Have you ever been to Uxbridge?

I have, and in the words of the distinguished philosopher Earnest Dabber-Dingy: "It's a shit hole, shit hole, shit hole."

Just so you know, if you've not had the displeasure of having visited, it's the sort of place that the scum of the earth migrate to during the day whereupon they loiter, looking menacing and generally waste oxygen and my tax contributions. Really, they'd be better off with a lobotomy.

Then at night, their black sheep of the family relations come out and it get's worse. At night Uxbridge is a truly terrifying place, full of very angry and very drunk feral youths who appear to be hell bent on personal destruction and as much physical violence they can get.

Imagine the scene of carnage at the start of one of the Terminator films where the machines are wandering about killing stuff, and you have the picture.

So, and this is the big question of the day before I get to my Costa rant, who in their right minds in Hillingdon Council decided that smartening the place up was a good idea? And what, apart from the thought of the bung they are about to get from the builders appointed to do the work, were they thinking when they commissioned the work.

The main drag in Uxbridge used to be paved with brick. Not bad looking if you could see past the puke, fag end and huge amounts of litter. So a few months ago, Hillingdon Council put up some signs stating that they were going to make Uxbridge an example of chic and comfortable living. The phrase "polishing a turd" springs to mind here!

So what they did was rip up all of the bricks in the main drag (it is a pedestrian walkway) and replace it all with, you've guessed it, bricks! Hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted on replacing one shape of brick with another. Every morning, these bricks are covered in puke, fag ends and general detritus, so no bloody change there then!

However, and this is probably the most astonishing decision the Hillingdon Cretins made, they have planted about a dozen small trees.

The base of each tree is covered with about two inches of shredded bark, or some such material. What do you think the great unwashed do to this bark at night? That's right, kick it all over the place so that in the morning, Uxbridge High Street is now covered with: puke, fag end, general detritus AND bark. Well done lads, fucking spiffing idea!

And finally onto Costa. Opening time 7AM. Apart from last week's grinder debacle, when do you think they open normally? 7AM, right. But are they ready, of course they are not. Instead, at 7AM they start to prepare for the day, getting the place ready, the coffee machine warmed up. My suggestion to them today that either they start preparing at 6:50 or don't open the doors until 7:10 was met, as expected, with a blank stare of galactic non-comprehension.

So I just stand there watching them work wondering how on earth they manage to live their lives without someone telling them what to do every minute of every day. I am sure that on their left hands they have a tattoo that says, "breathe in" and on their right hands they have one that says "breathe out". Next week I am going to experiment by asking them to try on a pair of gloves and watch them suffocate!