I never thought in my most disturbed imaginings that I would ever write a review on the Galleria. I used to live in Hatfield, you see, for three glorious years as a student. And as anyone who has ever had the unparalleled joy of living in Hatfield will tell you, if it's filth, crime and permed woman shouting at one another in the streets you want, if it's semi-retarded gibbons in Adidas sportwear roaming the ill-lit, decrepit backalleys and teenage girls with a KFC in one hand, a fag in the other and a triple pushchair wedged up against massive, tracksuit-clad arses that float your boat, then get yourself on over there. They've got that kind of stuff in spades.
But then, perched atop all this degeneracy and squalor sits, behold!, the Galleria (cue celestial choir and restrained but majestic timpani). Sparkling in the sunshine, this structural behemoth straddles the A1(M), casting its regal gaze over the gritted carparks and high-rise tenements of its constituency. All those who fall within its mighty shadow cannot but shiver to themselves and speak in hushed and wary tones. "Over yonder, within those very walls," they whisper "be a UCI cinema and a Burger King 'neath the very same roof." In these parts, word travels fast. "Aye, I too have heard tell of such wonders. Legend has it that there be a BHS with 50% off all stock. Mind, 'tis last year's range, most of which be unfashionable these days."
If you were to make the journey, only an hour's drive from London, or about half an hour on the train from King's Cross, you would, I can only imagine, be sorely disappointed. Unless of course you're a big fan of cavernous, soulless hangars of consumerism, in which case you'll have a ball. But honestly, it really is awful. I hate shopping centres in general, but at least the majority make at least SOME effort to put the reluctant shopper at his ease with a few token gestures such as a fountain, or some ferns. Not the Galleria. Set over two empty, featureless, barren floors, this paean to the basest of human greed offers nothing more than four rows of homogenous high-street retailers, peopled in the main by the kind of snarling harridans and skulking teenagers that Hatfield seems to churn out with a kind of malevolent joy.
Admittedly, it is cheap. Most of the shops (or as they like to call them, with a sickeningly ironic lurch for TransAtlantic glamour, 'stores') are factory outlets. For some reason this means that they are cut-price. I would have thought all shops were, in a sense, factory outlets, in that all the stuff in them comes from a factory. But clearly I'm missing the point. Enter one of these 'factory outlets' (which, now I come to think about it, sounds aptly reminiscent of a sewage outflow or toxic fume vent) and you can be sold some out-of-season clobber by a sullen teenage girl with her hair scraped so tightly back you fear her forehead will at any moment split across her skull and out will gush some kind of horrid goo. At least that's what I fear. Perhaps you're more sensibly-minded.
Added to the shopping area is an annexe that houses a nine-screen cinema (where I used to work, many years ago) and a variety of restaurants. I say 'restaurant'. I mean places like Deep Pan Pizza Co and Mamma Amalfi, the former being the traditional post-cinema munching post, the latter being the place for special occasions (giro day), where you can see Hatfield's finest tarted up to the gills in readiness for being served a stodgy plate of lukewarm pasta by a supercilious man who calls you 'sir' with the emphasis firmly on the silent 'loo'.
I know, it sounds like I hate this place. And I do. It's only possible redeeming feature (cinema excepted - everybody likes the cinema - you can't really go wrong), is that it's cheap. But as an experience in every other way it's soul destroying. I worked there every day for a year, and only now is my soul getting back to normal. It still has some unpleasant discolouration around the edges that I fear will never go away.
I implore you: stay away from the Galleria. Don't be fooled by the shimmering edifice, resist the call of the cash till and the allure of the huge discount. It's isn't worth it. It's isn't worth trudging back and forth from shop to shop, while slowly, insidiously, every spark and hue of individuality is remorselessly stripped from your body, as your shoulders droop, your features resign themselves to a callous, bitter rictus, and your eyes shimmer and blur, and all you can see is the next shop along, the next saving to be made, the next big red sign saying 'SALE'.
Of course, if this happens, there's always a McDonald's. That'll cheer you up.
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Terrible
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