Now, dear reader, don't cover your eyes. It was all quite innocent. Yellow T-Shirt Man continued: "because it's a bit of a long walk, y'know? But never mind, you can get the train back - cost of the fare'll cover it for you. Because, like I say, it can be a bit of a trek"
I was standing at the ticket booth for Southend Pier, where I'd gone for one of my regular-ish walks, and it was all I could do not to tell this man that yes, I was aware of how long it took to walk the length of 'the longest pleasure pier in the world' because a) I live just around the corner, and b) it's something I do quite often. Also, isn't it sad that in this day and age, people feel the need to warn you about a walk that might take a bit longer than five seconds? (For the record, I've timed it - the walk is about twenty minutes there, and - obviously, some might say - about twenty minutes back. Hardly a heart-stopping distance, is it?).
But in fact I think he was just a bit embarrassed about the fare - £3.10 for taking the combined forty-minute walk, so he shoe-horned the possibility of the train into the conversation so I might think I'd got something for my money. Especially since there's nothing at the end of the pier any more; you'd be forgiven for wondering why anybody would bother to go up there at all, train or no train.
Except...except...I love that pier to bits. Put simply, it's been there throughout my entire life. I was born in Southend, and rather dully, I still live there. I've been up and down Southend Pier so many times and in so many moods, and for so many reasons that I feel like my entire life story could be set there (when I die, I want one of those fancy new benches put on the Pier walkway in my memory...even though it'll only get shat on by seagulls and abused by chavvy families on a daily basis. So pretty close to my life now then...boom boom!)
I paid my £3.10 and, full of benevolent grace that I am, I let the Yellow T-Shirted Wonder think the walk might just get the better of me. Then I headed on to the start of the walkway. The wind whipped up, as it always does, hitting me full in the face with a bracing gust that made me feel happy and alive as I started my walk - to me there is absolutely nothing better than a ramble along the Pier with the wind blowing into my face at full pelt. Many's the time I've done that walk in November on grey days (my favourite kind) with people staring at me from the train in disbelief.
Ah, the train. The quaint little red train that carries people from the pier entrance, all the way to the end (with no leaves-on-the-line delays and no buffet car) that now largely houses kids and pensioners and their associated carers. When I was a kid, a trip on that little train was the best treat in the world (even now, I will very often much prefer journeys to places than the actual places themselves), and as I make my way up the Pier it ambles leisurely past me. Some of the kids inside wave at me. I will always wave back.
I stroll along, manoeuvring past some large people in clingy T-shirts who are obviously doing a 'Charity Pier Walk' (one of the reasons the Pier should really be avoided during the summer months). I reach for my iPod to turn it off; as I do so the track changes to Martha Wainwright's 'Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu?' and I let that one play, even though I can hardly hear it through the wind rattling against my ears, because it makes me smile - its French lyrics remind me of the time I dragged a French Exchange student all the way up to the end of the Pier in the name of "a fun thing for us to do". We were thirteen years old, awkward, and had nothing to say to one another; not even, I suspect, had we actually shared the same language. When we got to the end she'd just stood there, blinking with angered disappointment that I'd dragged her all the way here in the wind and then there was nothing at the end of it! She didn't speak to me for the rest of the day after we'd walked all the way back again. To be honest, I wasn't all that bothered.
But there used to be things at the end of the Pier, of course. There used to be a bowling alley and a pub I'd go to with some college friends on the odd Friday night. Then it all burnt down. I'd been at college that day, and as I left the building to go home I was approached by a camera crew from the local news programme.
"You may have heard, the Pier is burning down" the reporter said to me, excitedly. "As a local resident can you tell us how that makes you feel?"
I rather suspect, in hindsight, that the news crew had targeted the college in the hope that A-Level educated students might prove a bit more articulate than people in, say, the local pubs or the High Street. But they were to be bitterly disappointed, as I stopped, looked nervously into the camera, and stammered a "Well, actually...I don't know. 'Bye" They didn't use it.
The second time the Pier burnt down I was on a river cruise that had started out in Southend and gone on up to London (it was a rather strange 'cruise'; booze-fuelled and seatless. At some point a man had come up to me, said "I love your rosy cheeks", then shrank back into the thrusting sea of gin-and-beer-soaked bodies, never to be seen again). As the boat sailed back to Southend someone made out a distant fire illuminating the night sky.
"Hey, the Pier's burning down!" he shouted, and we all clamoured excitedly out on deck to take a look. The boat turned round rather hurriedly and made its way to Tilbury instead, where an anchor thrown by one of the crew on arrival smashed through someone's car windscreen by accident. Like I said, it was a rather strange 'cruise'.
Nowadays all there is at the end of the Pier is a 'sun deck' nobody uses, some toilets, and a little cafe over-populated by white-haired people. But regardless of what's there or isn't, the Pier has always been the place I go to when I need cheering up, or to think, or just want a nice walk. It'll be where my ashes will end up scattered, I suppose; like my husband's Grandad's were, which were then followed by a bottle of whisky. Perhaps I'll instruct whoever's bothered about where my remains end up to follow mine with a glass of red wine...or I might just instruct them to drink it, then another, and another...and then make their way back home through that lovely bracing wind.
No comments:
Post a Comment