Colchester- A Slight Return

These last few days have been the longest that I've ever spent on Mersea Island (Colchester Borough). I've sketched here, in the days that I was trying to get into art school, walked here and admired the mud bound water vehicles, but never stayed.

Someone I know (who lives on the Island) assisted in finding me a nook to spend my quarantine time in. That was here, on Mersea Island. It was a golden opportunity. I grabbed it with both hands.

True to form, the days were sunny as I was room bound, dank and miserable as soon as I was eligible for parole. Today's like that. Trying to prove everyone right about the British Summer. Well at least I don't have to see the half naked men roaming the streets and shore line. I am forever thankful for small mercies.

Before jetting off to the Far East, I had lived around the historic town of Colchester for nearly fifty years, in different villages and locations. I was back for a couple of weeks, four years ago. That really was a culture shock.

Yesterday I took the 67 bus from High Street West Mersea to Osborne Street in Colchester. I discovered that although the bones of the town, the water tower called 'Jumbo', and the Town Hall still dominant over the High Street, were still there, much had changed. The former Colchester had a surface of country gentility, with an undercurrent of Essex rowdyism and skirmishes between town and barracks. The gentility had gone and Colchester had the air of a town barely hanging on against the barbarians at the gates.

This time around the shock is not as pronounced. There have been further changes, true, and just while I have been trying to accept those I had been aware of, but that's life. The previously free Library now charges for membership (£1.15). But Colchester is lucky to still have a Library, though it's much smaller in stock than the original Library, the one I grew up virtually living in, on West Stockwell Street.

I had a merry game of spot the shop. Seeing which shops had remained and which had changed over the passage of time. It seems that not many had remained. The worse hit were the book shops. Colchester had many antiquarian and second hand book shops. Most have vanished.

Shops have come and gone. Woolworths (Woolies) has gone again. I say again because it was there, then vanished, returned and has gone again. The departmental store Williams and Griffin (WG) has gone, which signalled the de-gentrification of the town, that and the High Street Sainsburys departing (like ravens and the Tower of London). Now Debenhams has closed and chained its doors too.

To counter these losses, Colchester has gained a multitude of smaller ethnic shops and restaurants, successfully giving this Essex/Suffolk Border town all the trappings of London's East End. Shops range from Turkish and Oriental mini-marts selling everything from frozen mutton (for goat curry), harissa for reasonably authentic Middle Eastern dishes, rice, frozen Dim Sum and dried noodles. 

Restaurants now include ethnic Indian, Italian, Greek, Turkish and Mexican (well Tex Mex) Caribbean as well as the British style Indian (Bangladeshi), British Chinese flavoured (pseudo Cantonese) and a number of burger joints including The Flag Burger (in Church Street) designing burgers from a multitude of countries including Korea.

My insight continues.