Come friendly bombs to Croydon!

This week I have mainly been zooming around the country in a high powered hire car, breaking the law and doing some work.

I would like to give you an insight into what I did this week by badly misquoting John Betjeman (once Poet Laureate)

Come friendly bombs and fall on Croydon!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Yes I had to go to Croydon. It was hell! How can people live like this? The mean streets of Croydon are mean and it’s in the middle of nowhere, or more accurately it’s in the middle of somewhere, but that somewhere – the conurbation of London - that great expanding sore, has created this anonymous geography.

Croydon is simply an abstract collection of houses, streets, shops, office buildings and litter that has lost all its identity except that it is now simply an outskirt of London. A refuge for the worker ants to come home to after a hard day at work, to while away a few hours resting, before once more following the well worn path back into the City.

Croydon is the vision of the future. That time a century from now when the whole of this crowded island is concreted over and every hamlet, village and charming county town has disappeared under the planners red pen with their ‘vision for the future or my vision of Hell’.

I’m sure Croydon was once a beautiful place as the Saxon’s named it 'crooked valley' or 'saffron valley' – I guess I am spoilt and lucky as I live in Plymouth. From my office building I can see, on one side, the sea and the other Dartmoor. I can breathe. In Croydon, I started to suffocate and started to experience some slight claustrophobia that bordered on panic – and I was only there two hours!