I lived in Clacton for 12 years, here are some of the things I remember;

There was (or is) a theatre on the left of Pier Avenue where they had dancing waters on the stage. These were fountains of water that moved in time to the music, similar to the ones outside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

There is a ramp to the beach on the left of the pier where fishermen could come in and you could buy the fish they had caught.

You could get a day pass for Butlins and use the swimming pool and have a look round.

There were donkey rides on the beach and The Martello Tower in Clacton had a zoo at one time.

Next to the station there is a row of houses which would accommodate the railway workers, and there was a railway club with a bar for them, which we were able to go into and play snooker.

My first trip on an aeroplane was at Clacton airfield. It had 2-seater planes going up and you could pay for a flight around the pier and back. It probably only took about three or four minutes from take-off to landing! I’m not sure whether they still do that.

Initially when we moved to Clacton in 1967 and bought our first house, it cost £4000! We worked in London, travelling backwards and forwards but that became too much, so I changed my job for a local one, and gained employment in a German owned factory in Oxford Road on the industrial estate called HOPT, where I tuned tuners for Baird TV, which was very well paid.

I gave birth to two of my children in an NHS maternity unit just down the road from Clacton station, and it was a big old converted house, rather than a traditional hospital.

In 1977, when celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee, a local school (Frobisher) gave all the children a Jubilee coin.

The best fish & chips were in Clacton!