Squadrons of Mods in sharp suits on Italian motor scooters

Lambrettas and Vespas,

With little Union Jacks and floppy plastic tails hanging limply from their aerials

Disrespectfully patriotic RAF roundels on the backs of their parkas

Parked in a pack between the War Memorial and the Wimpy Bar

That little slice of American Modernity

– formica table tops

-frothy coffee

-table ketchup in real plastic tomatoes

wedged in between the dusty deserted grandeur of the Queens Hotel to the Right

and the Coop Department store on the Left.

September 2014

Bit of a false memory when I wrote this. I couldn’t recall what the Wimpy Bar looked like above ground floor level. Looking at the space I imagined it was in was even more puzzling, as there didn’t seem to be room for it. Scouring the internet turned up a photo that showed it was wedged between the Coop and the Queens Hotel, it was wedged into the Queens at the corner of its northern most end.

“Congress House” was the name of the Coop Department store. The Selfridges of South East Essex. It looked like the future in 1963. Sold everything from furniture to clothes to electrical equipment and hyperreal pottery shrunken heads of exotic types of person you might encounter on a holiday from a farther away place than Westcliffe on Sea. A great place to play hide and seek in after school. It even had lifts. There was a competition for the name. They chose the same one as the TUC HQ, which showed what a Labour sort of place this was.