The one thing that gets me riled up And has me almost blowing my top It's a slight that simply can't be ignored When I say that I was born in Watford. I have to confess, I must reveal Its not the embarrassment I feel When I recall how this once charming town It's red brick terraces, roof tiles brown, Last bastion of the cockney drawl Has been subsumed by the London sprawl Rendering it anonymous concrete morass An overpriced grey and flaking mass A pound shop pissant parody parade Lodged along the rivers Colne and Gade No, it isn't for that reason at all Despite the ugly architecture, I recall Within her still lies an emerald spark In the rolling fields of Cassiobury Park And the Whippendell Woods where I once walked Dog walking with Dad, where we father-son talked Of rocket ships, peacocks, bluebells Of the mysterious ways of dark haired girls And light sabre battles I did enact Thankfully these places are still intact Instead, I react with a pinched up face As, often when I mention my birth place To folks, clearly not from those parts, I usually get the same remark "Oh that's right by the Watford Gap!" Inside my bile rises, and I think "Oh crap" "I'm going to have to explain again Using that well rehearsed refrain Exactly how wrong they've been, dear dear Their concept of geography is so unclear As to confuse my clapped out place of origin For one that's got the Roadchef service in" And so, spitting venom, bile and pox I draw my self up on battered soap box Take a deep breath, to calm my voice And pretend this statement, that so annoys Is merely an amusing aside Though secretary inside, my pride has died I should shut up, but I just can't, And thus resolved, I begin my rant. "The Watford Gap is Northamptonshire Sixty miles north of home, Hertfordshire At the end of the last great ice age When glaciers great gambolled and played They shoved up a huge line of Boulder clay till Forming a long line of impermeable hills North of this, when the ice withdrew There was a great lake, clear and blue Which, finding a notch through which to seep In a breach in the line that wasn't so steep There birthed a stream which eroded away The easily winnowed silt, sand and clay Causing a cataclysmic flooding event Where in a matter of days, the Gap was rent The lake was drained in a manner most drastic A jokulhaups. Look it up. The words Icelandic. Years later, the waters long receded Romans built a road where there was needed An easy passage to the northern lands And, finding low gradients here close at hand They built unerringly, bold and true And skilfully, like you'd expect them to, A great feat of early engineering In the low laying lands in the hillside clearing. They built it straight. They built it neat. They then christened it Watling Street, And by the road, a fort defending traders From marauding Anglo Saxon raiders Who took the place when Rome retreated In the Mercia kingdom it was then seated T'was then that Watford gained its name Even though it was captured by invading Danes Since then, its population has stayed small Hardly anyone lives there now at all Even when the railways took advantage Of Watfords geographical lack of vantage And planted parallel pieces of metal Passers through never decided to settle And when was built the first motorway Still nobody really wanted to stay Meaning that this useful hillside hole Is inhabited by barely three hundred souls So, please don't confuse this tiny hamlet With my place of birth, just north of Barnet A ford of the Colne, first used by Celts Home of the Hornets, in the commuter belt Where the M1 and M25 meet On the metropolitan line, use Watford High Street (Don't get off at the Watford Met station The long walk to town causes consternation) It's alright to visit, though the building styles brutal Go to Watford Gap if you want somewhere rural." And so here ends my great tirade Leaving my poor victims eyes double glazed Just please be aware, you have been warned Don't confuse Watford Gap with where I was born.
