And Another Thing...: A Town That Time Forgot
Today we welcome a new columnist to Open Writing. Arthur Loosley is a retired journalist and lecturer who is enjoying a life of leisure and discovery in East Anglia after a busy life working for newspapers in London, south-east England and the Midlands. Voluntary work for a charity shop and as a museum guide has provided him with plenty of reminders of days gone by, which he likes to share and discuss.
His passion for writing is insatiable, his journalist's 'nose' keeps him well supplied with subject matter and he never goes anywhere without hia 'third eye' - a pocketable digital camera. Rarely a day passes without several new articles begging to be written!
In his first column for us Arthur writes about Frinton-on-Sea, a small cliff-top town on the Essex coast which tries hard to pretend that it is still in the Edwardian era.
Do please visit Arthur's Web sites
http://www.wordsweb.co.uk
http://groups.msn.com/wordswebforum
Also take a good long look at the pictures he has contributed to Open Writing by clicking on Gallery on this page.
"When the end of the world comes, I hope to be in Frinton, which will still be twenty years behind the times."
Those words come from a local residents' newsletter in what might well be described as the most boring seaside town in England. I enjoy a refreshing weekend there occasionally and am not complaining about the lack of facilities because that is the charm of Frinton-on-Sea, a small cliff-top town on the Essex coast overlooking the North Sea, which tries hard to pretend that it is still in the Edwardian era.
Unlike so many other coastal resorts, Frinton is not a place to visit for 'seaside fun'. There are no amusement arcades or dodge-'em cars, and no chance of a concert on the pier, because Frinton doesn't have one of those, either! Nor are there any ice-cream kiosks or hot dog stands on the promenade or anywhere else in the town, and no deck chairs for hire on the beach.
There is however one pub, which obtained its licence only five years ago when the local council overturned an ancient city ordinance prohibiting such decadent establishments and allowed a Kent brewery (Essex breweries didn't dare to ask! ) to open 'The Lock and Barrel' as a pub-restaurant in a former locksmith's premises on the single shopping street, which genteel Frinton calls an avenue . . . so much nicer than 'street', don't you think? The beer is good there, too, and is one of the few places outside of Kent that I have been able to enjoy 'Spitfire' real ale. Even the name stirs memories of England's finest hour.
The town developed in the late 1800s with the coming of the railway, and the line became popular in the days before car ownership, carrying holiday-makers and day trippers in their thousands to nearby Clacton, which today is a noisy bustling town with amusement arcades in its main shopping streets near the sea-front and a pier which makes a massive contribution to global warming with its blazing lights, even in daylight, and over-amplified music pumped out from high-powered loudspeakers masking the sound of £1 coins being pushed at a frantic rate into seemingly endless rows of slot machines.
Frinton has always appealed to a different clientele. In the 1920s and 1930s liveried waiters from the Grand Hotel could be seen carrying tea and cakes on silver trays, across the wide green sward and down the steep cliff-side steps to customers enjoying the sea air from their beach huts on the promenade. The beach huts are still there but their erstwhile occupants, said to have included such latter-day celebrities as famous actors and artists, are not. Frinton is proud to remember that a number of works by Picasso were found when clearing the home of a former resident, reputed to have been a friend of the artist, who may have stayed and even worked there, and there was also small sculpture by another friend, Rodin which fetched a considerable sum at auction.
It seems that the residents and city fathers have never courted publicity but valued their isolation, protected from outsiders on one side by the sea and on the other by the railway which is still served by manned level crossing gates, seen by today's residents as their last line of defence from the outside world. The words 'within the gates' are in everyday use by residents of the original Frinton, to differentiate it from the sprawling modern housing estate which has sprung up on the other side of the track.
A paragraph in the residents' newsletter mentions without enthusiasm a mooted plan to replace the gates with an automatic barrier, and one senses an undercurrent of the resolute British determination inspired by Winston Churchill's wartime words, "We will fight them on the beaches", when every man, woman and child was prepared to take up arms to defend their homeland and way of life from the anticipated invasion. A visitor might be forgiven for asking whether the wartime pill-box, built over 60 years ago and still occupying a commanding position with its gun slots facing the level crossing, might yet be called into action.
Not in genteel Frinton, surely, but the natives are becoming increasingly restless as they sit with their Spitfires, awaiting the arrival of the enemy.
© 2006 Arthur Loosley
