They Do Like To Be Beside the Sea

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 441, 5 December 1947, Page 21

They Do Like To Be Beside the Sea

A T this season New Zealandefs are thinking of seaside holidays and preparing for them. How different our seaside holidays at populat

resorts are from those in England,

JOAN

AIREY

of Wellington, |

tells us in this article, written in London in October.

WS from home, which, like all New Zealanders in England I devour avidly, is filled with indications of spring. Here we are conscious of the opposites-the autumn nip in the air, the morning mists, the falling leaves that crackle under our feet. We are stacking the wood and gathering in what coal we can preparatory to digging ourselves in for the winter; we are considering (not without a shudder) whether it’s going to be as bad as last year. Even if it is there will at least be some who for a long time will have warm memories of the wonderful week they spent at Brighton or Blackpool or Bognor Regis, at Bournemouth, Clacton, Margate, Hastings, or wherever they went in their thousands for a holiday by the sea. Such a holiday is different from the, New Zealand variety. The English have an infinite capacity for enjoying themselves in the open air when the weather is fine. I cannot say that their idea of a day at the. seaside is altogether what I consider enjoyment. For me there are too many people. In New Zealand I have always sought the solitary places; and I think that is a fairly typical New Zealand attitude. Here, you might have the same attitude, but it would merely be a state of mind. Of course, I admit that solitude might also be hard to find on the long stretches of New Zealand beaches if there were more than 40 million people living behind them.

My first meeting with the English holiday-by-the-sea. was at the celebrated Bognor Regis on the south coast. Although it was so different from home, Bognor was very much as I had expected it to be from descriptions and pictures I had seen. There was the promenade along the sea-front with its seats and chairs for hire (4d for 3 hours), its bandstand, its pebbly shore with wooden groins running at rightangles into the calm waters of the English Channel. There were the little dressing-sheds on wheels-bathing machines-which are taken to the tide’s edge. They put me in mind of earlier and more modest days, when neck-to-knee was the rule for bathing suits and bathing meant bobbing up and down near the water’s edge. There was, of course, that important piece of English seaside ‘scenery-the pier. All the appurtenances of its amusement pavilion had not been restored since the war, but what the pier may have lacked the promenade had in good measure. Here, if you came to the seaside to ride on merry-go-rounds and dodgem cars, throw hoop-la quoits over trinkets from Birmingham, wear paper hats bearing the motto "Kiss Me," give up your sweets coupons for big bags of candy floss, insert your sixpences in_ slot machines, have your fortune told on a printed card, indulge your appetite for prawns and winkles, the scope of your diversions was unlimited. In spite of the pebbles, children on the shore were (continued on next page)

ENGLISH HOLIDAY

(continued from previous page) busy with buckets and spades while mother and granny sat near by-on the deck-chairs. I think the English must be champion deck-chair sitters. Wherever you go there seem to be deck-chairs. The number I saw at Bognor was nothing to the rows and rows of them I saw later in the season at Southend. They provide, I think, two comments--on the English climate, and on the English character. The climate does not always indulge in long spells of summer sunshine. As often as not it is too damp or too cold to sit on the ground. It is a tribute to the quiet patience of the people that I have not seen anyone in difficulties over setting up e deckchair! Southend to Dunkirk Southend is considered to be the Londoners’ own particular playground. You can get there in under three hours -by train, by bus, or more romantically by river boat. You can choose between a trim up-to-date pleasure steamer, or @ waddling paddle boat that has been churning its way up and down the Thames since last century. I watched one of these squat ships come to the Southend pier one morning with its crowd of eager holiday-makers, its crew as brisk as any on a battleship, and its captain with as much gold braid and dignity as if he were the master of the Queen Mary. Such a craft as this has every reason to surround itself with dignity and pride. Once it chugged its way with that amazing armada of little ships across the calm and miraculous sea to Dunkirk. My own particular jaunt to Southend was made by train. I caught what has been referred to as the "Southend Saturday trippers’ train" with only a minute to spare and for half my journey stood in a crowded corridor. Eventually I got a seat wedged between a newspaper with a man behind it and a restless, small boy who extractéd sticky ‘sweets at intervals from his pocket and clutched a model yacht in hot grubby chands. Long before he was near the sea he began to erect the mast and unfurl the sails of his little vessel. In Southend it was Carnival Week. The railway stations and the high -street were decked with flags; the pave"ments were crowded; the shops. were doing more than a brisk trade in papér hats and balloons, *buckets and spades and shrimping nets, ice-creams, prawns, novelties engraved with "A Present from Southend," toffee-apples (nce points) and peppermint rock in large pink and white sticks. When I bit into a piece (just for the experience) I found the name Southend running right through it, I wondered how a toffee‘maker in New Zealand would get on supplying similar sticks to a vendor at Paekakariki or Taumarunui! Grand Procession Somehow or other I managed to get through the crowds to the top of the cliffs overlooking the bay. Southend was a favourite spot of the late James Agate, wel!-known to many as critic and compiler of the diaries he entitled Ego. I, too, was enchanted with what I saw and found it as he had once described it: "Blazing sun, a spot of wind, the sea

a blue mirror with myriads of little boats as in a canvas by Canaletto." On this Saturday afternoon even the gasometers at one end assumed a sweeter aspect, The highlight of the day was the Grand Procession along the seafront!) I made my way down the shaded sloping paths to get a closer view. Everything you could wish. for was there-decorated vehicles and bicycles, clowns and gipsies, marching bands, orchestras on lorries, horses, army trucks, a beauty queen (Miss Southend, 1947), the sea scouts and‘ the fire brigade. Along the route eyerybody was watching, smiling, good-hum-oured and orderly. I wags impressed by these crowds, by their orderliness, their quiet unhurried enjoyment of the open air. Though infinitely greater than any similar crowd ‘at Timaru or Napier at the height of the New Zealand summer season, they seemed to me much quieter -almost docile, in fact. At the end of the pier on Sunday it was just the same, They were there in thousands, to the eye a well-dressed crowd (even if they were wearing their one and only Sunday best), perhaps just a bit self-consci-ous in their funny paper hats, strolling in the sea air. Sunday is probably the only day in the week that these Londoners do not have to bustle and exert them-selves-until the time comes to go home." , i It was at the end of the pier that I found the deck-chairs-more than I had ever seen before stretching in lines like Wordsworth’s familiar daffodils, The odcupants of most of them could pot possibly see the sea. However, with the warm sun upon them the majority of them dozed anyway. My view of Southend in the morning was rather a shock after Saturday afternoon's vision. The pier-the longest of its kindextends for a mile and a third, It has to, since the tide goes out almost as far revealing acres of mud. In the morning the tide was out. Yet even the mud had its interest. From half-way along the pier I looked down at an artist making pictures in it-pictures in mud of Westminster Abbey and the Queen Mary. Fishermen were digging for sand-worms for bait; others were looking for winkles; people were wandering everywhere. And I knew that when the sand pictures and the mud were covered over, the scene would be beautiful again. Shakespeare might have been describing Southend when he wrote these lines in The Tempest: The approaching tide © Will shortly. fill the reasonable shore That now lies foul and muddy.