The Chronics of Southend.

Or

Why I left.


Back to southend. That’s all I’ve wanted and thought about for weeks. The positive of returning home. The negative of unsurity and unknown as to relationships, friendships, reputation. The single wish with so many caveats and add-ons that it has it’s own baggage handling fee. My aim, desire and wish. Not because I love the same-as-every-other high street with it’s obligatory Superdrug, Monsoon and Waterstone’s. I didn’t miss the statutorily, unforgivably, irresponsibly ugly people. I didn’t even miss the almost-nice-but-covered-in-a-layer-of-grease cafes along the Seafront but instead I missed my mother. I missed the comfort and luxury home provides. I missed my family who, despite not being the most ‘nuclear’ or even un-Jeremy-Kyle of groups, are really rather lovely. I missed my friends who tell stories that have me crying with laughter. I missed that view.

But finally something has become clear. Something or more specifically someone, well, even more specifically a group of people have become apparent to me. There’s a group of people in southend, a clique, a genre of person that is the worst thing about Southend. I don’t know if they’re a phenom all of their own, native only to Southend or if they’re a subclass that is active all over the country. Something is telling me they are unique due to the large amounts of constraints and peculiarities that form them.
Male or female, teenager or thirty-something. I dislike them. No, I loathe, nay abhor their breed. They are the epitome of all that I hate most about Southend. They encapsulate hedonism, laziness, arrogance, obstinacy, obnoxiousness and above all ignorance. The Chronics of Southend are blissfully oblivious and only concern themselves with their tiny little lives and their tiny little friends. They’re scared of change to the extent where they’ve blocked it from their mind. They’re stylish to an extreme.
They stand, sit and loiter in dark bars with dark hair that falls where it lies drinking wine and smoking roll ups. What’s in the cigarettes is unknown but no Chronic is clean. All are on, with, carrying or tempted by drugs. It can be nothing more than a little green or the more extreme cases where it’s taking heroin In Vitro.

Please don’t let me become one of these?