The day before the day before the night before christmas

Basildon is blessed in many ways, it is a beautiful town with a good population and also it happens to have two Aylesburys, like Sheffield, and is a fairer place because of it. I set off on the quest to find Aylesburys, dropping by my friend Joe’s house to take him along as a travelling companion. He is a useful and excellent map reader. Driving to places on your own is certainly not ideal with a map between your legs, it tends to lead to me getting lost and nearly crashing, the worst of both worlds. Joe is not new to Aylesbury hunting, having been with me for Slough’s Aylesbury a couple of year’s back. He also brings with him photography skills, a good sense of humour, an excellent map reader, an enthusiasm for the absurd, a laptop and mince pies which made an excellent breakfast.
We set off round the M25 which was swelled with Christmassy traffic, for it was the day before the night before the night before Christmas. Our ultimate goal was to pick up my brother from Cambridge via a rather long circuitous route, involving two days driving, and an overnight stay, but it was all worth it. It was all smooth running to Basildon and after taking a few wrong turns we were in Aylesbury Mews our 20th Aylesbury and first stop of the day. Our friend Cucumber texted Joe to ask whether he wanted to play football that evening, as he knew that Joe may not have gone with me that day if he had seen sense, or had more important things to do. Luckily he hadn’t and I sent him this photo back as a reply.

Aylesbury Mews is a small cul de sac of houses built in the early 1990’s and is well kept and tidy. There was an interesting set of Christmas decorations around one fir tree that looked as if it had tried to escape and someone had thrown a football goal net around it to lash it to the floor. It didn’t look very Christmassy more like a forlorn trapped animal.
Having ticked off another Aylesbury, we set off for our 21st Aylesbury. This was to be in the sunny town of Clacton on Sea, a place which I did not have high hopes for. It was a long drive to Clacton and we got there around lunch time. We parked at our next Aylesbury and went to take some photos. A family were just leaving their drive and looked on in great interest and fear as we tried to take timed photos of us by the Aylesbury sign. Slightly embarrassed as to what we were doing, we paused our failing photo taking and waited until we could continue undisturbed, not that we were doing anything dodgy.

The housing estate was some 1970’s housing and was quite pleasant, only a stones throw from the sea front, so we proceeded down to the front to find some fish and chips and have a break from driving. As now walking around felt incredibly slow, almost sluggish, everything looked as if it should be going past my eyes at 70 miles per hour and my hands were slightly numb from the vibration of the steering wheel. We got down to the sea front and walked along it. It was pretty sombre, lots of places either dilapidated and looking as if they should be demolished, or under scaffolding. Arcades full of loose promises, flashing lights and unsubstantiatable claims, like “unlimited fun” “ultimate pleasure”. Realistically the arcades were empty of fun, punters and potential.
We found a cracking fish and chip shop off the sea front and in the town centre, it was busy, a good sign, and I got some rock and chips as an alternative to cod, Joe went for the battered sausage. Very nice fish and only £4.00, tidy. We sat on the sea front looking at the sorry pier offering ‘family entertainment at its best, free entry for thrills galore’. On top of a nearby building we saw some depressed pigeons considering the jump, fish and chips were advertised at an extortionate £7.20. It was as if we had taken a punt on a giant Aylesbury slot machine and won nothing. There was only one thing left to do… we walked along the pier. We were greeted by the worst Christmas decoration on our trip. A dog, in a bag, being held by radioactive dwarf Santa, in a cage. The worst Cliff Richard music was being played on a terrible 100v line system.

On the pier was the Jungle safari, two plastic cactii, not traditionally jungle plants were embarrassingly placed next to a giant gecko and a small rope bridge. This was not ‘family entertainment at its best’.
We decided to leave quickly as we had had enough of the pier and Clacton. As we drove down the front, the war memorial looked decidedly quality with its neat beds of flowers and well clipped grass. It lived up to its expectations unlike so much of the rest of Clacton-on-Sea. We were off to Norwich, a long way north up A roads, not dual carriageways, the going was slow, especially as we started off on country lanes stuck behind a very slow driver, who travelled 10 mph below the speed limit and as the roads were small and windy, we could not overtake them.
We at last made it up to Norwich after Joe turned DJ and played some tunes on his laptop. We asked ourselves, has Weezer ever supported Iron Maiden at a gig or been on the same bill as them at a festival? We encountered a lot of traffic at Stanton due to a nasty crash on the high street there and so had to make it to Norwich via an altered route. This was an Aylesbury too many today. I was getting dangerously tired from driving and was starting to doubt the search’s success. I had driven over Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, for what? To see some signs that some unimaginative county council had erected, couldn’t you think up some names from local history or natural wildlife rather than tarring the good name of Aylesbury with this shambles? Nothing we saw that day was inspiring, imaginative or beautiful beyond what I normally see. What was the point? The original idea was to see interesting bits of the country and see more of Britain. Today all I had seen was mediocrity and dreariness. I had bitten off more than I could chew and it was hard to swallow. I gritted my teeth and we made it to our third Aylesbury that day. On the way, we passed the sign “School for the deaf and dumb” made famous by Steve Coogan in series 1 of I’m Alan Partridge, “Will there be noise, won’t there be noise?” Also on the A140, off to the left was a Partridge Way, perhaps nothing to do with the naming of Alan Partridge, perhaps named in honour of him. But at least a nice stamp on Norwich of his comedy existence. We found Aylesbury Close, took a picture, turned around, and left, keen to get to Cambridge as soon as possible powered on by chocolates and water.

We hit Cambridge at around 1900 and went for a curry at a restaurant where the maitre d’ makes enthusiastic grunting noises and is generally funny, the food is cheap and nice and you can be quite rowdy. My curry has broad bean size green pods in, for a medium hot curry, it was very hot, then I realised these were chilli pods and were very hot. Desserts were amazing with a frozen banoffee pie and lemon sorbet in a lemon, probably freshly made circa 1973. We discussed the day and all the events and decided to make a lot of jelly as we hadn’t had any in a long while and needed something silly to do. So on the way home we bought enough jelly for 10 pints and made it to set that evening. The next morning we ate jelly for breakfast and had a huge sandwich with 50 hams for lunch and drove home, ready for Christmas.