Eateries | Pubs & Clubs | Landmarks | Entertainment | Home
Leamington Today - Essential Knowledge
Disclaimer: The views and opinions represented below are purely personal and that of the author and are not intended to be in any way authoritative or at all serious.
Alcky Corner Location: Back of the Parish Church
Let’s face it every British town has an "Alcky Corner" and Leamington Spa is no exception. Leamington’s, in a pungently sharp example of real life social irony, is situated right at the back of the Parish Church which not only gives the pious parishioners food for thought when they attend their soul saving Sunday services but also enables the volume of the church choir to be grossly augmented by the half-cut, completely muntered Aled Jones wannabes slurring along to the abstemious anthems from the vantage point of their park benches outside. Nobody can be failed to be anything but moved by their heart felt renditions of "Onwuh Kristyun Sodgers" or their seasonal favourite "Inver Bleemid Winner Frozy Wind Made Moan". So moved in fact it is all one can do not to hop onto the first bus and motor out of town as fast as the non-English speaking bus driver can pedal you.
I have to say that Leamington’s South Town - or the "bottom end" as it is aptly known - is populated by more than it’s fair share of alcohol aficionados and the parish Church gardens tend to be as far North as they usually migrate. Usually because they’ve gone face down into a lukewarm pool of their own vomit before they get passed the main Post Office. For this reason Bath Street (the main route to the Parish Church) seems to be Leamington’s alcky superhighway for all the local Diamond White swiggers and Special Brew dickheads that infect the town. But the Parish Church gardens always seems to be their one regular meeting spot (since the local park warden turfed them out of the Jephson Gardens that is); their one place where they can meet as equals and hold court on the important issues in life... the cost of Heineken, the last time they had a shag and the potentially disasterous effects on the British economy should we become part of Europe. It’s kind of like an Anglo-Saxon moot but with puffa jackets and tracksuit bottoms.
Visitors to the town please note: please adopt "zoo rules" when sightseeing the local drunks. Do not use flash photography and do not feed the animals. It only encourages them.
BMX Track Location: Campion Hills
Located on the upper peaks of The Campion Hills, this travesty of misplaced youth rehabilitation was first carved out of the sacred soil some years ago as a venue for the local BMXers and skateboarders to twirl about like ballerina Barbies on their inexplicably expensive bicycles and their inexpressibly tatty looking skateboards. The BMX track was then extended and "improved" in 2006 as part of a Campion Hills "improvement" scheme that also saw the place smacked about with tarmac pavements and street lighting thus hurling the slightly wild and back-to-nature ambience of the whole place deep into a bucket named "complete and utter travesty".
I guess the intention of the BMX track designers was to encourage BMXers to migrate away from car parks, cul-de-sacs and office block foyers and into a safe containment zone where they could hone their skills of goolie-mashing bike dexterity away from the eyes of a wisely contemptuous public. Instead the BMX track is utilized by people with shopping bikes who fancy a quick thrill going over the lame artificial humps and gangs of kids from Crown Way who fancy smoking their stolen fags among green trees and untamed nature every now and then. I've never actually seen anyone genuinely practising their BMX jumping skills for the next Olympics or smashing their own brains out attempting a double-pike-twist on a pimped-up skateboard with tampon wings and tail fins. Not ever. And believe me I've sat among the bushes with a shotgun for weeks at a time hoping to catch someone.
A monumental waste of money and eco-vandalism at its worst.
The Brown Mile Location: Various
Ah Leamington’s Brown Mile: a miniscule area that yet manages to house at least 9 pubs of one questionable variety or another - about 10% of Leamington Spa’s whole tavern industry - and a fair number of curry houses to boot. So. Everything the pleb’s need for a good night out. Lots of beer and a bit of Anglo Asian cuisine and plenty of alleyways on route into which the voiding punter can eject his stomach lining and the contents of his bladder up against the graffiti’d wall of his neighbour’s back garden (hence it should be called the Golden Mile in my opinion). Hey and you thought working class community values were dead...
The Brown Mile is a geographic and socio-morphic corridor of beer lined thoroughfares and back ways that stretch from Clarendon Avenue in the East to Campion Terrace in the West and envelopes hundreds of little side roads and humble cul-de-sacs in between. Here you will find pubs that will satisfy every variety of human life and degradation. Whatever your appetite, you’re sure to get it sated within the seedy confines of The Brown Mile. Provided you have the sensitivity of the average Viz reader of course.
For those of you that are interested the list of public houses that nestle in the snug armpit of The Brown Mile is as follows:
- Bar 44
- The Black Horse
- The Builders Arms
- The Cask & Bottle
- The Fox
- The Hollybush
- The Hope & Anchor
- Oxygen
- The Somerville Arms
Why not pop along to the establishment of your choice and wet your whistle?
Bus Surfing Location: The Parade
In June 2006 levels of youth idiocy reached dork-dunking new lows when the town suffered its first instance of the social phenomenon known as bus surfing. Previously considered to be relegated solely to the arena of urban myth "bus surfing" was usually only mentioned in intelligent company by way of a comedic device to raise a few laughs at the expense of dope-heads, social misfits and extreme sports sadsacks who, according to their individual stereotypes, were each capable of committing acts of such complete and utter der-brained stupidity that they make egg boxes appear to be on an intellectual par with Stephen Hawking. "Bus Surfing" also reached the consciousness of the Great British BBC viewing public when the term featured in an episode entitled "Gas" in the first series of the ultra violent slapstick comedy Bottom originally broadcast in the UK in 1991.
Imagine the town's surprise then when "bus surfing" veritably leapt out of the pages of the Dick Head's Handbook and entered stage left into the incredulous limelight of real-life and made not only the local papers but also the national news. Leamington Spa's morons had gone a stop too far. People were not so much outraged as convulsing with contempt at the utter twatability exhibited by these hood wearing chimpanzees as they hung ape-like to the back of the town's buses in idiotic games of "anything you can do I can do dumber". Even the author of this highly academic Guide was moved to compose a calming, highly restrained article on the phenomenon for Pocketropolis sagely entitled Bus Surfing Scum Must Die. Unfathomably this didn't make the local papers or the national news. But weirdly there were no more instances of bus surfing reported since the article featured on the home page of Pocketropolis back in July 2006. The police of course claim full credit for this but I think we know where the true influence lies, don't we...?
Costcutter Location: 29 - 33 High Street
Costcutter is one of those bizarre places that people either hold in the very highest regard or the absolute lowest and I think it merely depends upon which end of town you happen to hail from. The snotty three car families from the north end of town probably see Costcutter as a bit of a scuzzy, fell off the back of a lorry, happy to sell vodka and fags to the under fives kind of place... whereas those from the south end of town who, by their very proximity use the place far more frequently and are therefore better positioned to judge it, know that actually it is none of those things. Though if the occasional 14 year old does happen to slip through the kiddie filter and walk off with a bottle of Diamond White I’m sure it is an extremely rare occurrence and anyway I certainly have never seen it happen and I consider Costcutter to be an absolutely upstanding kind of place and certainly don’t want to get sued for suggesting otherwise. Which I’m absolutely not.
Though whilst on the subject of alcoholic beverages I must admit that Costcutter is known locally as "The Alcky Palace"... and this on account of the extremely cheap, tramp friendly booze that they sell by the truck load which tends to make them popular with all of the down-and-outs and alcoholics in the district. I likes a bottle of Famous Grouse, me, hic, so jus’ shurrup ok or I’ll fukkin lamp yer, right?
Anyway, I really like Costcutter and I’m one of those people that in their time has been both a north and south towner (currently a south towner) so I’ve seen it from both sides of the divide as it were. Cutting quickly through the false image dichotomy, I can tell you that Costcutter is in fact a finely stocked mini market and one that can give all the major stores a run for their money... all the major stores except one (Tesco) being located out of town and therefore off limits to everyone without a car, a bus pass or the cash to waste on a taxi. Not only does Costcutters stock nearly all the essentials required to keep a household comfortable but it also has room for loads of specialist products to add an exotic flavour to your cooking endeavours. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the fact that Costcutter is an Asian run concern and I’m all for positive discrimination. In fact, for those of you who like cooking your own curries I heartily recommend that you buy your rice and sauces from Costcutters rather than the brand name supermarkets precisely because it is an Asian run shop. I have it on good authority that the sauces supplied to the big supermarkets are, how shall we say, less rich in flavour than those supplied to Asian businesses even though they might be from the same supplier. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong - who knows - all I know is I have never seen Asian shoppers buying their rice, sauces and ingredients from Sainsbury’s et al... they buy them all from the local Asian mini markets... Think about it.
Why not support a local business and bag yourself a killer curry? You can help yourself to the fine array of top-shelf jazz magazines that Costcutter keep around the side of the main door while you’re at it. And there you have the ingredients for the perfect evening in - a balti off the cuff and a quick bishop off the wrist. Finger licking good.
Crown Way Location: Crown Way
Once upon a time - just after the close of the Second World War - there was nothing but fields stretching from the outskirts of Lillington all the way to the small village of Cubbington. Now, due to Leamington's unslakeable thirst for expansion, both these villages have been consumed by the sprawling mass which is now Warwickshire's most premier town and the fields have been replaced with twisty-roaded posh-looking housing estates whose roads have all been inexplicably named after various UK race courses. And what better way to serve the everyday household needs of these white facaded estates than by contructing the excellent mega shoppertropolis that isn't Crown Way?
I guess when it was built (the 1950s judging by the architecture) Crown Way was something of a model shopping precinct - a central parking area bordered on three sides by shops above which the newly installed residents of post-war Lillington could reside in balconied splendour smug in the knowledge that all their consumerist needs were being met by the brand spanking new businesses bustling below. And for a while certainly Crown Way was a success - mainly because it was far easier for Lillington's residents to take a 10 minute walk to Crown Way for a loaf of bread and a bottle of stout than to walk the 40 minutes into Leamington's town centre to purchase the same for more or less the same price. But over the years - possibly coinciding with the construction of the Tower Block Of Terror, Eden Court - Crown Way has sadly become a less salubrious place to visit. A focal point for lary-eyed and terminally bored teenagers Crown Way has become something of an unofficial open-air youth centre during the evenings (and the school holidays) and thus burdened with all the social problems that such places entail. Indeed, if you believe the illiterate graffiti that adorns many of the shop fronts and roadside benches, you'd be forgiven for thinking that a socio-political organization called "The Lillington Crew" were now running the Crown Way show. Of course, it will little surprise you to learn that The Lillington Crew is actually comprised of nothing more than 5 hood wearing meatheads with pustulating acne and an indelible marker pen and a couple of council estates wide-girls with a fondness for white silettos, white jackets and boys with blatantly homemade tatts. They can often be seen having business meetings outside the newsagent where they'll try and charm every passerby to lend them money for some fags, a bottle of Tizer and a copy of Razzle. Don't be fooled by their gormless conversational gambits - they'll spit down the back of your neck as soon as look at you... once your back is turned, naturally.
One point of note: Crown Way does feature possibly the best chip shop in the entire Warwick District. I heartily recommend that you pay it a visit, get yourself a bag of chips and a huge wedge of battered cod and then, as you run the gauntlet back to your armoured car, kick the bouncing snot out of the youths carving their names into the paving slabs outside with their zippo lighters. It certainly makes my evening.
Eden Court Location: Mason Avenue
Known locally as Leamington's Beirut, Eden Court squats in the rough North Eastern zone of Lillington - Lillington once upon a time being a small village on the outskirts of Leamington Spa that has long been swallowed up by Leamington's unstoppable expansion. Eden Court is known by absolutely everybody who lives in the Leamington Spa area and can be seen pretty much from anywhere in the locale. A substantial tower block, Eden Court is undoubtedly a sorry testament to the 1960's solution to population overcrowding and like all such projects has failed utterly to provide people with a safe, pleasant environment in which to raise their kids. Without putting too fine a point on it Eden Court is the roughest, scummiest part of town. It is the council's human fly-tip. The housing zone where they dump every druggie, every alcoholic, every desperate single mum, every white trash dole-ite who ain't ever gonna come good. They dump them and then forget them. Nobody wants to live there. The people who already live there don't want to live there. Even the people who have utterly no interest in self-advancement because they're so cracked up to their eyeballs they have no awareness of their own corporeality don't want to live there. It's that bad. But once you're in it's damn hard to get out. Living in Eden Court carries with it its own brand of white trash stigma that is pretty much indelible unless you pay French surgeons to give you a brand new face and identity. Oh and somewhere else to live of course.
Which is a shame because, joking aside, there are decent families and decent people who live in Eden Court and the surrounding housing projects. People who through no fault of their own have to live here due to the simple lack of choice in Leamington's housing market. In short, if it's a choice between Eden Court and the street most people (without dependents) would undoubtedly choose the street... but when you've got kids you have no choice but to take whatever roof over your head that you can get. Hence this whole area is awash with kids. Kids who are undoubtedly suffering from the insidious and limpet-like "bad vibes" that seem to permeate the whole atmosphere around Eden Court. I hate to say it but you just know that they're going to grow up in a bad way. When your only role models are dope smoking kerb-muffins and bum-scratching petty thieves what chance have you got to make good?
Over the years Eden Court has seen its fair share of stabbings, beatings, muggings, robberies and every kind of drug related crime you can think of gaining it the reputation of Crime Central. Some of the local gangs have even stolen the front doors to their own tower block and in true comedic style made off with the very CCTV camera that was watching them and supposedly protecting them. There is no known analogy to such idiocy.
The best advice I can give anyone - and I defy anyone to say different - is to avoid Eden Court like you'd avoid being on Osama Bin Laden's Christmas card list. It's dangerous during daylight hours and potentially lethal during the night. If you have to go keep your head down, don't answer back to the gangs of hoodied children playing with grenades in the street and whatever you do don't stop to tell people the time, give them small change for the phone or go into the local newsagent to buy them 20 Benson & Hedges. By the time the transaction has taken place you'll be missing your wallet, a kidney, your Nike trainers and anything at all of resellable value. You'll be lucky to escape with your life and your virtue intact.
Job Centre Plus Location: Brandon House / Holly Walk
Every town should have one of these... a place where the work-shy and the productively inept can gather, smoke dope, swap lurid tales of all night drinking and regrettable sex (the story of how they got their leg over some brazillian-bushed crack-whore with venereal disease who turned out to be their half sister) and steal money from the tax paying public to finance their Marlborough and curry lifestyle. Not very PC I know and a few years ago when there was a genuine unemployment problem in the UK I wouldn't have dreamed of spouting such cynical purple prose. However, the UK workplace is now a very different kind of animal and there are loads of jobs out there for the taking. All you gotta be is motivated. You know the type of thing? Together enough to wear a clean shirt and your shoes on the right feet. Alert enough to get up an hour before you're due to start work and get yourself presentable. And smart enough not to be some hoody / baseball cap wearing jiz-wad who thinks it's hilarious to sit on the steps of the Job Centre Plus building cat-calling the pedestrians who walk by and and bigging up the fact that you're deliberately sitting on your arse all day long claiming that you can't get work or are unable to do the work you've got. You don't look cool. You're beneath contempt. You need a handout from the state yet you're wearing Nike trainers, enough bling to sink the South African gold industry and smoking enough weed to reforest the Sahara?! Why the hell should my taxes pay for your Clearasil cream? Get an effing job or join the effing army!
I feel it encumbent on me at this juncture to point out that some of the clientele who patronize the Job Centre Plus building do so for genuine reasons of re-employment difficulty and I, of course, applaud all their attempts to find useful work and acknowledge that hard times do indeed sometimes befall citizens of this country. All you genuine job seekers out there... I salute you.
The rest of you reprobates can don some wellies, grab a shovel and clean the shit out of the sewers like the pot-bellied, lice infested parasitic rats you undoubtedly are. Get to it! TEN HUT!
Old Market Location: Court Street
During its halcyon days Leamington's market was held weekly on Wednesdays and Fridays (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) and was what writers like Hardy and Dickens would have termed "a gay affair". For there was bunting and ribbons and cheery little urchins begging tuppence from the cheery man who manned the horse-chestnut brazier and all manner of tomfoolery and good natured buffoonery as the good people of Leamington bought their fruit and veg for "65p a pahnd". Well, something like that. Certainly there were fruit and veg stalls a-plenty and one could even exchange ones hard earned pennies for such luxury items as lacy underwear, long life batteries and a big jar of swarfega. In short all a gentleman needed for a good night in was freely available provided you had the dosh to pay for it.
But plainly not everybody did. Patronage of the market began to slacken off. People wandered off elsewhere for their cheap cotton panties... Birmingham or Wellesbourne perhaps... and Leamington's market began to struggle to survive in the new age of ultra consumerism. In the end one of the dastardly town councils gave the order to have the market terminated and before it could say "Get your whelks 'ere while they're 'ot" the market found itself lying at the bottom of the River Leam with its metaphorical feet encased in concrete. Bye bye Leamington market.
Now the area where the market was once held has been given over to shoddily parked cars, monkey bike enthusiasts, fly-tipping and people who can't be bothered to queue for the toilets at the numerous pubs and greasy cafes that inhabit the surroundings. The area is what is known as "undeveloped" in popular parlance. A few years ago a few portacabins were erected to house a struggling physiotherapy unit but these were soon pulled down when it was discovered that all the dole scroungers who were meant to be attending for their spurious back problems and knee injuries were actually by-passing the place to go for swift halves at the host of smelly drinking venues that line the High Street. Reports that a lapdancing club featuring topless schoolgirls and bottomless nuns is being built on the vacant location are as yet unconfirmed.
Private Location: 40 High Street
Ah the obligatory adult toy and video emporium. Yes even dear old, quaint old Leamington Spa possesses its own plastic willie and blow-up playmate retailer. Whether you want a blonde, a brunette or maybe something a little more bovine then Private will be able to supply you with the bush colour of your choice and no doubt a sturdy foot-pump to match. They also specialize in food flavoured condoms, genital shaped chocolates and a selection of videos and DVDs so hot they’d make Beelzebub come up in blisters. No pun intended. There’s even a small selection of lingerie and naughty underwear though it’s hardly of Ann Summers standard… just your usual French Maid and kinky bishop collection. Rather conservative by today’s standards and very disappointing I must say to anyone with serious libertine-esque pretensions. Ahem.
Private opened a few years back - just before the turn of the millennium in fact - under the rather bizarre nomenclature "Lovejoys". I’m sure in the seventies such a name would have had slightly more Soho-ish undertones and would instantly have given passers-by a salacious inkling as to what kind of goods were being surreptitiously hawked inside… "Lovejoys, eh? Oo-er, bet they stock all the latest jiz bubblers from Amsterdam and a few Berlin poppers to boot… I’ll be having a butcher’s in me lunch break and no mistake but don’t tell the bleedin’ wife. Guv’nor." Sadly in the post 1980’s world "Lovejoys" - particularly if you’re English - only makes you think of that awful antiques based BBC television series starring the God awful Ian McShane who has somehow reinvented himself as the dastardly Al Swearengen in the HBO series "Deadwood". Not a particularly erotic proposition in either incarnation. Anyway when the store first opened there was much gnashing of teeth in the local press about Leamington falling irretrievably into the sewers if such a filthy shop were allowed to operate within the borders of the Midland’s most premier Royal town... morals would dissolve, the minds of our youth would be consumed by grotesque orgies of hormone evaporating lust and the old would fall victim to marital aid widowhood and obsession. Forbidden fruits! Dirty plunder! Egad! And then some.
Sadly none of that actually happened. Instead Private sits very quietly on the High Street and only very rarely is life seen within its darkened enclosure. Observe the environs long enough, however, and you might be lucky enough to spy the lesser spotted jazz mag buyer or the long billed KY squeezer darting inside to hand over their sweaty fivers in exchange for some exotic merchandise the likes of which your granny only ever dreamed about after a late supper of cheese and pickled onion sandwiches. The only human that can ever be seen with any kind of regularity hanging comfortably around the shop entrance is the store keeper himself. He can often be spotted swinging nonchalantly on the lintel with a great big hairy fag hanging out of his mouth.
Well at least I think it’s a fag. Urgh! And weirdly I can't help observing that the sign above the door proudly announces that the "back door [is] now open"... Ooer! Not cottage pie for supper yet again?!
Shipleys Location: 128 The Parade
Replace the "p" with a "t" and you’ve practically written the review yourself. Shipleys Amusements is a real oddity and only "amusing" if you’re one of those baseball cap wearing gitballs who like the cheesy flashing lights of the penny arcades at Blackpool or some other lowlife, white trash Mecca. Quite why we have such a haven for teenage scummery and underage gambling in the centre of Leamington’s main shopping thoroughfare is beyond my intelligence to grasp. The fact that it is directly opposite Leamington Spa Town Hall may or may not be a comment on the decision making processes and political manoeuvrings of the town’s various Council bigwigs and pig-bellied investors.
Still if you like a little flutter every now and then on the sweaty pawed delights of the old fruit machine then Shipleys Amusements will be glad to accommodate you. Laughing all the way to the bank I shouldn’t wonder. Personally I’d rather throw my money through the letterbox of the Town Hall than dribble it relentlessly into the tight metallic mouths of the slot machines and one armed bandits of Shipleys. There is something ineffably tasteless and seedy about the place. It’s like coming face to face with a gold plated turd. A white trash pleasure palace than can surely only appeal to the most down at heel shell suit wearer and dyed in the wool dole scrounger - a spiritual home for every glue sniffer, car radio thief, council estate bike and blue rinse gobshite in the Leamington Spa district. Geez, and it gets worse: I think they even hold Bingo sessions here too. Mother, I say mother, are yer goin’ ter showt effin’ howse or not?
They’d probably sell Marlborough flavoured crisps and whippet & greyhound pies if you were to ask them nicely.
Avoid like the clap.
Eateries | Pubs & Clubs | Landmarks | Entertainment | Back to top
Rest of page under construction...