Another view
I’ve probably given you the impression that it’s all Miss Marple and stone circles and villages fêtes, haven’t I? Like most things, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Take this view. The white strip at the bottom is Camber Beach, the only white sand beach in this part of the country. It’s a beautiful thing; its been used dozens of times as a movie backdrop (most recently, George Clooney and Matt Damon filmed there this Spring).
And that thing in the upper right corner that looks like fly eggs? That’s holiday caravans. Read: trailer park. Low rent, but at least it’s seasonal trash. The houses around it are poorer, and year ’round.
It’s a rough little town, Camber. About the poorest in the county. And I can think of half a dozen up and down the coast nearby that are like it — grubby places next to lovely places.
There’s a particularly seedy, sea-sidey kind of poverty here. White. Drunk. Violent. Loud. Cheap. Young men with fighting dogs on short leads, lots and lots of tarty girls. The seaside attracts them, of course, but we also have it on good authority that the social workers dump problem families in the same neighborhoods, over and over.
Which explains all the junkies in Hastings.
November 23, 2013 — 12:37 am
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