Pier Review
Page 3
The water at Clevedon is coffee-brown with weak, white foam, and the Bristol Channel is at its roughest as the tide comes in. I leave Jon in a reverie and Midge to mooch as I walk out onto one of the concrete jetties. If you walk out far enough it feels like being completely surrounded by the sea. The sea is so big it doesn't fit into a human brain. When faced with it, I find it's hard not to believe in the existence of a higher power, because I'm in the presence of one. A big expanse so complicated, nuanced and ancient that not only do you not matter, it's unlikely that your existence is even registered. I love it.
CLEVEDON
Opened: 1869 (Architect: Hans Price)
Length at start: 1,024 ft (312 m)
Length now: 1,024 ft (312 m)
Burn baby burn? No, but it did collapse during stress testing in 1970
The only surviving Grade I listed pier. Described by Sir John Betjeman as 'the most beautiful pier in England', and constructed with rails from one of Brunel's railways. Also the setting for the video of One Direction's 'You & I' single.
Getting down onto the beach, I'm feeling a desire to feel some sort of loss. I swing my legs off the side of a concrete jetty and stare out into the water. This is the first time I've looked out properly as all focus at Weston was on the town and finding our way. Here the channel is where the action is; the tide is encroaching and breaking gently onto the slope. Others such as us are taking the wind, including an international array of flags across the beach road. I watch a cute couple enjoy the emptiness: she's taken her shoes off to slip into the surf and he's dotingly taking her photograph.
Clevedon has little else to offer. I have at least heard of Burnham-on-Sea and Midge is keen to get there. He's not going to push, but I can sense the desire to make it to wherever we're going as soon as we can.
* * *
Midge negotiates the coastal road while me and Jon pretend he doesn't smell of stale, vaporised lager.
* * *
If you're a back-seat non-driver like the supine Mr Smith, reclining in a nest of bags, supplies and cardboard, then the tension of travelling as a passenger is relieved. For me every crunch of gear, every slip of hand on steering wheel, every audible 'what?' at the satnav is a tiny shard of wince. Midge is still getting used to the car and on unfamiliar roads, but I can hear the engine and it's not revving how I would assume it should for the speeds we're doing. Worse is that the indicators don't click off sharply once you're round a corner. It's worth controlling it manually or else you look like you're swapping two lanes, or parking, or are a fool. I try to mention it casually, but to no obvious effect. The tick-tick breeds frustration. I distract myself, and the car, with music: in this case, Fleetwood Mac.
It works until we have a little scrape as we park in the dusky back streets of Burnham-on-Sea, but the worry about the surroundings and leaving all our kit in the car is more pressing. Eventually I make a resigned pact with myself – I'm going to have to leave stuff in worse places, for longer, so I need to trust my luck. If anything can go wrong, it will. Trust fate to shit on you and you'll never be disappointed.
We're going to learn all sorts of facts about piers and Burnhamon-Sea is, I'm told by Danny, 'the shortest'; in essence, it's nothing but an amusement arcade on stilts. We're in need of amusement, so that's okay.
* * *
Burnham-on-Sea is very proud of its status as the shortest pier in Britain and is indeed laughably small. With an Edwardian pavilion roof, it sits defiantly on the empty seafront. It's basically an elaborate hut on stout concrete stilts. We venture inside to drift amongst the arcade, which appears not to have been updated since the seventies; browns and creams swirl into the carpet. 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (the theme from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) plays wryly and grandiosely from one of the ticket machines at the back as we walk in. I beat Jon at a rifle game but there's nothing worth swapping the tickets for. The prizes veer from novelty tat and bouncing fun balls to strange, grocery items like catering packs of gravy or jam.
BURNHAM-ON-SEA
Opened: 1914 (Architect: unknown, but possibly inspired by Isambard Kingdom Brunel – or so some claim)
Length at start: 117 ft (36 m)
Length now: 117 ft (36 m)
Burn baby burn? Concrete doesn't burn.
Shortest pier in England according to the people of Burnham. The Burnham-On-Sea.com website says 'Weymouth's Bandstand Pier is shorter… but only because most of it was deliberately blown up by the council in 1986, and that's clearly cheating!' It was the first concrete structure of its kind in Europe.
Most games in an arcade aren't really much fun, either being simple games of chance or ones where the time needed to gain the knowledge and skill is never rewarded. As long as you know what you're getting into, it's fine, but not everyone does. The worst kind for me is the 'skill with prizes' scam – you win tickets which can be redeemed later for prizes. If one is of an iconic bent, the neon-lit 'Redemption Areas' provide great metaphor about a higher power. I'm not thinking this right now, but there's something in the hundreds of tiny steps needed to gain a muchpostponed reward. What I do think right now is that it would take something like ten years of constant prize bingo to get near the 1,450 tickets required to win a box of PG Tips. I'm also trying to take a furtive photograph of the box and, after doing so, slink embarrassed to the exit.
It's about 7 p.m. now, and I manage to manoeuvre our party into a small hotel bar which advertises Banks's ales outside. Banks's is a brewery local to us, so I comment on how unusual it is to find here. I'm not too sure it is, but it's enough to sell it to Dan.
* * *
It's pleasant enough in a mock-Tudor way. The kind of place that uses a Windows Publisher template for its menus, and you can play pool as long as you don't mind stepping over the dog. And it's nice to be at the seaside, even if the seaside is a couple of streets away. Going to the toilet, as I walk past the hotel reception, the staff look up with puppy-dog hope and I almost check in out of pity.
* * *
Midge is still keen to press on. He wants to get to his mate's place, where we've been invited to pitch camp halfway to the next pier, as soon as possible. He has reasons: driving in the dark across the top of Exmoor won't be pleasant and it won't be polite to arrive too late at a working man's house. But I'm already deeply uncomfortable about stopping at the house (or indeed in the garden) of someone I don't know, so want to spend as little time as possible there.
The bar itself is functional, worn monogrammed carpet betraying past pretension and regulars crowding the serving area, but the staff are friendly enough and we settle down, overlooked by current TV favourite Come Dine with Me. I drink quickly and order another while Danny quizzes Midge about just where we're stopping.
'So, where do you know this guy from?'
'He used to let us sleep on the floor of his pub.'
'…'
'I used to follow this band – Strap-on Jack – and they played at the pub in this village we're going to. The landlord was great.'
'And it's him we're stopping with?'
'I got in contact again with him on Facebook not long ago; I don't know him that well really.'
I'm now even more nervous. Not genuinely scared – in truth, I'm just imagining being terribly uncomfortable, a weak tie to a weak tie. No bond at all.
'He says it's going to be windy, so we can stop on his bus.'
* * *
When someone abandons the satnav you expect to be on the home stretch, but it's night, miles from anywhere, and Midge seems to be navigating by The Force alone. I find the best thing you can do in the back seat is shut up and let the adults worry about things, but Midge is swearing softly under his breath and I can't help but offer my opinion occasionally.
* * *
Heading to the village we listen to more of Rumours, perhaps a peculiar choice given Midge's punk credentials, Danny's rock stylings and my studied mod-ness. We'd discussed the idea that music might be a problem, but the Mac's masterp
iece finds agreement. I'm fascinated by the group dynamic of Fleetwood Mac; Lyndsey Buckingham wrote songs about how he didn't love a woman and then that same woman (Stevie Nicks) sang them.
I'm also interested in how time changes people, and use myself as the closest example. My 18- or 20-year-old self – lost in the throws of a mod revival, and still worshipping The Smiths – would have despised anyone who expressed a preference for such soft, countrified, rock; but in my late thirties I hear it differently. Has the world changed or have I changed?
It's now dark, headlights have to be flicked regularly from full-beam to dipped and back again, Midge mutters about a hill and a pub and a left turn. Despite not driving quickly, he's taking turns very late. Eventually he makes a decision and turns up a gravel path, which soon becomes a grass one.
We come to a halt, hemmed in by a wire fence and brambles. Midge gets out to check we're in the right place. A glance at Danny suggests he doesn't think we are. Neither do I.
A figure is silhouetted in the doorway, but it's no one with whom Midge has even a passing acquaintance. A torch flashes. We hear the answer to an unheard question:
'See, what you want to do is… get the fuck off my garden.'
CHAPTER TWO
THE MAGNIFICENT DEVON
We later find out that Midge's directions were taken from his memory of the route based on Google Street View. Eventually we are met at a different driveway by a bald and sternly amicable man named John, who welcomes us into his house. Like all houses built before a certain time it is a charming haphazard affair, with rooms that have grown out of others organically as and when they were needed, as opposed to modern two-up two-down affairs built with set squares and formulae. The kitchen smells strongly of weed. Nick is an ex-landlord and somewhat of a local legend for health-and-safety-nightmare gigs in the pub he still lives near, the White Horse Inn.
As he ushers us into the living room he offers us beer and sits in a chair that seems to make his boots look like the three-inchheeled bastard stompers they once were. After some chit-chat with Midge, with whom he shares that same impossible-to-age punk quality, he stays quiet and lets his brother do the talking.
His brother, John, is a pleasant middle-aged gentleman who remains quite perplexed at the purpose of our quest. 'Why?' is the first reaction of everyone save a special few. It seems that some people are naturally suspicious of anyone doing anything out of the ordinary but as soon as it has a context they understand; their minds are put to rest.
Telling people about the trip always causes one or more of four reactions:
1. Complete and utter indifference, as if you couldn't have told them anything more mundane.
2. Confusion followed by a series of questions and then normally reaction 1 or 3.
3. Completely getting it and being on board.
4. Reciting as many piers from memory to check we're actually going to them and then eventually making some up for no other reason than to fuck with us.
John is a two, then a four.
We spend the next half hour playing pier bingo and keeping an eye on a football match I mentally refuse to make a note of because all football is rubbish.
Now this could be seen as quite remiss of me, but I'm willing to bet that Jon has noted which football match it is and is able to deduce something clever about John by which team he is supporting. This is one of the ways that, as alike as we are, me and Jon differ.
I have always been disinterested in football and over the years have even come to resent it. Not being a football fan has made me somewhat of a pariah in male circles – most men use football as the balm to ease the stress of speaking to new men. As an observer of this phenomenon I have a theory that this is something to do with having a shared experience, language and culture, and instantly being able to work out your place within a hierarchy by exposing which team you support and always having something to talk about. If you're not a fan, men really don't know what to do with you.
Most of my early teenage years were awkward. The eldest in a new generation, I was too old to play with the kids on the swings of the numerous pub playgrounds where our family convened, and the men of the family didn't really know what to say to a long-haired proto-goth who spent his time reading and drawing. So I ended up sitting with the women. This explains why during my late teens and most of my twenties I always felt more comfortable talking to women: men are generally dull and frankly most of them smell bad.
But ten or so years of bar work has given me a fair bluffing game when it comes to football, so after some polite chat and much-needed bottles of beer we retire to the bus to spend the night. The bus itself sleeps a comfy five and has its own kitchenette, plus lovely electricity for us to juice up our various electronic devices.
We drink beer and listen to Jon play us the best of the singing bloody milkman or some shit, then go to bed.
* * *
I can't sleep. I'm on a bunk in a converted coach and, directly above me, the skylight is mottled with black. In it I see a picture of a bull terrier. The dog isn't breathing heavily, but one of my companions is. Not snoring exactly, but a rhythmic exhale, enough to break any cocoon of wakelessness I can conjure. I get up and sit in the diner area, and read the book I've brought with me: English Journey, a travelogue by J. B. Priestley from the thirties where he traces a fairly random route around the country and simply records what he sees.
What he sees is a country in a state of social flux. The upheaval of the Great War had left many in desperate need of support. The book is supposed to have inspired Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, and even to have helped to win Labour the 1945 General Election, but reading it today you're left with a feeling that not much has improved. Jobs have changed from the traditional to the transitional, and from the make to the make-do, but there's still the same powerlessness of anyone but the rich. Priestley spends a lot of time meeting not the manual worker, but the commercial traveller: the supposedly white-collar worker who is no better off or any more free than the most put-upon factory fodder. So who is free?
We are, at least temporarily.
From the garden dead end I had to direct Midge's reversing with a torch, although that didn't stop him veering dangerously towards the undergrowth. We eventually got back to the main road where he pulled up and called his mate.
'I'm by a red phone box…'
I sleep fitfully unless in perfect darkness and quiet. I'm also starting to feel my age and make at least three trips to the toilet overnight. The toilet in this case is England's green and pleasant land, behind the bus.
'The bus is wired up so you've got power,' John has told us, 'but the toilet isn't plumbed in, so if you need to piss just use the bushes.'
If you've spent much time on coaches over the years, then the mechanisms that you're not allowed to touch become fascinating. The trepidation of a blackout wee in the country, in the cold and the damp, every step a potential slip on wet grass, is tempered by the joy of being able to open the door with the driver's lever. It swings with a satisfying smoothness. Now I'm back in my bunk, and Priestley is visiting the Daimler factory in Coventry. He postulates the conversion of one of the new breed of motorised coaches to a touring motorhome. It seems a good idea, big enough to live in. In a caravan everything is something else; the sofa is a bed is a cupboard, things fold down and out, you pull open the microwave and are surprised it's not also a wet room.
* * *
We have a generous light breakfast with John, who manages to be just as chirpy and friendly in the morning as he'd been the night before, which is more than we can manage, so we set off.
From anywhere Falmouth is out of the way, but on a trip where you're following the coastline it's really bloody out of the way. It's fair to say that Midge has been publicly decrying this to anyone who would listen. Ever since we saw the route, his hope has been that Falmouth Pier would blow into the sea. Me and Jon have explained that even if Falmouth Pier had been blown up by weirdly pier-specific terrorists, we
would still have to visit it because it's on the list. But I think towards the end his animosity towards it is fuelled by his generally grumpy nature rather than a desire to dodge the task.
While we are on the motorway it begins to rain. Big fat fists of rain slam against the car, reducing the windscreen to a kid's runny painting of the landscape, and the beating against the roof drowns out the stereo. I think it is quite pleasant, romantic even. It's only when I see Jon's white face and Midge's equally colourless knuckles on the steering wheel while they tell me how dangerous it is that I know anything of the sort. The gods are testing our resolve and we pass, like the Ghostbusters swallowed into the mini-earthquake before they go into Dana's apartment building. I decide to keep that to myself; neither Jon nor Midge seem in the mood for pop-culture references. So I sit back and watch the giant white windmills slowly turn.