The Clacton Experience
Oh God it’s awful.

Such brazen ineptitude surely warrants some kind of achievement award, the monumental shittiness of Clacton-On-Sea cannot be solely attributed to the guiding hand of mankind alone. It’s hard to imagine that even the combined efforts of the Great Plague, Hermann Goering’s urban remodelling committee and Thatcherism in a hellish frenzy of municipal misery could possibly conceive of something to rival the suppurating nastiness of an Essex seaside town. Indeed, the very thought of such awfulness is why I’m inflicting on you the most florid metaphors for “Squalid”, “Pox Riddled” and “Rectum” that my simple brain can conjure on a whim.

Clacton-On-Sea owes its very existence to the efforts of Victorian holidaymakers, who each year would flee the slums of London for two weeks by the seaside. Now the morale destroying unflushed lavatorial ambience of East London during the 1880s is well documented, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that sharp pangs of homesickness would have lured all but the most masochistic back from the Essex Coast before too long.

The Pier

“Clacton Pier, Clacton Pier, come and spend your money here!” jingled the advertisements in the 1980s, accompanied by the smiling mugshots of Chas n’ Dave.

The reality is even worse. The pier itself is a blocky, carbuncular structure constructed from decaying wood, seaweed and crumbling concrete, lit by swathes of pink neon in the most garish pastiche of an episode of Miami Vice. The aesthetic appeal is in the same league as the end result of a Lego building competition for war traumatised nine year olds. Once you’ve gotten past your ocular distress, you realise that your nose has been stung by the acrid stink of rotting seaweed, jellied eels – jellied eels, for fuck’s sake! – and the swaggering unwashed East End wideboy types who exist merely to transport gold sovereign rings from place to place. Your patronage is rewarded with stingy portions of chips drenched in life threatening amounts of salt and slovenly filled beakers of warm, pissy beer. All priced at a premium. The so called “amusements” consist of knackered fairground rides, a rusting wheel and a few ageing arcade games which appear to have survived a recent nuclear apocalypse.

The Arcades

Viewed from above, the Clacton promenade must look like a gigantic pink cock, flanked by neon lit cubist testicles on opposite sides of the road. These are the home of Clacton’s more miserable attractions, namely the slot machines. A quick wander around rewards you with the spectacle of watching men with vacant facial expressions slap buttons on blinking fruit machines in the futile hope of a payout. Feral kids charge around everywhere while overpriced video games empty your wallet. Once you’ve had your fill of this object lesson of cynical bad taste, you may wander over the promenade to the delights of its mirror twin, containing more of the same, but furnished with a slightly less smelly carpet.

Indeed, my sole cherished memory of the arcades at Clacton was happening across a barely functional, cigarette burned Outrun cabinet, which served admirably as a knicker elastic loosening ice breaker during an early date with my very first serious girlfriend one Sunday morning.

Unemployment

I had the massive misfortune to be enrolled at a higher education establishment in the town during the mid nineteen nineties and vowed that wherever I went in life, I’d never settle for anywhere worse than Clacton. The effort expended in maintaining this vow has thus far been minimal but with wholly successful results.

The thing that most struck me was the universal lack of ambition demonstrated by of any of my college mates. There was the chap whose dream job was to work in the local Vauxhall dealership and the girl whose idea of a life achievement was to get to the age of twenty without being impregnated. Clacton suffered (and still does) from high youth unemployment and piss-poor wages because it dies a seasonal death every autumn when the boarding houses close and the supply of tourist pounds dry up. Those with any nous whatsoever got the hell out of town as quickly as possible. I’m not sure which was the more depressing spectacle, seeing the aforementioned girl drop out at nineteen and eleven months due to an unplanned pregnancy or the chap on our course who never spoke to a soul and leafed through Commando war stories comics during lunch.

Climate and Ambience

For fifty weeks of the year, Clacton-On-Sea is grey. Grey skies, grey concrete and grey pavements conspire to inflict SAD on all but the most robustly jovial of souls. The only colour to be seen is either pink neon or on the track suits of the many Cockney Wankah types swaggering around presumably in between buying and selling clapped out Fords, slapping their wives and shouting “Yew faackin’ shtoopid caah!” at the very same.

For two weeks of the year however, it all changes. The grey skies turn blue, the temperature rises above dreary degrees centigrade and prompts the population to shed clothing and head for the beach. Baywatch it ain’t. Imagine a writhing sea of pale wobbling tits, greening elongated tattoos and ambitiously sized swimsuits. The females are even worse.

One sunny weekday afternoon, I took myself, my textbooks and my notes down to the beach to complete an assignment. Within half an hour, a whale of a man appeared and wasted no time in strutting about in a pair of microscopic red speedos, randomly bending over and pointing his lardy arse everywhere while his wife sat on a deckchair and scoffed chips.

Meanwhile, two girls of late teen vintage spread a blanket a few yards away and stripped to their bras and pants. In an act of eye watering vileness I’ll never forget, one girl turned to the other and spoke.

“Shell. D’yer fink me spiders legs poke aaht the side of me fong too much?”

This ghastly speech was followed by some futile furtive gusset tugging as the owner sought to shield her worryingly unkempt fanny from unprepared eyes. Gag.

Indeed, such a metaphor serves to conclude this dismal piece, for I pledge to ensure that when I’m running the country this neglected, unwashed clopper of a town becomes the location of choice for the RAF to practice carpet bombing.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 29 Oct 2009, 17:12, 6 replies)

If you're ever up for running the country, you've got my vote...
...but for now you can have a click.

15 years. Fifteen fucking years I lived in that shithole. Everything you've said there is absolutely spot on.

For some reason I was content to stay there and work in the area after leaving school (though obviously not in the town itself, no jobs etc), despite hating the place with a vengeance since my early teens. It was only when I was in my 20s that I decided to go to uni as a way out of there.

They say there's a curse - if you're born there, you'll die there. Even if you get out, it'll draw you back in. My dad was born there, moved away for years but went back... now he's over 70 and not in great health, he won't be leaving. Luckily, I was born elsewhere and only moved there as a kid, so hopefully that doesn't apply to me.
( Dave McF wrote some words on, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 17:30, closed)

I started highlighting sections of this that I liked...

And ended up just copying the whole brilliant lot.

word-for-word perfection sir.

One click just isn't enough.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 29 Oct 2009, 19:55, closed)

As bad as Clacton is.....
Jaywick is worse (apparently).
(purple_gromit, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 21:48, closed)

True
but sadly it's a bit of a stretch to regard it as a separate town. The residents who are ashamed of the reputation refer to it as West Clacton, and annoyingly they're kinda right.

For the record, my brother currently lives in Jaywick. I don't visit often.
( Dave McF wrote some words on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 1:40, closed)

Lovely!
Hoya!

Sounds bloody gorgeous.
I love the bit with the two girls ; it's chav-tastic!

No surprise that people living in this kind of place end up lurking on b3ta! :-D

Be funky

M A D
(MAD Life -The Best Antidote To Happiness, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 21:49, closed)

Liked that

( FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:08, closed)