Well, my summer holiday hasn’t finished yet, so there’s scope yet for more of this kind of thing. I could say this is a typical English seaside scene, but actually we’re in Wales — Llandudno in fact. First impressions: it’s like Aberystwyth, but bigger and with lots more Liverpudlians.
Regency Square was first laid out in the early 1800s and was one of the first sea-front housing developments in Britain with social cachet; until that time the upper classes wouldn’t have dreamed of living near the sea, which was full of smelly fisherman types. But it was a success and became the template for many similar British seaside towns since.
What the Georgians would have made of the 450-feet-high tower that has sprung up at the end since last I was here, I have no idea. It’s nicely corporate, being sponsored by British Airways, for no immediately obvious reason, and is to become the “tallest moving observation platform in Europe”, or something. At least it will be until someone else builds a bigger one, which may turn out to be equally pointless and intrusive. I’m not a conservative — surely anyone following this blog can see that — so I’ll judge anything new on its merits. At the moment, I just can’t see that this has any.
Ah, the English seaside on a hot summer’s day. Sand? That’s for those continentals, of suspicious morality and lacking in backbone.
Being 42 