barrow though - both have had some money spent on the town centres and are pretty pleasant and clean places in my relatively recent experience, particularly on a nice day. That said, there are some right neanderthals amongst the population of Whitehaven.

[bwfcdan94]

barrow not great but motherwell has to b up there. is carlisle and middlesbrough towns or cities they are both really poor (financially)