‘Staycations’: the best and worst of the UK seaside

Being from a coastal town myself and generally hanging on to every word uttered by the cynical Mancunion, Morrissey, his opinion that coastal towns should be shut down or bombed was a difficult one for me to swallow. Too difficult in fact; so armed with a notepad and a pen I set off in search of some kind of saving grace for the classic British seaside holiday and prove him wrong.

Everyone knows what to expect from a seaside town in Britain: high winds, salty air, fish and chips, ice cream and last but not least, rain. However, there is something overwhelmingly romantic about fish and chips by the sea. The simplicity and understatement of the British seaside has a lot of be said for it.

It appears though that this opinion doesn’t wash with foreigners. I explained this ideal to a French man and he simply didn’t understand. It wasn’t my bad French he didn’t understand; it was the notion of a romantic day out on the coast of Britain. And now it seems even the British are falling out of love with the seaside - I have heard nothing but drab stories of storms, of tents blowing away and emergency fleeces!
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Now, I can appreciate these complaints, and I can hold my hands up and admit defeat when it comes to the bad weather this summer. However, I can’t help but feel that some people are just overly cynical. This isn’t to say there weren’t disappointments in my travels. I found to my horror that 99er ice creams don’t actually cost 99p! I have paid from £1.20 to £1.50 for these timeless cones with a flake, after asking for “a 99er”. Maybe the cashier just saw me coming, and mumbled “there’s one born every minute” after I gleefully walked away lapping up my cooling snack. So, can anyone answer me this: am I wrong in thinking that (a) these cones were named after their price and (b) that they always used to be 99p? Or am I merely fantasizing that when I was young(er), prices were more reasonable?)