Where I Live

One of the difficult things about writing a web page is saying where you come from.

You see I normally vary it according to who I'm talking to. But on the WWW you can be talking to anybody from anywhere in the world. Normally, if it's someone from my own county, I say I'm from "Benfleet". From elsewhere in the south-east, it's "south-east Essex", "between Basildon and Southend" or "the mainland adjacent to Canvey Island" (by the way, why is Canvey Island better known than Benfleet?) Further afield in the UK, it's "the Essex coast". To someone abroad, I come from "near London". I rarely tell people it's in the Borough of Castle Point, becuase there really is no place called "Castle Point". It comprises the towns of Hadleigh, Benfleet (Post town), Thundersley and Canvey Island. It gets its name from the ancient castle at Hadleigh and the "Point", which is an area of Canvey Island.

And for the guy I met who works in a San Francisco gift shop and had never heard of London: Tough! I'm not going to give you a geography lesson!