Skegness

Occasionally I get nostalgic, not very often, but I get wistful about the places I went in my young days. Now, Skegness is nothing really to get nostalgic about. It has always been perfectly horrid. But therein lies its charm; Judges go to a dominatrix for a spanking, movie stars go shop-lifting, other people vote Lib Dem, others slake their masochistic thirst with trips down memory lane to places where frankly, you were always glad to get out of. I visited a few years back and it had not changed in the 50 or so years I have been aware of it.

Yes, there is a Lap Dancing Club, but that is only a bit of natural evolution from the strange "What the Butler Saw" machines that my Dad held me up to the viewfinder to watch, on Skegness Pier.

These machines contained pictures from the 1920's, or earlier, and might have revealed a bosom or two, that's all. I never figured out why my dad was so keen to help me along the pathway of knowledge in this particular way. Skegness is what it always has been; tat and more tat with rock and fish and chips. You may not know of course, that the surrounding coastline is one of the most breathtaking, some would say, bracing, in the country. You pays yer money, you takes yer choice.

And yes, the beaches within a few hundred yard of the town centre can be that empty, since most holiday makers cannot drag themselves away from the slot machines and chip shops. Mind you, they do a rather yummy fresh hot doughnut...