That's what we heard on the radio on our way back from Great Yarmouth.
It was a comment on Radio Norfolk from someone involved in the holiday trade. I didn't catch his name or whether he was referring to any particular place.
Overall we've had a bad summer and it seems difficult to realise it's pretty much over when the temperature today was up around 27 degrees.
But the fact is this week is the dribblings of the summer school holidays. The last couple of days.
Resorts like Great Yarmouth, Cromer, Sheringham and Hunstanton in Norfolk sink or swim according to how much money they can take in the main holiday period which in effect runs from the end of July to the end of August. There are a few other key weeks but by and large it's the five or six weeks of the summer holidays that count.
And you could see the direness by the number of people at Great Yarmouth yesterday. It was pretty quiet. Certainly much quieter than we had anticipated.
We parked by the side of the road much closer than we had expected and had a coffee at one of the beach side cafes which only had about four other people. The grandkiddles had smashed advacado on toast - something that seems to have gained in popularity over the past couple of years. I like advacado but I can't tell you why. It's a pretty tasteless commodity. Maybe it's the texture. As long as it's not served with smashed eggs because that can get a tad messy.
Next up was pirate golf. Now something tells me that Poppy has been secretly practising. She tied for second place with grandma. Elliot came in the rear but modesty precludes me from saying who won, although that person was accused by his other threequarters of "just being too steady."
Now on the way between the smashed doo dah and Pirate golf we had a revelation and this revelation was the main conversation of the day. Elliot (11 years of age on Friday) is now taller than grandma.
I'm actually glad because once he becomes comfortably taller he will stop telling us that he's taller. But then I forgot that in about a year he will probably be taller than me as well. He wanted to know how tall he's likely to end up (I told you it was an important topic for him). He seemed pleased when I said I reckon he will end up 6ft 2in or 6 ft 3in. I have no idea where this tall gene comes from.
We had lunch in the closest thing to a greasy spoon there is on the golden mile or whatever it's called in Yarmouth. The food was good though.
I've said it many times before but when the sun shines Great Yarmouth looks resplendent. I can't help comparing it with Southend which we visited a few weeks ago. Sorry Southend but there's absolutely no comparison.
Next on our day out was the Hippodrome Circus. I could write reams about the history of the building, the history of the circus and the history of the Jay family and perhaps one day I will, but not today.
The show was as cheesy as ever, but also fun. Scotsman Johnny Mac is back after COVID prevented him from appearing for a few years. He reprised the stormtrooper sketch which we saw a few years ago. It involves a strange contraption with Johnny M in the middle of two dummy stormtroopers. When he moves they move as well. So I'm sure you can imagine the lunacy of it all.
When Johnny Mac was prevented from appearing by semi lockdown his place was taken by local comedian Ben Langley whose main bits of entertainment seemed to involve disappearing into a balloon ( yes really) and misheard or misunderstood song lyrics.
This year's circus is the usual mix of strongmen, jugglers, acrobats but no clowns. Poppy was glad that there are no clowns. She doesn't like clowns. I do remember when there were clowns. When I was a governor at one of our local schools I always volunteered to help with a school party to the circus. Being near the front we were often picked on. One year our caretaker got wrapped in toilet paper as part of a boxing ring for the clowns. I had popcorn hurled at me but lived to tell the tale.
I can't remember if they ever had live animals at the Yarmouth circus but I think they probably did. I do remember that one year there was a tragedy at the circus when one of the artists plunged to her death. Eva Garcia dropped 30 foot to her death in August 2003. That must have been incredibly stressful for the audience but highlighted the dangers facing circus performers.
Today the trapeze artists have a safety net but again this hasn't always been the case There weren't any trapeze artists this year but there was an aerial artist who had a safety harness on.
Can you imagine the days when high wire acts had no safety net. One slip and splat. No dramas this year although a number of acts made things more dramatic by failing certain tricks/moves and then completing them successfully on the second try when you know they could have done it on the first.
And that was our day in Yarmouth - one of my favourite places in the world (yes you did read that correctly).
Elliot was intrigued by the skill of the bowlers in a competition on the greens and Poppy was interested in where bombs fell on the town during the war. They also seemed vaguely interested in the fact that many of their ancestors come from the town.
Spending a day in Yarmouth as described above is certainly not cheap. It's not something you can afford to do too many times in a year.
But back to that opening statement. The season has been disappointing and now it's almost over. In another month's time Great Yarmouth and many of our country's great seaside resorts will become ghost towns with amusement arcades, rides and restaurants shut down for the winter.
The weather will change and cold winds from the North Sea will hammer across the sand. Then all those involved in the tourist industry will look towards summer 2024 and pray for good weather.
I will develop the theme of seaside resorts out of season in a coming blog. There are a few pictures with today. I got in a tangle with the camera. I even tried to take a video of the nutters at the circus and forgot to hit the record button. The nutters are the motorcycle team with four of them hammering around the smallest of globes in an exercise of machismo nerve and skill.
I have a feeling these nutters come from Australia. All the acts by the way seem to come from exotic places like Mexico, Ecuador and Hungary. I suspected most of them come from Ipswich but Elliot did point out that they looked South American or Mexican and he probably had a point.
PS - have just looked at the photos I took and notice they were on some strange setting that puts X all over them. No idea what the point of this is but here they are in all their glory. I'm always happy to feature the bad and the ugly alongside the good.