OUT OF SEASON

I’ve always been drawn towards places “out of season” as it were. There’s something comforting I find about them which I can struggle to track down when they’re buzzing and “fun” and full of life at the times of year when the tourists are packing the streets with their laughter and noise. Somehow I just like them more when there’s a hint of drizzle in the air and an all-pervading gloom and melancholia has begun to shroud the amusement palaces and funfairs, which gives them an almost abstract and functionless quality which just kind of works for me.

I can recall being sent to Great Yarmouth on a business trip in the run-up to Christmas more than a decade ago now, and somehow those icy winds, crashing waves and steel grey skies seemed to bring the various qualities of the slight sadness of a seaside town in winter, waiting for the people and the joy and the income to return, into some sort of sharp relief which pleased me on a level so deep that I can’t really begin to explain it. Somehow I get the impression that I just liked the town more in the depths of winter than when the gaudy, tawdry nature of the pursuit of “fun” is at its height.

Perhaps I am just drawn towards the more miserable side of life. I think, perhaps that it’s due to my long-held suspicion of what I refer to as “organised fun” in which I am deemed to be “supposed” to be enjoying what everyone else has decided is a “fun” thing to do, even if, for me, it patently is not. I don’t think that it’s at all unusual to think that way, by the way. I accept that it’s just sometimes easier to go along with what the crowd is doing, even if it makes you personally extremely miserable, but, rather a long time ago now, I made a decision that doing something you don’t like just because everyone else with you thinks that it’s going to be fun is a colossal waste of time, energy and effort, and, to be brutally honest, nine times out of ten, I’d quite simply rather not, if you don’t mind.

Thinking back, I can even remember writing an essay about the miseries of a seaside town in winter when I was eleven years old which contributed to my unprecedented ninety-six percent result in my English Language end-of-year exam that year. I don’t know. You’d think I’d have ended up as some kind of writer or something with that sort of a pedigree but, alas, that moment was a high point and it’s been downhill all the way since then. I can’t, naturally, remember a word of that essay now, of course, although I am beginning to wonder whether the eleven-year-old me put it all far more eloquently and succinctly than I am managing to do today.

There is a point to all this rumination, which I will now share with you, because that is, after all, rather the point and, for better or worse, it’s what I like to do for “fun” (or whatever equivalent it may have in my particular version of the universe). So it was that, a few weeks ago, we found ourselves in Santa Cruz in early March. Santa Cruz is, of course, rather famous for its coastal amusement park that exists on its “Boardwalk” and, consequently, might not initially seem like my kind of place at all, but I think that you might just be misjudging me, or it, or both, if you were to make that assumption. After all, February is pretty much “out of season” in anybody’s book. Now, “out of season” in California probably doesn’t much resemble  “out of season” in Blackpool or any other of the British seaside towns. The sun was still shining brightly and it was still warm enough for the beach volleyball nets to be fully occupied on a late Monday afternoon, but nevertheless, the Boardwalk was pretty much closed for business.

We had, of course, been drawn to Santa Cruz for various reasons. We’d been renting episodes of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” before we went on holiday which had reintroduced me to the rather dubious delights of the idea of an old-fashioned seaside town, and my quick glance through the Guidebook had made me aware that there was supposed to be an original old-fashioned Carousel somewhere in the fairground which sounded like it might be well worth going to see. Sadly, it turned out that that little gem was all locked up for the winter along with all the other rides, but we did, at least, get a glimpse of it through the glass, and it still looked rather wonderful. After strolling through the park and back I now have far too many none-too-brilliant pictures of an empty fairground in all its tasteless, gaudy and tattered finery than is strictly necessary and it left me feeling rather gloomy as we walked up to the end of the pier, sorry “wharf”, as the sun started setting, taking far too many pictures of the birds, the sea lions, the seafront as viewed from the wharf, and the wharf itself.

Of course, in this instance “gloomy” is good.

I had been to Santa Cruz a few times before. A brief visit back in ’96 had introduced me to the statue of the surfer which my travelling companion of the time was eager to visit, and two subsequent passes through the town on my way to somewhere else had found me both frustrated with its complicated one-way system (which seemed specifically designed to confuse the unwary traveller) and unable to track down that statue again. Eventually, after much ranting, raving and self-recrimination behind the wheel, the statue was found on the second visit, but by then the joy of actually finding it had been tempered by the aftermath of my display of temper, if you get my drift...?

Anyway, just passing through had, at least, left us with the feeling that it might be a nice place to stop and explore sometime, and so it finally made the list this time around, not least because of that Carousel that I mentioned. The Visitor Center put us on the a rather fabulous little hotel, the “Pacific Blue” which did truly amazing breakfasts that really do have to be seen to be believed, and they, in turn, recommended “Soif” which became our restaurant of choice that night, which had a band playing and halibut that was out of this world. The next morning, as we drove away, we also discovered that there were any number of wildlife reserves to visit in the surrounding area, and so we visited a couple, did a bit of bird-watching, nearly got blown off a couple of clifftops by the winds of a passing storm and generally left the area thinking that, despite being a gloomy old seaside town out of season, we’d rather liked the place.