Back in
the old scratchy, jerky, black and white days of mid 20th
century England, before the advent of the "package"
holidays to Europe, the working classes made the seaside
resorts of England wealthy. Originally, places like
Blackpool, Whitley Bay, Brighton and Scarborough had been the
holiday resort of choice for the upper-middle classes, they
boasted genteel tea rooms, baths and fine promenades and
parks. The working classes in the industrial interior made do
with the moors and forests around their workplaces for their
recreation.
When mass road transportation became a reality things began to change. A charabanc - a forerunner of the modern bus - would be hired on the Bank Holiday (a public holiday) and the whole village, or street of a city, would take a day trip to some revered resort. Parents and children packed tightly into these noisy vehicles - open topped, maybe two decks - and would set off early in the morning (remember these were working families who were used to rising around 5am) to drive the many miles to their destination. This was an occasion, a festival. The day would be spent in Scarborough, sitting on the beach trying to keep the drizzle-damp sand from blowing into your sandwiches, tea would be drunk from bulky tartan thermos flasks. Within only a few years these day trips changed the face of the towns, driven by market forces the local business began to provide the kind of instant entertainment that is required by people who have only eight hours in which to spend their money. The upper-middle classes began to go elsewhere, and the seaside resorts of the UK became the playground of the workers.
A common dream for people who have enjoyed a holiday is to wish one day, after all the work is done and the body is tired, that this place, this place they have spent so many happy hours, will be the place they retire to - to make sure the children are set in their lives, to store away a little something every week until the time is right to rip up the roots, then give life to the dream of spending the last years of their lives in the place they have loved so much. The resorts, previously home to the grand houses and summer homes of the great and good, were taken by surprise when the first wave of interest hit them - where would they put these people? Fortunately, for them, the timescale was such that when the first great surge of interest came, it was during the late forties/early fifties, an age of mass production.
When the war ended, the cities of the UK had lost a good percentage of their housing, and with hundreds of thousands of returning servicemen in need of homes the pre-fabricated home was chosen as the ideal "temporary" solution. These were also put into service by some of the seaside resorts, and they are still there in many of the towns, sitting in clusters in the hillside over looking the bay. These were some of the original seaside "bungalows" - cheap, low-maintenance housing for tired workers. Often the route down to the beach runs past these bungalows. For all they are built to a common design, each is customised as far as possible. Rows of seashells, ships wheels, flowerbaskets and driftwood all feature. A whole pocket-industry grew up in these towns, an industry of signs and nameplates - individual adhesive letters, poker burnt lettering into slivers of wood, wrought iron monstrosities that threated to pull down the wall. The names gave some indication of how these places were viewed: Shangri-la, Dunroamin, The Haven.
It's a bit of a hollow dream now - the hey-day of these places ended in the mid-sixties, but many of those who were regular visitors back then have now reached their retirement age and still seek out a "bungalow" in the Eden of their youth. By the end of the sixties the pre-fabs had been joined by custom built bricks-and-mortar homes designed along similar lines, but the face of the towns was changing again. Mods and Rockers fought on the beaches that their fathers had been prepared to defend with their lives.
These seaside towns are now geared up for weekend youth. Night clubs and discos, wet T-shirt nights, girls dancing around poles, karaoke, three measures of any spirit for a pound. In Whitley Bay the old pools, promenades and trampoline pits are decayed ruins, the concrete has rotted and fallen into the sea. The fabled "Spanish City", a brilliant white funfair, all domes and arches, once the pride of the town is now virtually deserted - the white paint hasn't been touched up in years and half the booths are empty.
The song "Bunaglow" sums that whole history up for me beautifully, maybe it's a Brit thing. I hear the faded gentility, the fraying aprons on the teashop waitress, the cracked plaster ornatmentation of the wind-pocked guest houses, the elderly donkey sheltering in the lee of the wind while it waits to carry uninterested children along the shit and bottle strewn sand. I hear a couple working their way through life, saving and waiting for this little haven on the cliff top, a nest in the gorse bushes linked to the town by a narrow sandy path. I hear their wishes, but I know the reality - the towns are now geared for youth, the gentle days of their memory are gone (if they ever existed) and their dream will not be realised.
According to Andy :-
"I wish I'd written that song. It's just two people planning for their future. His (Colin Moulding) parents and my parents, all their lives - and still do, because mine are still alive - lived on a council estate (cheap, state housing), and I did until I was 20, they still live there now; and they have this thing where they have this dream of buying a bungalow. And so he wrote this song really as a homage to his parents' and my parents' generation's ideal of 'we'll save and save and save, and we'll buy a bungalow by the sea'."
Morrissey's "Every day is like Sunday" makes an interesting companion piece to Bungalow, giving the modern young person's take on these dead towns, and "A Holiday Memory" by Dylan Thomas might help those unfamiliar with the traditional British "Bank Holiday Outing".
