With the cost of living crisis now a permanent mainstay, parents nationwide have to cut their cloth accordingly. It seems a distant memory jetting off for a few days to Barca and ambling with the kids around Gaudi’s quirky architectural concoctions and so, with a school holiday on the horizon, we instead look at day trips to glamorous places of yesteryear such as, er, Southend.

As a Hastonian born and bred, I knew exactly what to expect from such a seaside offering, and I was not disappointed. The day kicked off with a ‘first’ however, as we visited the cat café, located up a nondescript back road somewhere near the high street. With Fort Knox style security, we waited in the ‘holding’ area before admittance was garnered, and we entered to be met with a lovely little fella who looked like he was suffering the effects of alopecia totalia.

With 15 cats in attendance, for the uninitiated, it is basically a café with cats roaming about. Most of them seemed docile as they lay on radiators, shelves and sofas and slept, as cats are wanton to do, as we made ourselves comfortable with a steaming hot chocolate before a black and white number jumped on the table. As the kids wandered off petting their feline prey, our conversation turned all middle aged and sensible as we discussed how such cafés pass food safety hygiene inspections as we watched a tortoiseshell rub its anus across a neighbouring table.

Then, in place of the Ramblas, we took a walk through Sarfend high street. I got overly excited when I saw an HMV and followed this up with a ‘ooh…there’s a Primark’ and ‘ooh…there’s a Marks and Sparks’ before the family informed me they too had eyes and that every high street in the country has such retail offerings.

Suitably chided, I do what gentlemen seem to spend most of their time doing on a family day out as I stood for hours outside shops I refused to go into. The only men who looked even more miserable than us were those who had ventured inside the Primarks and came out laden with cheap paper bags and a couple of hundred quid lighter as they wished they, like me, vaped, to give them an excuse for some retail respite.

With a cold front moving in we warmed ourselves up with a portion of (eight) chips for the princely sum of £4.50 as the owner explained that local businesses were suffering, as we all are, as I nodded in agreement and wondered just how much potatoes have gone up in price. Now loaded up with saturated fat which put a huge full stop on my Slimfast diet we ventured into the seafront theme park which, like Hastings, had a selection of the most obscure and random concoction of individuals one could wish to see.

As the kids went on rides and I bemoaned my bad back, we people watched. It was like being in the home end of a Newcastle game as 20’s something men, whose partners looked in fear, accompanied them around with their tops off (the men, not the women) and openly displayed tattoos that were as badly spelt as they were unethically pleasing. They all had an air of aggression with ink showing an allegiance to the army, their football team, or arms adorned with names of randoms such as Cheryl, Mum, or Lucy-May.

And so, in the rain on the way back to the shires, I undertook a ‘marks out of ten’ audit on a day out in Sarfend. Averaging in at a solid seven, we all agreed we would not want to live there, as conversation turned toward how much it would cost to set up a cat café?

My wife then unexpectedly said ‘who needs the Ramblas, when we have that on our doorstep?’ which, a few seconds after saying it, she retracted, as we peered through the gloom at the traffic jam up ahead and wished we were sipping an overpriced cappuccino in the spring air in sunnier climes…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher