My kind of town....

I am going to tell you a bit about my town. It has nothing to recommend it, either culturally, aesthetically or geographically. No one famous lives or has ever lived here [in the sixties the parents of  Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits ran a pub here though he was never seen .]

I have just remembered that IN 1963 a film was made here in the The Bay entitled French Dressing and, I have discovered, on the wonderful 'knowitall' that is Google, that it was Ken Russell's directorial début.
Local people were used as extras. Sadly the film has never been  shown on TV nor is it available on DVD

There is a lovely short video of our, 'Pier that was' with the star of the film, James Booth, cycling the length of it to deliver a ticket to a deck chair user. AND LOOK! SAZZIE HAS INSERTED IT HERE FOR ME. YIPPEE!
. .

When I first came here in 1946 to holiday with a friend of my mother, it was a slightly decaying Edwardian town with the second longest pier in England, plate glass was a dubious joy to come and the Street lights were the original and real Mcoys. There were shops selling meat and shops selling baked goods and Greengrocers and two Fishmongers, a coffee bar, Hardware Stores, fifteen pubs, eight churches/chapels/and one Masonic Temple. Charity shops had not been invented nor did we boast a Super Market.  Our friendly grocers weighed our bacon and sugar and tea, patted our butter and biscuits were taken from brown cardboard boxes, weighed into paper bags which were then swung by the edges over and over in a movement that fascinated me, to the extent that I thought I had found my calling. The man with the striped apron tied high under his arms would  pat  moist butter into neat squares, slice the cheese with a wire cutter, turn the handle on the bacon slicer and watch the slices drop neatly onto greaseproof...all this in an atmosphere that was scented with sugar and salt and cheese. Heaven!

It seemed to me then that I knew everyone-our postman cycled through rain and snow, ice or blazing sun, always the same man. He knew us and we knew him, he shared our relief when a letter from Mexico contained a cheque. George was  his name was and his son Terry was a one-time boyfriend. The man who emptied the gas meter was named Fred, he knew us so well that he counted the  French francs we had used when the shillings ran out before pay day, and accepted the equivalent straight out of the pay packet.  We knew our coal-man, his face and arms blackened with coal dust, an empty sack open at one seam thrown over his head and back to give him some protection as he lumped the sacks into our bunker. 

We knew all our neighbours and  their joys and sorrows, sharing, to halve them.

Then, as England began to pull herself up out of post-war gloom businesses boomed and progress stripped The Bay of it's tiny bit of uniqueness. Councillors allowed Jerry building; destruction of  the old and quaint  for concrete blocks which would last only a quarter of the time. Most of the Pier blew down in a storm and the powers that be twiddled their thumbs until it grew too expensive to rebuild it back to it's original glory, putting up only the Pier head or Pavilion in a style reminiscent of a factory.

As the decades passed we would return from some exotic location to find the town dying more and more, shops closed leaving gaps in the High Street until it looked like a row of decaying teeth. Only the seafront came alive, in the summer months as those without the means to enjoy the delights of the new 'Package Holidays' to Spain, would spend their two weeks in B&Bs and their days sheltering behind groynes on our pebbled beaches.

Now there is a new burst of hope for our town as City Dwellers, searching for an affordable second home, and working their way down the coast. have found their way to us. They are buying up and refurbishing and need the boutiques and Bistros and coffee shops. Things are looking up-but so are the prices. But that is a small price to pay [excuse the pun] if we are ever to see The Bay return to its original Edwardian Splendour.

I rarely see a face I know, and Charity shops abound [though a bargain is hard to find these days-no longer are the shops musty, fusty and dusty but smell of strong air-fresheners and display Fair-trade goods which one would not buy in the country of origin as too naff.]

So what is it exactly about this town that brought as back here time and time again?
Well, it is perhaps its very unpretentiousness. It is what it is, a slightly run-down seaside town, where the air is bracing, the sea [now clean] is cold, the shingle is hard on the feet, the penny arcades still attract when the wind is too cold and the shops are, little by little, returning. As petrol prices brings tears to the eyes and Super-markets revel in their monopolizing profiteering, small businesses are starting to emerge again, giving   the personal service we thought lost forever.

And...I can see memories around every corner.