It was all blight on the western front before Eden

4:39pm Friday 14th March 2008

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I'VE ALWAYS been known as a bit of a cynic. I'm one of those chaps most comfortable sitting in the back row lobbing rotten fruit at the jobsworths giving us the official party line at the front.

I am hardly renowned for heaping accolades on the powers-that-be for their actions.

That's why my praise for High Wycombe's Eden shopping and leisure development came as a surprise to many. Indeed, I was cornered by one friend who asked me why I was being so positive about the new centre.

Her view was that it really wasn't such a big deal, especially considering the traditional shops in the High Street would be bound to suffer, and especially since there may be gaping holes left in the Chilterns Shopping Centre.

Sorry, but it is a big deal. Most townsfolk have short memories and some are already picturing old Wycombe as a place of beauty where historic shopkeepers plied their trade, and children frolicked in the streets and...and...you get the picture. There's probably a few angels playing harpsichord in that vision of yesteryear.

Well let me lay it on the line: old Wycombe was rubbish. It was awful, depressing, bereft of originality and imagination, and ready to fall over and die.

I'm not talking about old Wycombe from donkeys years ago; it was the town of the 1990s and early 21st century that was on its last legs. Sure there were good shops and pubs around and I mean them no insult. However, the west part of the town truly lived up to its nickname of the Western Desert. Come early evening and I swear you could see tumbleweed rolling down the Oxford Road as you looked across to the run-down car park and the fading, rarely-trod streets. It was dingy and ugly, and there was little hope.

So whatever you may think of Eden, please reflect on one thing - it has saved this town from blight and misery.