ABSTRACT
A month after the season had finished the holiday resort was characterless, uninhabited and depersonalised with the colourful summer-thronging crowds gone from the streets and cafes and amusement arcades. Along the concrete promenade with its decorated lamp-posts and regularly spaced shelters and benches there was no one to be seen; the steep flights of steps and the sloping paths coming down from the cliffs were deserted, and between them the formal flower beds were now only empty and unplanted bare patches of soil. Over the lines of abandoned beach huts and shuttered refreshment stalls a ragged group of mute seagulls flapped and dipped hungrily and the distant pier unused and silent stretched out like an atrophied arm into the sea.
