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The Promenade |
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A host of ingenious devices, explosive and inert, of steel and concrete, oil and amatol, was devised to keep us off our beaches. But an active force of visitors filled the hotels and lodging-houses, in both summer and winter. They brought to them, in place of the childish smells of peacetime seaside - the rubbery, fishy smells of "paddlers" and of the moribund victims of inexpert aquarists - the more martial odours of Brasso and Correctine. There was no lack of surprises. Blackpool found itself suddenly catering for a new; eastern European clientele; while Dreamland at Margate ended the war aptly housing thousands of Ministry of Supply mattresses. Many a Seaview or Marine Hotel was landed with a still more ocean-going name, and had its ceilings ruined by the washing down of the second-floor decks. But no one resented the determined voices of these visitors, though a few may have thought regretfully of the many childish voices that should be piping there in August, still ignorant of the pink cylinders and neat typography of the local rock, and to whom jellyfish must, for the time being, remain some unimaginable delicacy out of a packet. |
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Last Updated 26 Feb, 2004 |
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Never was the seaside so important in English life as during the years 1940 to 1944. Never had it seemed so much the edge of our island: it was more than the edge, it was a dead end.