Worst place you have ever lived?

Soldato
Joined
16 Jun 2005
Posts
23,976
Location
In the middle
Amazing that just a few scummy people can ruin a whole area for everyone. We had a family living in the next street who made everyones lives hell for the couple of years they were there. The sort that have screaming rows in the middle of the street, with two feral young children who went round trashing everything, wrecked the local park, scratched cars (including ours, police not interested)
Was a real relief for everyone when they left.
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Apr 2003
Posts
3,326
Location
South North West
The house I grew up in.

I had chronic asthma which blighted my life and eventually hospitalised me (in the days before miracle inhalers) until I went to university and escaped. Turns out -- when the landlord eventually had no choice but to spend some money -- that the place was riddled with dry rot with the epicentre approximately under my bed at the front of the house, and that was triggering me all those years.
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Jan 2010
Posts
3,517
Splott, Cardiff.

1 The guy opposite ran a stolen car business. One day his brother nicked a swanky car in Newport, which turned out to be a plain clothes police pursuit car. Battered one of the cops while nicking it. Got chased and ended up smashing it into another car, in our street. Police range rover in pursuit knocked the door off "his" car as he jumped out. He then chucked bricks from a skip at the cops until he was brought down.
2 boxing night in the local leisure centre turned into a huge street fight outside my house. I could hear some guy's head bouncing against my door as he got a kicking. Hid upstairs until it was over.
3 smackheads I knew from my mis-spent youth moved in down the road and used to turn up pestering me for cash.
4 The hoarder next door filled the house with rubbish. One night a fire engine turned up as his house burned down. Not good.
5 when the house was rebuilt a prostitute moved in next door. She also loved really loud techno. She didn't like hardcore punk at 7.30am though, so we came to an understanding.
6 gypsy funeral. One of them had been killed in a fight outside the local chippy, so after the funeral they came looking for trouble. In splott, that's not hard to find. Running fights all day in my street.

Still, I'm told it's an up and coming area...
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2013
Posts
4,096
A year living in Northfield while I was at Birmingham Uni. At Griffin Close - which got basically condemned and sold off shortly after I left.

This was at the same time that the Longbridge car plant shut down, so it was a very depressed area. And I was - even more than most - a penniless student. While everyone around me was living on £50 a week or more from their parents, my dad managed to give me a tenner once - as mine were struggling rather at the time too. What I did have was a very cheap Astravan, insured through my dad's commercial insurance so costing nothing but petrol to run. So I did a pizza round twice a week till 2 in the morning. It was the only thing that kept my head above water throughout that year, but it wasn't a nice experience. Looking back now, 20-odd years later, I can't believe I willingly stuck it out. The most memorable occasions would be:
Driving past a car on fire in the middle of the road.
Another car embedded in a tree and abandoned.
Several occasions of people playing 'chicken' with me.
Various threats and attempts to steal food.
One occasion on the top floor of a hi-rise when a pregnant lady answered the door and started claiming she should have the food for free because she was pregnant. Then two massive blokes came out of next door and backed her up. Through sheer patheticness I managed to convince them to pay me or I'd lose my job.

Outside of that, in my student flat basically no-one ever cleaned or washed anything. At one point I was using consecutive pages of the yellow pages as fresh 'plates' for my food.

It's probably totally unfair, but it completely put me off the idea of living in a city ever. I can just about manage a weekend break in one, but the crowds and noise still get to me even in that short time.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2005
Posts
8,618
Location
Southampton
Before settling in Southampton following on from my uni days in the early 90s, as a nipper we moved heck of a lot in the 70s and 80s. I've not been to either place since ~1985, so they will have changed heck over the past ~35+ years, but for me it's a toss-up between Prestwich and Simister. Tuelle Court in Prestwich, where we lived with my nan for a while, apparently became an horrendous drug den and was demolished around 2000.

Having said that, there are parts of Southampton I really dislike and while we've rented in a realtively nice part (old Bitterne village) for ~15 years, there are very few flats we can afford to get on the housing ladder with around the city that aren't in areas I'm not very keen on living.

In these modern days of internet, I'd quite happily live somewhere semi-rural like the outskirts of Warminster or Prestatyn, with lovely hilly road cycling right on my doorstep and ~1 mile to reach civilisation including the supermarket.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2009
Posts
4,900
Location
London
Wealdstone, Harrow. Absolute **** hole. I lived there for 26 years and just recently moved to somewhere in Herts, much nicer.

I guess I got tired of the smell of weed, being woken at 3am by screaming and shouting outside, somalians peeing on the side of my house, blatant drug dealing going on right outside my bedroom window, smashed bottles everywhere, police sirens 24/7...oh and a big machete knife fight at the bottom of my road where a car mounted the pavement trying to kill each other (it's on youtube)

https://metro.co.uk/2017/07/19/shoc...-knives-and-machetes-in-north-london-6790601/ that was literally 45 seconds from my door step.

I still work in Harrow as an NHS Nurse, but the drive out of there and making my way to Herts puts a huge smile on my face everytime.
 
Associate
Joined
10 Jun 2020
Posts
336
Location
Scotland
Moss Side was objectively a dump when I lived there as a student. I only occasionally had to run away from knife supported bank transfer requests. I now live in the kind of place you only lock doors when you go on holiday, but it was much more fun living in Moss Side!
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Aug 2004
Posts
7,606
Splott, Cardiff.

2 boxing night in the local leisure centre turned into a huge street fight outside my house. I could hear some guy's head bouncing against my door as he got a kicking. Hid upstairs until it was over.

Still, I'm told it's an up and coming area...

There was an epic video recently of a brawl at a boxing night in a leisure centre. They do seem to attract the nutters lol.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Dec 2011
Posts
5,830
Location
City of London
Sort of - those are still called 'rolls' but are sold in a batch. In Cov, they call a single one a 'batch', and the takeaways sell 'chip batch' or 'donner batch' etc
The 'batch' isn't referring to the number of rolls being sold but the baking method, it's in the description:

"Batch baked for a light and soft texture."
 
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