Last week, I ventured to Southend-on-Sea with my partner. Rather than spending a rare day off together sitting in front of Netflix, we decided it would be much more enjoyable to see a bit of the British coastline, in all of its grey, tacky glory. It will be fun, we told each other. It will be nice to see the sea.
And yet, setting out from London in the car, against one of those endless grey skies that forecast a cool, penetrating drizzle, I had a slight feeling of dread. The last time I had visited Southend was as a child; I remember being blown away by the scale of the rollicking rollercoasters, too scared to go on them but enamoured of the environment: the sticky twirls of ice-cream, the noise, the fun. Would returning in the depths of winter kill a dear memory? Earlier this month, another British seaside spot, Falmouth, was crowned the UK’s most depressing place to live, while Southend was shortlisted.
Yes, it rained continuously, and there were cigarette butts and dog poo on the beach, but, wandering down the deserted promenade and seeing a wee girl and her faintly exasperated dad having a “picnic” surrounded by seagulls (“Are you sure you want to sit here on the sand, Maddie?”) had its own, bedraggled charm. The grey sea looked treacherous around the longest pleasure pier in the world. Sitting down for some excellent fish and chips at Fish & Wish, we had a lovely chat with the Albanian patron who told us his life story, and how his new fry cook, a cheery international student from India, reminded him of his younger self.
That it is almost two years since Southend became a city is a complicated point of pride and pain for residents, and, judging by some of the surroundings we encountered, money may still not be reaching all parts of the area. But, as our friend at Fish & Wish assured us, it was good to visit the British seaside in winter because the promenade is rammed in summer and there was no way we would have got a table. Once we got home from our day trip, we discovered a 1961 video, A Frenchman Explores Southend. “This has gotta be the life, dun’ it,” says one of the gents interviewed by the Frenchman as he strolls down the promenade on the lookout for a good boozer.
Southend, we’ll be back – perhaps even in the summer.
• Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is a freelance journalist
