I sometimes wonder if Watford has been entered into some sort of contest to create the ugliest town in Britain.

There's very little left here of any architectural interest or merit and in the few instances where a building has miraculously escaped the bulldozer you can bet your bottom dollar that someone somewhere is making plans' for it.

Therefore it was with little surprise but a great deal of unease that I read last week's WO lead story on the possible development of West Herts College in Hempstead Road. Apparently, this could lead to the demolition of the building's handsome 1930s faade and, no doubt, threaten the already cruelly overshadowed Grade II* listed Little Cassiobury, formerly the dower house for the now-vanished Cassiobury House.

Walking though our sad, shabby, featureless high street today, where at least 800 years of history have been almost completely erased, you'd think that a few lessons might have been learned by the civic planners who rated utility above beauty and who destroyed the soul and spirit of our town centre in their quest for practical modernity.

How wrong you'd be.

Apart from two wonderful churches (St Mary's Parish Church, and Holy Rood - described by architectural historian Nicholas Pevsner as one of the loveliest buildings the Victorians gave to England) the Town Hall and the former Cassio College are probably central Watford's most significant buildings.

George Derbyshire, councillor for Park ward, is quite right when he describes the building at the heart of the Cassio campus as: "a fine example of 1930s civic architectural design".

If you ever get the chance to stand back and admire it from the traffic tumult of Hempstead Road you'll see that it's actually a rather simple and gracious architectural legacy from Watford's more recent past. A building doesn't have to be old to be beautiful, but it does have to be well designed.

If the almost Art Deco faade of West Herts College does make way for hundreds of poky, new-build boxes, I doubt that they'll be a new landmark for Watford or win any architectural plaudits.

But one thing they most definitely will do is add to the already horrendous congestion of Hempstead Road, which, in terms of waking nightmares is right up there beside Dante's seventh circle of Hell - Rickmansworth Road - on my husband's daily journey to work.

If the college site is turned into, say, 300 flats then that's at least another 600 vehicles vomiting out onto one of Watford's busiest and most unpleasant access roads at rush hour.

I was interested to read in another article in last week's WO that local artist John Kirkham's bestselling drawing is of the former Park Gates, shockingly demolished in the early 1970s as part of road-widening scheme. He says: "I think it was such a pity they were taken down. It should never have happened. A lot of people remark about it when they see my drawing."

Which just goes to show that people in Watford have long memories, aren't all philistines, and have been ill-served by successive regimes of cultural vandals at the Town Hall.

Hands off the old Cassio College, I say - and if it really must be re-developed into something else, do it with sensitivity, care and a sense of civic pride.

Otherwise, horror of horrors, it could even become another giant Tesco!

THE past is not always a better place. Writing as someone who has often commented on the behaviour of young people on trains, this week, in the interest of strict impartiality, I bring you a tale of pensioner power.

To be exact, the power of a pensioner to completely clear a train carriage in rush hour.

When this tiny elderly lady took her seat beside me, I admit, I thought there was something a bit odd about the five-foot stripey Dr Who-style scarf she had wrapped securely around her head like a Victorian toothache cure.

Mind you, there's nothing offensive about over-zealous displays of knitwear. It was what she did next that shocked the occupants of 6.30pm fast from Moorgate.

Delving into her capacious Mary Poppins-style carpet bag she produced a newspaper that she laid flat on her lap. Another dig around revealed a large foil container, followed by a second silver tray of similar size and shape.

A final foray into the black depths revealed a knife and fork.

It was at this point that a nasty suspicion dawned on me. She wasn't, was she? Oh yes, she was.

This frail creature was about to tuck into a full curry (with rice) in a compartment full of commuters - most of them standing.

One shunt at Willesdon Green and the man hanging onto the strap in front of her could have found himself sitting on her Jalfrezi.

It was a particularly potent curry, too and not the mouth-watering kind. Throughout the carriage fellow passengers exchanged looks of horror as the pungent whiff reached their nostrils. She wasn't exactly a quiet or neat eater either - one vigorous, slurpy forkful spattered my newspaper with odoriferous brown gloop. As the hurtling carriage reached maximum rocking speed, somewhere beneath Madame Tussauds I feared for my coat.

When we arrived at Baker Street the mass exodus was unprecedented - and even people waiting on the platform to board got off again when they breathed in the less than exotic fumes.

In the past I've sat next to people eating burgers, munching sandwiches and tucking into chips, but never before have I sat next to someone eating a full, premeditated takeaway curry with a knife and fork.

If she was looking for extra elbow room on the commute back to the shires, she found a novel way to ensure herself plenty of space.

When I got home my husband wrinkled his nose and asked if I'd spent the afternoon in a curry house. I told him the answer was no, but I'd definitely had a close encounter with fast food.