Pier Review

by Jon Bounds

  * * *

  I make an effort to say 'hi' to the lady looking after the stall as I enter. I'm fighting my natural urge not to talk to people in order to satisfy my desire to get more from the places we're visiting. To start with, at least, I look intently at the junk in order to deflect conversation. It's not cheaply priced. I pick up a couple of books relating to the area and had they been 10p I'd have bought them, but they're approaching two quid. I flick through them and smile – replacing them carefully. Danny is outside, taking snaps of the decay on his phone and fiddling with packets of salt. I pick up a hardcover Enid Blyton book and decide it would make a good present. I like giving books. It's a pound, which isn't too bad considering it looks good and old. It's The Island of Adventure, which is sort of what we're… it feels relevant.

  'Thank you,' says the stallholder. 'It's all for the upkeep of the pier. It needs repairing, as you can see.'

  'It is a little dishevelled.' And I tell her in the broadest terms of our quest.

  She's early fifties. Hennaed hair is showing growth at the roots. Her clothing speaks of a thrift that's studied – grey cardigan, blouse that doesn't quite go with the rest of the outfit.

  'Many come here looking for something. But it's not here. It was, but it is no longer.'

  'I'm not sure we are looking for a particular thing, for the past maybe.'

  'That you'll not find here either. The community isn't what it was. We're commutable from London, there are too many people who don't care for the place really, don't interact. There's a magic where the land meets the sea, not everyone attracted by it can harness it. I control the ships; I make images of them, crude images in watercolour and ink. And I can decide if they float or if they sink. I can control you, if you become part of my art.'

  'Then I can control you, because we're encircling the land. We have the power to rewrite real life in our image.'

  '…'

  Dan enters.

  'They don't like paintings so much round here.' Calmer now. 'When I lived in Wolverhampton people liked paintings of the landscape, of the factories. Here they like photographs. Too real, no interpretation.'

  * * *

  In 2003 a group of Southampton football fans narrowly escaped when a drunk dredger captain steered his craft through the pier, completely severing the pier head from land. The incident cost £308,000 and the captain eight months of his life in prison. The cost of repairs has yet to be recouped, which is one reason for the jumble sale. The possibility of being smashed into any minute by a hammered sea salt on a joyride explains also the nervous scanning of the horizon by the troll guarding it.

  Killing time until the train next leaves we mooch around. Occasionally she recommends some trinket and we politely refuse. Jon, made awkward by these interactions, engages her in conversation. It turns out she's both an artist and photographer lulled into a false sense of competency by boredom and the lack of any real competition from the Hythe craft community. Jon mentions our project and she seems engaged up to the point where he buys a set of postcards from her (in addition to an Enid Blyton book), pausing only to have a crack at Boscombe Pier. It seems they receive more funding than this one. The lull comes, the horrible gap where two people who have no intention of ever meeting again run out of polite things to say. Despite the bright sun and a reasonably upbeat mood up until then Jon senses my anstyness. I have a horrible habit of filling those particular lulls with the first thing that pops into my head. Jon knows this.

  'What the fuck is up with your hair?' I feel my mouth form the words but, luckily, before they are articulated Jon cuts in, 'We better get going, if we're going to make Southampton.' He flashes me the stretched mouth and raised eyebrow expression that denotes 'don't say it, let's go'.

  * * *

  She has postcards of her ink work for sale, and it seems remiss not to buy some. Take control of her art and incorporate it into our own. They are of the Titanic and other liners.

  * * *

  In Jon's eagerness to get away, partly because the pier troll is both awkward and boring, and partly so I don't say something terrible to her, we leave before the next train arrives. Having missed the train both ways, we leave Hythe looking out for pissed boat captains all the way to Southampton.

  * * *

  A final decision. We've completely given up on the satnav and I've pulled a large-format road atlas from under the passenger seat. 'Where the fuck did that come from?'

  'It's always been here, Midge. I just thought the satnav would be better.'

  'Bastard.'

  In fact we're not even using the map; we are following signs to Portsmouth and assuming we'll see Southampton on the way. The pier might be more tricky, as it no longer quite exists. The physical Southampton Pier has not been demolished as such – I don't think – but all that remains is a restaurant. Our notes say 'we must have a curry on the pier', but as we crawl through industrial estates and retail-park, landscaped roundabouts at around 11 a.m, Thai food is not on our minds. We've been following signs to the docks, but when we see the pier we also see that the sea itself is obscured by hoardings and that the pavements are guarded by yellow lines. We decide that there's not much here for us.

  * * *

  Following a complicated one-way system we pull up outside Kuti's Royal Thai Pier, the sun high and lonely in a cloudless sky. The building, a revamp of the old entrance pavilion painted startling white, is grand and seems at odds with the scaffolding, temporary fences and vinyl banners that spill over from the Southampton International Boat Show. The mood is sour.

  Angry and slightly drunk white guys in deck shoes are exchanging driving advice as they queue to pull their Land Rovers in through the gates. These are manned by security guards who are sober, but irritated by wearing the hot hi-vis jackets in the sun and being ordered about by middle-manager types who are as unaccustomed to being told 'no' as they are to the boats they pretend to sail.

  Southampton Royal Pier was opened in 1833 by Princess Victoria before she was crowned queen and it enjoyed rapid expansion. The pier was expanded several times to accommodate the railway station and it became a hub of transport as well as leisure. But eventually disrepair and neglect by a private company caused it to be declared no longer 'viably maintainable' by the British Transport Docks Board. This, along with a couple of fires ten years later, effectively put an end to the pier's history.

  Ideally we would have arrived late in the day and eaten, perhaps dropping our writers' credentials to score free food, but it is early in the day and we have no time to stop even if we did fancy curry for breakfast. The bad vibes from the ugly, rich white guys and the weight of hitting four more piers that day keep Midge and Jon in the car. I pull together my Hawaiian shirt, run my hand though wind-blown salty hair and walk in, my flip-flops flapping conspicuously on the polished floor.

  I grab a menu and walk out again.

  'Come on then, you old twat,' shouts one old white man to another equally old and privileged white man as we pull away.

  SOUTHAMPTON Royal

  Opened: 1833 by the then Princess Victoria (Architect: Edward L. Stephens)

  Length at start: 900 ft (274 m)

  Length now: Almost nothing.

  Burn baby burn? One in 1987 pretty much finished it off.

  Once docking up to ten steamers at a time and offering entertainment, food and even roller skating. There's now nothing but a Thai restaurant in the former gatehouse. The reviews for this place are generally good, but one review website does include this gem: 'The "manager" was unapologetic, rude and, might I add, needed to improve his oral hygiene.'

  We're in a dull city, no friendly faces or distractions. There's traffic and confusing ring-road systems. As we pull out and try to get back on the road we're honked by a white-and-black security van. There's something dustily apocalyptic about the combination of stark brick, building work and demolition. The van is liveried with the name of Loomis – like Group Four, security is what you know them for, but you're
not sure what shadowy things they really get up to – it's a word that makes me feel uneasy.

  I spent far too much of my early teens mulling the prospect of sudden, uncontrollable death. Looking at grey-printed halftone heat maps of kill-zones, dreaming of frozen moments, clouds above the houses across from the playground. Some weeks there wasn't a day when I didn't wake half-unsure if the bomb had dropped. The constant Cold War news and films didn't help, but the thing that I think affected me most was a book we'd read in school. It featured a young girl in a patch of countryside which had somehow escaped nuclear fall-out. She was coping with the loneliness and learning to be self-sufficient when a man in a radiation suit turned up and destroyed the peace, and I remember something about rape. I can't remember how it ends, but the name of the guy always stuck with me: Loomis. The vans make me feel alone, fear being alone.

  Danny is asleep in the back less than five minutes into our journey to Southsea.

  * * *

  I wake up with a layer of sweat cooling on my skin and the menu for the Kuti's Royal Thai Pier glued to my face with spittle. My semi-conscious brain is already picking the perfect moment to open my eyes and interrupt Midge's and Jon's conversation about how best to rouse me. The truth is, a-rousing me would be an easier task. Three days without any private time and the gentle rocking vibration of the car by this point is leaving me with an erection I could knock doors down with. I shuffle awake before one of them turns me over and ends up with an eye out.

  * * *

  It's not easy to see the first pier at Southsea, or even that it's a pier. After driving down the promising-sounding Pier Road, we park up and walk between low-rise, cheap fun to the main entrance. Across the funfair that's either closed or just deserted you can see the water; but the angular thrust of a pier just isn't there.

  * * *

  Arcades and hotdog shops flank each side. They all show the signs of a busy season, and the free-standing cartoon hog dog covered in cracks, dirt and pro-vegan graffiti looks more like a prop from a Mad Max film than anything that would encourage me to eat food. I see my first black family of the trip, which is jarring when the realisation hits.

  * * *

  The stalls and shops are open, but render is peeling from the walls where they're not covered in signs. This is the faded commerce we've been expecting but hadn't found as yet. The cheap fast food smells awful and inciting. I ate a few nuts, dry roasted, last night but haven't had much in the past few days. We're not eating, and we read nothing but postcards. We're here in Southsea, at the Clarence Pier. Southsea is either in or so close to Portsmouth that it makes no odds. But it doesn't really want to be.

  Postcards of here there are none. There are postcards of dogs – I buy a set of golden retriever ones that fray at the edges and sing the Super Furry Animals song of the same name – postcards of 'historic Hampshire', postcards of 'Austen country', rootless perhaps. The pier entrance is well signposted, and we enter the same arcade we've seen a lot of. Machines burr and beep; metallic voices beckon.

  Then, cutting through all of it, is a voice I recognise. A voice I love. Flashing from a busily carpeted alcove is the king. The King.

  Elvis is a touchstone, a godhead. He transcends the ages and age. We see him bedecked with lights in arcade after arcade; the games are all gambling ones and the connections tenuous. I've taken to keeping myself grounded by touching his image, reminding me of a time we had control over what we consumed. If I have control of a stereo for a long-enough period of time I pretty much always pick a combination of Elvis, fifties, seventies, gospel, films – there's good stuff in much of it. But what Elvis really does at the moment is make me feel safe and connected to things, to memories. I quietly cross myself and touch his image. Danny puts 50p in the slot, is blinded by choice and loses some sort of game based on cards.

  SOUTHSEA Clarence

  Opened: 1861 (Architect: 1961 rebuilding by A. E. Cogswell & Sons and R. Lewis Reynish)

  Length at start: A lot longer

  Length now: 132 ft (40 m), but wider than it is long

  Burn baby burn? Bombed during World War Two.

  After destruction by the Germans in World War Two, it eventually reopened in 1961, 100 years to the day after the original pier opened.

  Clarence Pier was a Victorian pier in the grand tradition and the first stop on any trip over to the Isle of Wight a gentleman would take. It was opened in 1861 and continued expanding right up to when it was destroyed by a German bomb on 10 January 1941. Rebuilding began in 1953 and, perhaps as a way of avoiding further bombs, the structure now hugged the coast and became a 'horizontal' pier. It's often billed as 'one of the largest amusement parks on the south coast'.

  Confused by the lack of actual pier we head to the beach to try for a side view and are stunned by the launch of a giant hovercraft. An impressive and noisy beast, it's my first time seeing one for real and I'm immediately struck by how improbable, inefficient and silly the whole affair seems to be. Noble even in its silliness, it is English hubris dressed as advance.

  We hunker down, making our notes as Midge scans the horizon. I look over at Jon in 'that' coat, Midge adjusting his day bag on his shoulders and at my own dirty frame. We're surrounded by an exchange school trip, all taking photos of the hovercraft, and even after five days we stick out like homeless 'Nam vets at a fashion show.

  * * *

  Without us really noticing we've become surrounded by a school trip of teenage girls, who start to giggle and gasp as a hovercraft emerges from the waters, its wet blousing clinging to the air, showing every fold. We feel a little uncomfortable.

  * * *

  We're looking at a rope course called Pier Pressure and we're deliberating the question we're all thinking but, as a result of our three-day-old proximity to one another, nobody has to ask: is one of us going to have a go? Jon shakes his head dismissively. 'Nah.' I think a bit longer and say out loud: 'I definitely would.'

  Everybody looks up, the girls from the exchange school trip wrinkle their noses and pull their cardigans closer to themselves, and the guy in charge looks over pointedly. We leave shortly after.

  * * *

  Pausing only to photograph Dan hugging a battered sausage, we climb back into the piermobile and head just a mile or so down the coast.

  The south end of Southsea is approaching suburban, but looking run-down. We find a parking space beneath overhanging hedges. The roads are quiet but full of parked cars. We tessellate between a dropped kerb and a battered Vauxhall. I get out clutching my Priestley hardback and we stand on a pavement looking at semis as far as we can see. We've no view of the sea, and that's disconcerting for a moment. There's a vibe of a transient population, as many of the houses are divided into flats and other indications are there too: many, many bins, some overflowing; and numbers and messages for postmen scrawled without artistic thought on any available surfaces.

  More than that, it's a feeling: there's little care of the area. If a household is poor, it's not usually immediately obvious from the outside. You can't tell how expensive the curtains are or if the paintwork has been done by hired help or a harassed resident. If a house is uncared for, it's different: sheets drape across windows at off angles, paint flecks. There are discarded things in drives and uncut gardens. And that's what we see here, along with takeaway remnants.

  * * *

  Southsea South Parade Pier is technically younger than Clarence, but a lack of bombs makes it the more traditional of the two. Although traditional isn't how some pier enthusiasts would describe it, due to it having a concrete deck. But as I said, I'm not a pier enthusiast, not by a long chalk. I didn't start a pier enthusiast, I'm unlikely to finish a pier enthusiast, and I can only describe three or four times during the entire trip so far where the piers even piqued my interest, apart from as a logistical challenge.

  That is not to say I dislike piers; they seem to be important. But at this point in the trip the fact that South Parade Pier is mostly closed relieves me mo
re than disappoints me. The pier head itself is wide and populated by fishermen. If fishing is merely a man's excuse to enjoy the sun then at this moment I understand why they go through the pantomime. The sun is hovering near the horizon, like an office worker on a Friday afternoon that has already logged off his computer and is in the process of shuffling papers on his desk waiting for the clock to turn five.