Southend Seafront
A seaside resort town in Essex, England. Manifested as a surreal, melting improbability hallucination—complete with washing buildings, a five-headed maniac with kippers, and a million-gallon vat of custard—when Ford and Arthur were rescued by the Heart of Gold.
Point of Interest Dossier: Southend Seafront
"Arthur and Ford opened their eyes and looked about in considerable surprise.
'Good God,' said Arthur, 'it looks just like the sea front at Southend.'
'Hell, I'm relieved to hear you say that,' said Ford.
'Why?'
'Because I thought I must be going mad.'
'Perhaps you are. Perhaps you only thought I said it.'"— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 9
Southend (Southend-on-Sea) was a coastal resort town in Essex, England, on planet Earth. Moments after Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent were plucked from the vacuum of space by the Heart of Gold at an improbability factor of $2^{276,709}$ to 1 against, the seafront at Southend manifested around them as a wild, unstable hallucination in probability space.
Anomalies of Improbability Southend
Lying on a pavement spewed up by five wild Event Maelstroms in the Third Reach of the Unknown, Arthur and Ford opened their eyes to find themselves on what looked just like the seafront at Southend—leading them to conclude that, all things considered, they must both be mad:
- The Five-Headed Maniac: When they remarked that they must be mad, a passing maniac—a man with five heads and an elderberry bush full of kippers—agreed that it was a nice day for it.
- Bouncing Children & Sky Horses: Sitting uneasily on the pavement, they watched huge children bounce heavily along the sand while wild horses thundered through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the Uncertain Areas.
- Washing Buildings & The Six Dancing Segments: As Arthur coughed slightly and noted there was something very odd about Southend, Ford pointed out the way the sea stayed steady as a rock while the buildings kept washing up and down. With a huge bang, Southend split itself into six equal segments which danced and spun giddily round each other in lewd and licentious formations.
- Ten-Pence Road Doughnuts & Storming Sky Fish: As wild yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind, hot doughnuts popped out of the road for ten pence each and horrid fish stormed out of the sky, prompting Arthur and Ford to make a run for it through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions, and footling bats.
- Custard & Melting into the Sunset: At an improbability level of $2^{100,000}$ to 1 against and falling, a million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over them without warning, great ugly bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time, and Southend melted away into swirling stars and a dust bowl as Arthur's legs and left arm drifted off into the sunset and Ford turned into a furious penguin.
The River Moth
A wide, slow, and extraordinarily dense river famed across the Galaxy as the premier waterway for sailing a mini-raft rigged with a hitchhiker's towel.
The Whale Impact Crater
A circular crater roughly 150 yards wide, splattered with fresh whalemeat, whose central kinetic breach cracked open the long-sealed subterranean galleries of ancient Magrathea.