Brexit Walk
20 images Created 1 Feb 2023
From Instagram, 31st January 2023:
"Brexit Walk, 31st January. The UK left the European Union on this day three years ago so I took a childhood walk along the seafront of the Estuary, from Southend to Shoebury. A walk of pure nostalgia for me as we would come to a beach hut somewhere between Thorpe Bay and Shoebury for days at a time in the sixties. I suppose the hut is still there but I wouldn’t know which it was.
What I do know is that 58% of Southend-on-Sea voted to Leave. I walked and photographed all the way to the WW2 coastal defence emplacements at Shoebury Garrison where my grandfather served and my mum and dad first lived as a married couple. They had a family, they bettered themselves and lived abroad (with me), both dying over thirty years ago nearby. Had I stayed locally myself, I wondered today what life I’d have made for myself here - and whether I’d have also become closed to the idea of ‘foreign’ and ‘there’ - rather than European and ‘here’."
"Brexit Walk, 31st January. The UK left the European Union on this day three years ago so I took a childhood walk along the seafront of the Estuary, from Southend to Shoebury. A walk of pure nostalgia for me as we would come to a beach hut somewhere between Thorpe Bay and Shoebury for days at a time in the sixties. I suppose the hut is still there but I wouldn’t know which it was.
What I do know is that 58% of Southend-on-Sea voted to Leave. I walked and photographed all the way to the WW2 coastal defence emplacements at Shoebury Garrison where my grandfather served and my mum and dad first lived as a married couple. They had a family, they bettered themselves and lived abroad (with me), both dying over thirty years ago nearby. Had I stayed locally myself, I wondered today what life I’d have made for myself here - and whether I’d have also become closed to the idea of ‘foreign’ and ‘there’ - rather than European and ‘here’."
