I went to Southend on Sea earlier today, and it was closed. No seriously, I arrived in Southend at the main railway station, Southend Victoria, and then walked through the newly refurbished Victoria Shopping Centre, that leads from the station to the top of the main street down to the front. A lovely shopping centre it is too, a nice central atrium, but half of the units are empty… that’s always a depressing sight.The one shop that actually looked interesting, “Into The Void” (a comic book/sci-fi place by the looks of things) was closed. And it got worse from there, because then I stepped outside into the cold, biting wind and the rain. Take it from me, British seaside resorts are awful places in bad weather, I’ve had Novembers in both Blackpool and Brighton, so I know.
Well I made the best of it and headed down to the seafront to look at the planes flying past as part of Southend’s annual airshow. It would have been great, but the low-lying cloud just rendered all the aircraft grey and once they turned and headed away from the beach, impossible to see. I’m sure on a sunny day the crowd would have been “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing, but not today. Mind you, the organisers continued to send out cheerful updates on ‘Twitter‘ – I wonder how many of those attending the airshow took advantage of it; I bet I was the only one there getting little messages on my mobile. The poor acrobats performing on top of the bi-planes must have been *freezing*.
The small splashes of colour that I did see were the wonderfully laid out flowerbeds along the Clifftop Gardens, which stretch from the centre of the seafront all the way along to the Cliffs Pavilion. They’re beautiful, but as I sat there in one of the pagoda-like shelters hiding from the gale and cradling my hot, triple-shot skinny latte from Costa, I just couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm. Queen Victoria didn’t help either, sitting on the top of her plinth staring glumly out to sea, I knew how she felt. Next I came across the war memorial… as you can imagine it was all downhill from there…
After trudging along for a mile from the centre of town, I finally arrived at what I normally admire as a rather bold and dramatic building, the Cliffs Pavilion, but today it just looked like some grim 1960s council office and the statues sitting in front of the building, with fountains playfully splashing about them – I’m sure they were smiling last time I was here…
At this point, I’d had enough and decided to call it a day, and almost ran back to the railway station. Today Marvin had nothing on me. I’ve posted the rest of the pictures from today here but be warned, they’re really depressing 
“OMG, I’m going to Thamesmead tomorrow…”
About Pete Stean
