Southend- the jewel in the Essex crown.

Southend- the jewel in the Essex crown.

So there we were casually sunbathing in the roasting heat of an August afternoon on the Essex Riviera. For only the second time in this most troubled of all years we were taking a leisurely break from the concrete jungle that both London and the outskirts can seemingly become. In the distance my father in law noticed a whole fleet of ships on the horizon and could hardly hold back his unalloyed pleasure.

There far away was the might of England's nautical heritage, several very socially distanced ships and boats steadily inching across the heart of part of the Thames estuary and just going about their business in a way that they must have done for many generations. They looked, even from our vantage point, like beautifully painted watercolours undisturbed by nothing in particular and just proceeding silently and properly towards some bustling harbour or perhaps an oil rig.

But a family day out in heavenly Westcliff seemed just the ticket. Now Westcliff on Sea is geographically just down the road from the more familiar-sounding Southend where doting parents would normally have allowed their young offspring to just go stir crazy and enjoy themselves. But the Pirates Adventure Playground was still closed and all Southend had to offer its daytrippers and regulars was a large slice of good, old fashioned fun if not quite on the grand scale of former years.

Here were the amusement arcades where every year thousands upon thousands feed the one-armed bandits with two-pences, five-pences and that machine that keeps nudging two pence pieces off a two platforms and bingo. You've won a small fortune. Then an upbeat, joky voice keeps telling you to play yet another game of bingo while all around you the kids are firing computer-generated guns and then driving pretend racing cars around pretend racing tracks while frantically steering a pretend steering wheel.

Then all around you the whole cacophony of this yearly seaside ritual will always be heard as the kids school summer holidays gets underway. All manner of strange noises will emanate from who knows where, whooping, buzzing, bleeping and then varying the tone of its voice according to which game you happen to be on. This is old as time itself but this summer the seaside almost didn't happen at all because the world came down with the most frightening sickness and the kids were now distraught.

And yet here we were as a family just glad to be away from the pressure cooker heat of London and determined to cool down in the faintly exotic breezes of the Essex coastline. The summer in England has been very good if not quite the summer we experienced two years when somebody left on the central heating and didn't switch it off until roughly September. This summer has been playful, changeable at times but never less than surprising. May was beautiful in as much as that it felt as if you were sharing the same climate as the Mediterranean while June and July kept teasing us flirtatiously.

All in all it has been very much a typical English summer: unpredictable and moody, brash and possibly temperamental but that may be enough about one Donald Trump. But of course this is dreadfully libellous and totally untrue so Trump may have to forgive you hopefully. Yesterday Trump had the shock of his life when somebody told him that gunshots had been heard outside the White House and the orange-haired phenomenon suddenly turned ashen-faced, looked totally alarmed and then realised that it may not have been as serious as he thought it was.

Back in Westcliff  a reasonably packed throng gathered on both the pebbly and sandy beaches and for the first time in ages you made a very telling observation. In the sea were countless swimmers, Olympian swimmers, thrashing their way across relatively placid waters, front crawling with impressive style and then bobbing up and down like the buoys in the water. It almost felt like watching Britain's finest at the Tokyo Olympics that were so regrettably postponed until next year.

On the piers, sea fronts and increasingly active esplanades of the Essex Riviera you walked slowly and appreciatively past those delightful palm trees that should have been gracing Benidorm rather than Westcliff. Then you all retreated to one of Westcliff's most enduring of all institutions, a cultural landmark that seems to have been there since the beginning of time. We knew we'd savour the experience because as a child you'd spent many a happy Sunday afternoon with your parents and grandparents during the Swinging Sixties, the 1960s, the decade when everything else changed apart from Rossi's cafe.

Yes, Rossi's cafe has been available for down to earth Essex grub for ages and ages. The photographs on the wall tell so many eloquent stories that you could hardly stop looking at them. Louis Rossi and his family had opened up this gastronomic paradise way back in the 1930s when social events were dramatically moving in the most sinister direction. And 90 years later Rossi's is still there, resplendently art deco in a manner of speaking, still boasting the same beverages and meals that had so readily satisfied the appetites of so many diners.

Behind a now socially distanced and shielded counter were those classic comestibles. There were also the teas, coffees, milk-shakes, orange juices and, lest we forget, Horlicks.  For a minute you thought you were imagining it but Horlicks was there on sale if that was your choice of drink. Now without wishing to seem too judgmental Horlicks doesn't seem quite the drink that would have appealed to any of us after a long day of exhaustive sun tanning. Still, it was there if you wanted it.

And then after an afternoon of relentless bathing self-indulgence where caps were nonchalantly dipped, knotted hankies were not quite the order of the day and faces raised confidently towards the sun, we made our way past the tiny souvenir shops with their quaint collection of kids windmills, inflated swimming pool rings, discreetly naughty postcards dripping with innuendo and candy floss that always reminded you of pink cotton wool.

You thought back to those halcyon days of the late 1950s and 1960s when dads would insist on wearing their work suits and jackets, complete with braces, formal shirt and tie. You remembered the glorious formality and order of the age, when huge families would huddle around their children protectively and proudly as dad bent down to build architecturally perfect sandcastles. You thought back to your wonderful parents and grandparents when your grandma made absolutely sure that you'd never go hungry with shopping bags groaning with egg and onion sandwiches.

At the end of the day Westcliff was still there and always will be. It was a predominantly social rendezvous where all of the latest Jewish gossip would casually float over to nearby Chalkwell and Leigh on Sea. Southend and Westcliff are the Essex heartlands where all our childhood memories were planted and nurtured, where cockles and whelks can still be slurped in downtown Southend and finally most of the cafes are open for business. The chairs have been taken down after a seemingly indefinite coronavirus lockdown and in this seaside haven of all seaside havens, the good people of Essex and beyond are walking around with a beaming smile. Long may it last.