I should first point out that I do not live there (in a sense does anyone?) I have only visited. I may be foolish but I am not bloody stupid!
Clacton or ‘Clackers’ or ‘London by the sea’ is a seaside town (the clue is in the name) that is so incestuous that it is twinned with itself. It could also be that the dockside where Russia dumps it’s rusting nuclear subs turned their irradiated noses up when offered the gig.
Their offer to tow a leaky sub to sit off Clacton pier as an attraction was only refused after protests from the time warp resorts of Walton on the Naze and Frinton. But Clacton is the subject and it’s remedial level for sure. Entirely bereft of any charm (that’s the place and it’s occupants) it relies on seducing the unwary with endless burger shops, arcades, cheap clothing stores with knock off quality copies of last years fashion. **** shopping heaven!
It also has a glum and dreary market that has micro ***** being lead round by the hand as their parents who are possibly also their sisters/aunts/brothers etc look for something remotely worthy of a £1 plus purchase. Older ***** in the most common teens to early twenties bracket, hang around the car parks (christ they sure know how to live), Public loos (start as they mean to go on? Perhaps they’d call it work experience), and guitar shop.
I must confess that the guitar shop has been my only reason for visiting as it’s okay and has a certain tattooed rockabilly charm and eye candy guitars. Quite how the shop manages to keep £2000 Gretches out of the hands of thieving ***** is a minor miracle. The owner must be a treble hard *******.
Clacton is dirty, so dirty in fact that a quick spruce up or pre holiday season make over will not impact upon the grime inflicted upon it by it’s population. I guess if you flatten most of the buildings, bombed the pier, closed 98.9% of the retail outlets (it’s easier to call them want to be junk shops) and removed the population it might be half decent place. After all, it has a nice location and the sea…..No I’m not convinced either.
The pier is Clackers main ‘attraction’ and is as damp, dirty and disappointing as any other aspect of the place. At least you are temporarily free of the locals there as it’s just for tourists but don’t be fooled! Here we experience the dichotomy that is Clacton on Sea ‘population ..too many, brain cells..too few.’
It’s visitors are as bad or worse than the locals (I am begging leave to excuse myself from this equaton on the grounds of not being ******, of knowing what a bin is and how to use it and not commonly spitting on the floor as I hang outside shops). The dregs of the North, the Midlands and London descend upon this place as a home from home which if they live in a **** town, it is.
Rather than diluting the gene pool they make it murkier still and leave one with the feeling than a month of rain could not cleanse the place of the **** they drop.
Suffice to say that **** wear,bling,Novas and all the usual uninventive, follow the bloody mentally feeble leader **** is in abundance whilst taste, good manners and quietly spoken people are not. Public rows are the thing, so visitors feel free to berate your little **** or ******** for being a little ‘Cant’ and showing you up at your most irritating volume level. Now that I’ve done the Clacton on Seas’ tourist boards’ job for them you might well ask why I visited more than once? Well I didn’t, much, and then only for the guitar shop and the happy memory of my mate being shat on by a seagull near the pier as he threw chips to them. I had told him not to feed the ****** as it only encourages them and he must have assumed I meant the locals. The seagull quite rightly gave it’s verdict on the local cuisine and perhaps on the town above which he soared on thermals that stubbornly refused to take him away?
