Trip back to the UK

Southend misses the mark, again.

Walking around Southend, especially down the High Street, it seemed slightly depressing and that a great chance for re-birth was squandered.

Now I’m no architectural genius but I have an opinion and I used to live in just off the High Street.  The whole stretch from Victoria Circus to the Seafront seems to be randomly peppered with bits of steel and glass, like some set designer was given the task to retro-fit Southend for a TV Sci-Fi film that was never made.

McDonalds has purple “comfy” chairs and a lot of the signage employs modern sans-serif typefaces, but the whole thing looks rather half-hearted.

The new University of Essex building dwarfs its surroundings and looms over shoppers like some nanobot created leviathan from a Gibson novel. Meanwhile the rest of the buildings a street away are crumbling and boarded up.

Now by no means am I saying that it was a jewel whilst I was living there, but it did seem to have a sense of promise. I hoped it had learned from the concrete boom times of the 70’s that wiped a lot of this town’s character away for good, obviously not.

Most of my friends told me they rarely visit Southend anymore.  It’s a shame but I can see why.