Yesterday the sun shone on a bitterly cold East Anglian landscape despite the Southerly direction of the light breeze.

Sunny days in Winter are an automatic draw in our household to romp up the coast to Southwold. I had half a mind as to what to expect as regards grockles but my, I have never seen so many cars parked by mid-morning, so much so that we parked in Ferry Road car park that already had a dozen or so cars in it.

I have a view on Southwold and Aldeburgh, two quintessentially British seaside towns and that is they are open to anyone but, and it is a big but, the constant invasion of grockles into these two resorts and the effect on property prices ensures that not many locals can actually afford to live in these towns. I often refer to Aldeburgh as Islington-on-Sea. Go there between Friday lunchtime and Sunday afternoon and you cannot move, apart from the annual Aldeburgh Festival. Sunday onwards to Thursday, one can breathe the air without hearing accents more akin to those that can be heard in the cappuccino bars of fashionable parts of London.

Well, yesterday in Southwold did not seem much different. I’m sure there were plenty of Suffolk based folk there, drawn just like us to the sunrise coast. I had never associated anything political with Southwold in the past as ordinary grockles and Prime Ministers have holidayed there rubbing shoulders as it were in a common direction.  I was not expecting to see this rather blatant advert for UKIP parked in a paddock along Ferry Road though.

The iconic water towers and rugby pitch with golf course in the mid-ground are Southwold. I have never seen anything blatantly political publicised in this resort. I feel that Southwold has somehow lost its virginity. It shall never feel the same again.

I was told by someone working in Southwold yesterday that they had never seen so many cars and visitors even though it was new year’s eve. I was asked if I knew how many people were recorded as living in Southwold at the last census. I quipped ‘Five, the rest are from Islington’ to which the response was 320 but 4500 lived in Reydon, the poor neighbour of Southwold that no doubt provides the servicing workforce for all the holiday lets and second homes. I looked up some stats and 800 were recorded in a recent census but I have no doubt that the 320 figure is a more realistic value for the haves versus the have-nots currently. The same goes for the North Norfolk coast. Those who graft at the bottom of the food chain are priced out of the housing market by second home owners. Yes some menial work at minimum wage is on offer but how can these communities sustain themselves when all the money if off-shore so to speak?

2015 will be a strange year as we march steadily towards a General Election, with all sorts of political fairy stories being trotted out as to who and what is best for the country. Suffice to say I hope that ‘that chap with a pint’ does not divide an electorate to the point that we end up shooting ourselves collectively in the foot. I fear the nation will be divided but I doubt there is any straight talking to be done by this lot that actually has any gravitas.

Oh, and a Happy New Year to you all.