by Jon Bounds
There's no glamour to Yarmouth Pier. It's the longest wooden pier in England, but even to people who have a vested interest in piers that's quite a dull fact.
To me Yarmouth Pier is notable because it's the first pier that Midge chooses not to go on to.
'Why would he not come onto the pier?' I ask Jon, nudging him.
'Why would he?'
'Well, he's going to every pier anyway. He might as well be able to tell people that he's been on every pier in England and Wales.'
'Not everyone is… like us,' says Jon with a strange mix of shame and pride.
With the sun low in the sky and a view that is truly strange to an Englishman – one where land can be sighted over a huge stretch of water – Yarmouth Pier lends itself to quiet reflection. But we have other piers to visit.
* * *
I think perhaps that the Isle of Wight's tourist season lasts a little longer than that of the mainland. It's getting on in the day but still warm; we lean over the railings and look out over the water past the now-loading ferry. Dan tries to explain how to tell how long it is until sunset. He stretches out a thumb to the horizon.
'So the sun sets in the… er…' I'm guessing, as this is one thing that never sticks in my head. There's no way I can naturally remember left and right or east and west, so every time my hands have to do a little weighing-scales dance before I work it out. '… west.'
'Right.'
Dan explains something learnt at a far-off scout camp, involving the distance of the sun above the horizon. I understand it for just as long as he's saying the words. My eyes are drawn downwards to the boards. Each is punched with a dedication. Letters painted white and gouged out with a stencil font we're sure is a standard. It's not the first time we've seen this. Piers are trying many ways to pay for their upkeep and this one is trying them all. There's a 'Lottery Funded' sign, the toll and these names: they're part memorial, part about belonging to a community. Some are obviously commemorating lives lived, but there's a sense of people wanting to belong to the area and perhaps to the pier – including a 'Pier Preservation Group', which makes me think of Ray Davies and whether we're getting sucked into that 'strawberry jam, vaudeville and variety' world. A false nostalgia.
This is a most genteel form of graffiti, a sanctioned and celebrated act of tagging. A kind of territorial pissing for the philanthropic classes. I've only ever written my name with a marker pen on public property once, and the fear of being caught (by the driver of the number 11 bus) meant I never became a graffiti artist. We are, by making this trip, making a sort of mark around the country, at each place an invisible blue plaque erected upon history.
* * *
We have to trust the satnav as we drive to Totland Bay, because it seems that on the Isle of Wight they removed all the road signs to confuse the Germans, but never got round to putting them back. We pull in. There's a small beach with public toilets, a parking bay with three spaces and a ruined pier. A couple sit in their car staring out to sea while a dog climbs over them looking for the thing that restless dogs look for but never find.
TOTLAND BAY, Isle of Wight
Opened: 1880 (Architects: S. H. and S. W. Yockney)
Length at start: 450 ft (137 m)
Length now: 450 ft (137 m)
Burn baby burn? There was a fire in the amusement arcade in 1978, and weather damage finished it off.
It was bought and used by artist Derek Barran as a studio from 1999 until 2008. Derek says 'I'm told that a lot of local people were created on this pier, so it's clearly had its moments. We've had some pretty good parties here ourselves.' It's now closed after failing to meet the guide price in an auction.
From over here the view of England – the whole country which we are attempting to drive around, along with Wales – lends humility to the decision we've made. The decision I have made to get away. While you can quite clearly see the coastline and some of the activity on it, you have no real idea where it begins or ends on the left or on the right. The sun sets slowly and, in the browning light, the rust stalactites tearing themselves from the structure look ancient and organic. Totland Bay Pier is boarded, scorched and crumbling, but a beautiful site and sight. The sky only flecked with cloud, I can feel the outdoors press hot against my cheeks.
We slip down to the pebble beach, where Danny sits on a wooden strut and I search for flat stones. I've never been particularly good at skimming stones, but I play ducks and drakes all the same.
We linger much more than perhaps the structure itself deserves, long enough for people to park up, walk away and then return, having walked a series of nice-looking dogs along the seafront. We're quiet and happy as we leave in the last of the light and drive across the island to Ryde.
* * *
It occurs to me that the term 'dogging' may have come from the cover that its participants use. Remote public spots where you can wank someone off through the window of a Ford Mondeo are also essentially where people go and walk their dog (or conduct drug deals). There is something very British about dogging; with its arcane system of rules and signals, the sheer organisation coupled with crippling furtive exhibitionism is something only us repressed Brits could do, polite even in our perversion.
The couple we see are not dogging, as far as I'm aware, but I do consider telling Midge to flash the lights three times just to see if the old woman might present her naked arse to the passenger-side window. They're simply enjoying the view, though, which is stunning. The sun setting over the sea in a clear sky gives everything a weird overexposed photograph quality. Jon, lost in his own thoughts, is clearly stunned and even Midge ceases his endless mooching to watch the sun set. I try and climb the pier but only succeed in hanging off one of the struts shouting at Jon to take a photograph. Before the sun sets completely I look up to see the ramshackle pier completely silhouetted against a red sky and then even I stop. The image burned into my memory. Looking down I see someone has set aside a near-perfect, heart-shaped pebble on a low post. I know a talisman when I see it, and it stays in my pocket for the rest of the journey.
* * *
The phone signal is patchy and I've had a missed call from Dean – in whose house we're being put up tonight. He lives close to Ryde and its pier, so we're adjusting plans to see the last pier on the island (at Sandown) in the morning. All in all, they're better in the light.
Everything about the island is obviously quaint; the place is in some ways a preserved microcosm of the larger island over the sea. We pass warning signs about red squirrels, and joke about them attacking us. We also pass a sign for Animal Farm. I look from Danny to Midge and can easily tell one from the other.
We park on a surprisingly industrial road alongside the seafront. It's now dark and in the gloaming what lights there are are not welcoming. The front is not busy, the pubs are empty and the pier stretches out over the black reflective water into the dark. Ryde Pier is a long one, so long that it has a real – ex-London – tube train that runs up it. We head into the station, which seems to have managed to take on the utilitarian appearance of travel links everywhere. Posters behind scuffed plastic, yellow tubed light, it feels like we're heading back home on the last train from some outer suburb.
There's a train on the platform as we arrive, and I finally pick up a call from Dean. He's in a pub just over the road. While I'm saying hello and that we'll join him in a short while, Midge and Dan leap onto the train. I'm a little confused as to where we buy tickets, looking around and talking to Dean. The doors close with me still on the wrong side of them, and I feel that hairy, sinking feeling in my gut. I've missed the train. I'm alone. They look at me through the window with a mixture of pity and banterish glee.
And then the train pulls off away from the pier.
In the wrong direction.
I wave cheerily.
But I'm alone.
* * *
The train carriage is decorated like a thirties tube and is populated by people who seem bemused by our predicament
. The ticket collector turns out to be completely sympathetic and doesn't ask us for a fare.
RYDE, Isle of Wight
Opened: 1814 (Architect: John Kent)
Length at start: 1,740 ft (530 m)
Length now: 2,305 ft (703 m)
Burn baby burn? No fires, but in 2012 a car collided with the railings of the pier causing £10,000 worth of damage.
The oldest seaside pier in England: April 2013 was the 200th anniversary of the laying of the pier's foundation stone. The following month, a small section of the three-metre-long gangway at the pier's main berth collapsed into the sea.
The now-demolished Concert Pavilion features in Philip Norman's book, Babycham Night: A Boyhood At The End Of The Pier. His family ran the venue in the fifties, when it was known as the Seagull Ballroom.
Looking around the platform I see that there isn't another train up to the end of the pier for about 20 minutes and I don't fancy the wait, so I start to walk. Once around the front of the pier you can walk up alongside the train track, safe from electrocution only by your good sense and a crossed-wire mesh. The pier isn't only dark; it's damp and industrial. There's nothing to see and not just because of the gathering gloom. The pier is almost entirely featureless, forcing itself out into the channel to a dock of some kind. There's no one else here, nothing to see, nothing to think about. I abandon the pier and head to the pub, nearly taking a side-swipe from an incoming bus.
This pier is work, not play. The road is work too, a surprisingly complex dual carriageway, not the quaint beauty of the other towns we've seen on the island. I text to say where I am going:
'Hola trainspotters, am in pub on front: The Marine Bar. See you soon xx'
I do feel a little bad for not spending more time on the pier, but a half-hour walk in thin drizzle to, well, nothing isn't what this trip is about. We've already not made it on to, or to the end of, some of the piers as a result of fire, dismantlement or our own tardiness – so being in the pub next door isn't a problem. In fact, in my more self-aware moments, I think that 'in the pub next door' is somewhat my station in life. I'm often the first to want to leave any gathering, feeling that I've seen enough, that I'd rather escape the pressure of the herd. I've lost count of the number of support bands I've missed at gigs because of being in the pub next door. I've arrived late, left early, and nipped out. All to be where I'm comfortable instead of where there are too many people and too many decisions. I've often thought that if I was at the Last Supper I'd have missed the bread and wine bit, because I'd have said 'fancy a pint?' to Matthew or Judas and been downstairs in the public bar.
Dean is in the public bar of the Marine Bar and Diner, a glossily painted and cream-wall-and-brown sofa type of a place. Only the photos of scooter boys and mods tastefully framed on the wall give it any personality at all.
Dean is easy to spot. He's the only one in there. Ryde is off-season.
* * *
I've travelled quite a bit, and while travelling there is a certain feeling you can grow about the inevitable fuck-ups you make, a special sanguine attitude that you develop. I see this immediately form on Midge's face. To his credit the shrug is almost audible as we both start laughing at the situation.
We exit the train at the next station and a quick look at the timetable tells us that the next one back is in half an hour. We caught the right train at the right platform, just going in the wrong direction. The station is a smaller version of most of the train stations found inside or just outside cities all over Britain; pretty much unchanged from Victorian times, with filigree ironwork painted a bright racing green. On the opposite platform a couple take a break from their bickering to eye us suspiciously. I spend my time with my eyes closed listening to the satisfying 'chink chink' of Midge pacing around, enjoying the only chance to stop and wait I've had in three days.
'Jon's at the pub with Dean. If you get off at the stop where we got on you can go meet them,' I tell Midge as we get on the train.
'Where are you going?'
'I'm staying on and going to the end of the pier like we intended.'
'Then so am I.'
Ryde Pier has nothing at the end of it but a bland and dirty docking station for the Wightlink catamaran and is as grubby and utilitarian as a suburban bus stop, without even a fruit machine for entertainment. There is little to look at and with another halfhour to wait for the return train we elect to walk the 2,305 ft (I checked) back down the adjacent walkway. The way is plain, apart from a streetlight every 50 yards or so and even they do little to mitigate the crushing black you get out at sea at night.
Halfway down we look at a perfectly round moon doubled on a flat sea. As above, so below. Magick mostly works on the principle that smaller, simpler versions of things can stand for the things themselves. So by being in a certain frame of mind and by manipulating these symbols you can affect the larger world.
I've never been one to take a lot of photographs, but when I point out the reflected moon to Midge I understand his want to get his camera out.
'It's amazing,' Midge says, bending down to his viewfinder.
'It's magick,' I whisper to no one.
* * *
It's good to see Dean again, and to have some time alone with him before the others catch up. He's a very old friend who moved over here a few years ago, extending an open invitation to come to stay whenever – and now I'm taking full advantage by dragging two unwashed strangers with me. We chat about family and mutual friends, and I try to explain what I'm doing. Dean is keen to reminisce and tell me about some of the things he's been doing and about the island. Seeing Melvyn Hayes walking past the shop where he works is the highlight.
My madness and my friends – who turn up after we've had about two pints – are easily accepted. A real friend does that. You have shared histories: in this case Dean's been my football manager, employer, business partner and drummer. That's enough to be getting along with. He's been a formative influence on me – helping to plant the idea that you can do odd things and still live in the real world.
* * *
Dean turns out to be a friendly, ruddy-faced man who has the considered opinion of a guy who has been around. I instantly like him. I get the impression that Dean has not only been around the block a few times but has been around some other blocks and a motorway or two as well. He's not really clear about why he moved to the Isle of Wight in the first place, but I imagine the story would be an entire book of its own. Because of the family I have, and the jobs that I've done, I have been around most types of scurrilous, dangerous and corrupt people that a workingclass background can produce. I find that the people who have seen, done and lived the most have a certain silence, a way of talking without saying anything, a confidence that comes from the lack of bragging that belies a man who would rather demur and watch than crow and boast. As genial as these people are, make no mistake, they are the scary ones.
There is an amount of this vibe I get from Dean, a no doubt nice guy, evidenced by not only the fact he was willing to support our venture and put up a mate with two strangers, but also by the way he was so happy to do so. We stayed up late into the night at his place, drinking cider from cans, discussing our leftist leanings, and shouting at Newsnight. Pausing only briefly to appreciate being indoors.
* * *
On BBC Four is a programme showing swathes of a blackand-white British Pathé film about a young woman in Italy and her holiday romance. She swooshes through the piazzas of Rome, enchanted by the air, the sun and the freshness of discovery. She smiles and I have an almost uncontrollable desire to talk about how I've decided my smile has changed. I've appropriated the smile of a friend of mine, I think. I shape my lips before I let my bottom one drop to reveal my teeth. Danny recognises the signs and changes subject midstream.
Dean talks some more about life on the Isle of Wight. It's very insular apparently – very hard for outsiders to get work. He was lucky enough to be helped by an old mate who he works for selling and instal
ling window blinds. He also tells me about the trouble he's had managing a football team – young lads of 16 and 17 – every game is against a team from or on the mainland and there are continual fights. He's giving it up.
* * *
Dean had to be up before us so he retired first, leaving us to find the spare room with one bed and two airbeds. Jon, of course, bagsied the bed.
* * *
I'm roused from sleep by a shout. It's about 4 a.m.
'Help!'
I stumble over Danny and Midge, who are sleeping on the floor, and hurry towards the cry. We're in a secluded part of a quiet island. This isn't the childish scream of a teenage drunk.
