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YARMOUTH
“I’d rather lose my hand than go back to that beach.” Simone
From the world’s worst wax museum to shops selling jarred monkey foetuses, Great Yarmouth is an eerie place to spend a rainy day. On Regent Street, the touristy stretch leading down to the seafront, the shutters are being pulled on a shop in which you can dress up as a cowboy and get your photo taken, while, across the road, a lone member of staff at what claims to be world’s largest seaside rock factory stares dolefully out into the drizzly abyss. Looking to get out of the rain, I duck into one of the few open shops, Martyn’s Walkaround Store, which is surely the best place in Britain to go right now if you happen to want to buy a cuddly giraffe, a dildo and a really massive scary samurai sword all at the same time. Of course, this being Yarmouth, it’s possible it has a nearby competitor with similar merchandise, but it’s probably closed. Article throughout by Tom Cox, The Guardian
I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the place I came here to see, Louis Tussauds House Of Wax, is closed too. The House Of Wax currently has just two customer reviews on Google, one of which complains about its faulty arcade games and the fact it’s stuck in the 80s, and the other of which says “Biggest dive ever waste off f***ing money avoid”. It gets in the national news every few years owing to the heroic awfulness of its exhibits, which currently include a Neil Kinnock waxwork who looks like someone simply burned the hair off a Margaret Thatcher waxwork and made do, and a Michael Jackson waxwork who gives a very accurate impression of what The King Of Pop would have looked like if he’d aged naturally from 1982 onwards, died in 1997, been buried, then been dug up two weeks later and had his feelings hurt.
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We all imagine that when the world ends, it will do so with a plague, a giant flood or a meteorite, or a combination of all three, but there is also the possibility we’ll all just get stuck in Great Yarmouth on a rainy day in early November, with all the shops shut, and gradually expire from ennui.
You’ve never really seen rain until you’ve seen rain in Yarmouth at the beginning of winter. It’s an oppressive curtain over the sky, turning everything a colour halfway between rusty metal and dog wee. Few civic environments in Britain imbue you with less hope for the future.
“What a shithole.” Alex
“This is the best part of today.” Everyone
YARMOUTH