Christmas is a funny old time. For a few short days each year, the country collectively eases its foot off the accelerator. Emails slow to a trickle. Phones ring less. Even the roads seem different. The constant background noise of urgency drops away, and when that happens, something else tends to surface. You notice things. Not in a dramatic, life-changing kind of way. But in a way that’s quieter. A touch more considered.

This year, that noticing happened for me on the south coast. We spent Christmas by the sea, staying in a house right on the beach. It was a luxury; I can’t pretend otherwise. You could step outside and walk straight onto the sand. Long winter walks, immediate family, plenty of food, warmth, and conversation. For a week, we were effectively living in a second home, and it was precisely that contrast that made everything else impossible to ignore.

During the week, we took a few short trips along the coast. Anyone who’s spent time in Britain’s seaside towns will recognise the pattern. Places that were once thriving holiday destinations. Grand seafronts and piers. Large commercial buildings that, in their day, would have been full of life. Hotels, cafés, arcades and shops. Now, many of them look tired and forlorn. Some feel totally forgotten. Shutters permanently down. Upper floors dark. Entire stretches of commercial property sitting empty, sometimes for years at a time. Not derelict enough to demolish. And not functional enough to use. Just, well... there.

What struck me wasn’t just the volume of empty buildings, but the waste embedded in them. These weren’t ruins. They were structures with inherent value. Walls, roofs, services, locations.

Buildings that could house activity, people, warmth and life. And yet they were doing nothing.

As you walked along those same streets, you’d also become aware of something else. People sitting in doorways or huddled under makeshift shelters, sleeping bags pulled tight. A piece of cardboard doing its best to defeat the wind. People asking for change. Looking for food. Looking for somewhere, anywhere, out of the cold. Empty buildings and homeless people co-existing side by side.

Warmth was locked behind brick walls, while cold was lived out on the pavement. Christmas, more than any other time of the year, makes that mental contrast harder to step around.