Pier Review
Page 14
We pantomime a bit of grappling, but it's clear that neither of us really wants to lose. We soon overbalance and sprawl onto the stones, arms round each other. Dan pushes me over and holds my hands back against the ground. I feel that he's not quite giving it his all and that, if I do, I can get on top. The embarrassment, and some of the clouds in my head, are moving further away. It's difficult to get a grip, though. We're both hefty guys and grabbing a handful of flesh seems uncouth. There's more of a slapping as our hands and bellies flop against each other. I make a grab for the belt of Dan's trousers and he attempts to hook his elbow under my leg. He gets me and I fall backwards heavily, catching sight of Midge and Adam laughing at our flailing. I'm surprised, though, to see that we've not attracted the attention of anyone else. Old ladies shuffle past our part of the beach, and people stroll up and down the boardwalk, but no one notices. Danny isn't concentrating. I see his eyes wander. I've had enough, heave him over and make like to hit him in the balls. I win.
Manly hugs all round as we leave Adam to return to his home to sleep. We've driving, piers and camping ahead of us before we can rest. We pull out of town with the sea on our right-hand side. The buildings drop away and we're left with grass and cliffs. I've prepared something for this moment. I plug my phone into the stereo and search for just the right music.
We start a slow climb, Midge as usual driving steadily. Rain starts to fall and a piano tinkles. The drums rumble gently, a cymbal splashes. If we weren't in a car the stereo panning would kick in.
The beach is kissed by the sea. I sweat beer sweats. Anxious sweats. I am starting to wonder what we're doing. Fake strings stab and I swipe the volume higher. It swells to fill the car, as we swoop down over the brow of the hill. The view is filling my mind, emptying it of worry. I can't sleep and I lie and I think. I need a drink.
The Who save me again. 'Won't Get Fooled Again' hits the speakers. As a pop aficionado I often remark that almost all songs are too long. Or their recorded versions are anyway: 2 minutes 45 seconds is the length that a tune should last. But 'Won't Get Fooled Again' is, at nearly nine minutes, way too short. I often reach the end and put it back on straight away. It is bombastic, symphonic and urgent all the way though. Every time you think it's about to die you get another battering from the drums of Keith Moon or a howl from the lusty lungs of Roger. It speaks directly to the bitter soul of all those who have felt treated unfairly by life. And that's all of us. It's me. It's me in the way that my dreams always seem to get thwarted, in the way that the things I really want I've no idea how to get. It won't happen again, not this time. But it will work out, as long as the trip does. We get a break in the clouds. We really do.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BIG DEAL
We're heading to Eastbourne, one of the few places where the local media expressed any interest in us before the trip. We'd contacted the press more because we thought it was the sort of thing we should do than because it would do us any good. We filled in a questionnaire for a publication based in or near Eastbourne and I had to reveal my ignorance of the place.
I'm vaguely aware of it being the butt of sitcom jokes. The Major in Fawlty Towers defends the 'most badly run hotel in the world' by saying, 'No, no, I won't have that… there's a place in Eastbourne.' And that's about the extent of my knowledge. You could say under-researched; I'd say open-minded.
* * *
Eastbourne Pier is a grand and beautifully designed Victorian pier with round huts dotted along it. It looks like a traditional, if somewhat successful, old pier. But the amount of redevelopment and the number of commercial enterprises should tip you off. Yes, the buildings are old and the paint somewhat peeling, but you feel like something is weird. It works a little too well, the shops have none of the erratic opening habits of other piers and the stock is too consistent.
The pier is owned by Six Piers Ltd, who also own all three Blackpool piers and the one at Llandudno. Leisure tycoon Trevor Hemmings put the pier up for sale in 2009 after a couple of terrible seasons and a loss of £7.3m. He managed to sell Southsea's South Parade Pier but withdrew the sale of Eastbourne after a £9m season. His current net worth is somewhere around £500m, which is not bad for someone who left school at 15.
And he knows the market. Eastbourne feels old and the pier reflects that. To highlight that fact, the crown green bowlers in front of the pier seem to foreshadow the facilities on it. The shops are definitely aimed at the older generation, including a glassblower, a clothes shop selling cream windbreakers and elasticised slacks (I had always wondered where those come from and, for the record, even new they have that old-person smell), and an ice-cream parlour that sells the generic Italian ice cream you find in every shopping centre in England.
EASTBOURNE
Opened: 1870 (Architect: Eugenius Birch)
Length at start: 1,000 ft (305 m)
Length now: 1,000 ft (305 m)
Burn baby burn? In 1942, a mine exploded: it had been tied to the pier by the police, who thought it was fitted with a safety device. A fire in 2014 damaged the central domed building.
A theatre added in 1888 soon blew away in a gale and landed 17 miles away in Lewes, where it was later used as a cowshed. Police visited a seller of saucy seaside postcards on the pier in 2012 after a complaint about their content from a minister of a local church. Both the Agatha Christie's Poirot episode 'Jewel Robbery' and the 2010 film remake of Brighton Rock used Eastbourne Pier as a stand-in for Brighton Pier.
The one thing we'd found out about the pier in advance was that it had a camera obscura in the building at the end – we reach it with hope and ice cream. To find it closed. The bar is playing Westlife and there's piss on the floor in the toilets. I feel a real need to touch the icon of The King. There's something about the way the place is both open but closed – the way shopping areas are on Sundays – that makes the tiles and the walls scream about the fading caused by modern commercialisation. Elvis is my current totem against that, as his commercialism was naked but homely. A touch is a connection, so I touch Elvis.
Danny has a Slush Puppie. That's as faded as it gets.
* * *
'Don't look now – but that grey van is following us,' says Midge, making it very clear he's not turning his head.
'What?' me and Jon say together. Jon's 'what' is incredulous, mine is more surprise because I have yet again begun to doze off. And, of course, we both turn around to look at an innocuous grey van behind us. Midge makes a noise of frustration.
'Why would a van be following us?'
'Could be the DSS,' Midge replies. Jon laughs and I join him when I see that Midge is serious.
'How can you be the one losing his mind? You had the bed last night,' I say to Midge. He just shakes his head.
I can see why things could be coming apart. Everything has started to get a bit odd. Like the landscape is unfolding just for us to have a giggle at. A bed shop passes by with a full-size Jurassic Park raptor outside. We laugh. We see a late-night chippy calling itself 'The Kebab Centre' and we get a good ten minutes out of wondering which workshops they offer and if they do a playscheme in the holidays.
We see a house with 'The Murder House' painted on the roof in broad red letters, but we don't really laugh at that.
* * *
There's not a battle in English history more remembered than the one that is named after Hastings, the site of which we pass on the way now. We don't follow the brown tourist sign any more than we followed the one for the Sussex Ox Country Pub on the way to Eastbourne. Thatcher's government deregulated the tourist sign and since then anyone who cares to pay for one can point travellers to their castle, ruin, patch of grass or garden centre (always garden centres). Which means that we've no idea if any of those we've seen advertised are interesting or not. I do like the signs, though, and I love the symbols and am becoming increasingly obsessed with getting the pier one tattooed on my arm.
* * *
Midge obviously thinks our jovial mood is a goo
d enough time to bring up the reason for going to Hastings at all, or not.
'It's closed, we know it's closed – we could just say we'd been.'
'The List is king,' we both chime. I don't know when we'd taken to shouting that to nip any of these conversations in the bud. I also have no idea when the list gained capital letters and became 'The List'.
I'm undecided as to whether we are using the shorthand of fanatics as a way of explaining to Midge how 'it doesn't make sense, but we're compelled to do it now' or if The List is starting to become a religious text on a par with the Bible or the Torah in our heads. Perhaps both, maybe neither.
The thing is, when you separate yourself from your normal rhythms and routines for long enough, your brain retracts and waits for more information, waiting to find the routine again. Even on holiday you quickly fall into a different routine: your dad will get up way before you to go for a walk and 'get the papers' and then berate you for sleeping in and 'missing the best part of the day'. Little does he know that sleeping is for you, the teenager, the best part of the day for exactly the same reason his early-morning jaunt to the shop is for him; you don't have to interact with your family in any way. Deprive a brain for long enough from routine and it can have a tendency to seek solace elsewhere.
Hastings' signage is tastefully done in a mosaic style, with one such sign comprising a seagull and a landscape view that features the pier. The pier that we know burnt down a year before. Hastings Pier is somewhat of a music legend: it played home to the voodoo alien love god, Jimi Hendrix. It also hosted the last ever gig that the mental-pixie-acid pioneer Syd Barrett played with prog-rock grandfathers Pink Floyd.
* * *
'I don't trust your handbrake.'
'It'll be okay; leave it in gear if you're worried.'
I'm more bothered about checking the conditions on the parking sign. I'm oscillating between not caring at all about the money we're spending and being terrified that it's already all gone. I've not had a lot of work this year and my bank account is fragile, but my bank account is where the pier fund lives and I'm not going to be able to do the maths en route. A parking fine really would be costly and stupid, but my brain is as sandblasted as the rough wall I scrape against when weaving and staggering down to the sea.
* * *
As we approach the front we see the metal fence that stops you stepping onto what is basically a wooden platform, all that is left of the pier. It's sad, and it feels like all the memories and cultural ghosts are hovering above the water on that platform, kept behind that fence as if in a spiritual zoo.
We decide to discover the town some more and head towards the shops we can see open in the distance. Mainly because we're all busting for a slash. Obviously our bodies still have some more toxins to get rid of from Brighton. The base for the 'Save Hastings Pier' campaign is a shop set up in an old millinery. It's all dark-wooden panels and shelves, and they have done an amazing job of filling the glass cabinets with merchandise, from cool T-shirts that exploit Hastings' rock-and-roll history to books and poetry that actually tell the local history of the area and the building of the pier. There's a great exhibition space at the back of the shop, occupied by a sculptor who modifies books and other objects to look like Victorian oddities, which only adds to the vibe. Even though this is a community-driven venture, it's all very slick and smart. Proof that this sort of thing doesn't have to be a bit naff and run by people who wear cardigans.
HASTINGS
Opened: 1872 (Architect: Eugenius Birch)
Length at start: 910 ft (277 m)
Length now: 910-ish ft (277-ish m) (see below)
Burn baby burn? The pavilion burnt down in 1917 and the seaward end was damaged by storms in 1938. Since then various cycles of disrepair and damage have included a lightning strike in 2007 and a devastating fire in 2010.
The pier was opened on the first ever Bank Holiday – 5 August 1872 – after the law creating them was passed in 1871. A number of famous names have played on the pier, including The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Hollies, The Clash and the Sex Pistols. In 2013 a community shares scheme was launched to sell shares in the pier at £100 each to provide funds towards its refurbishment. The pier is now run by a charitable trust, who are overseeing the rebuilding and eventual reopening.
I'm hung-over and hurting, so I lose myself in the merchandise; I want to buy things to cure me. Top hat, T-shirt, those metal wall hangings that are reprints of bygone adverts. Danny's perhaps a little better, Midge is buzzing. He flicks through the free postcards and fiddles with stickers he's made with our website address on, using Impact and a photo of a donkey.
'We're visiting every pier in England and Wales,' says Midge.
And perhaps for the first time someone is actually interested. David, the guy running the shop, listens.
'Hastings is our twenty-sixth. It's really good, getting to see loads of things.'
'That's great.'
'Yeah. Yeah… it's er… they're writing about it, I'm just the driver.' He re-adjusts his backpack strap on his shoulder. Excitedly hopping between feet.
There are lottery bids and fundraising efforts on the go here, a real community effort, and a CD that I can buy without looking profligate, as it's a good cause.
We cross the road, looking for a better angle, trying to see the pavilion that's worth saving, as the front doesn't seem to be. I dip down an incline towards the sea and find myself in a sort of promenade mezzanine. Columns frame the sea and nooks and benches form a colonnade of expectation.
At the first bench is a couple of what officialdom terms street drinkers – not homeless, but exhibiting few signs of a comfortable home environment – and one has an old purple tin and a festival jester's hat. The second guy has an odd-shaped acoustic guitar, battered and looking a little fire-damaged.
'Hey, man.'
I don't want to make eye contact. You never know with the trampish.
'Hi.' Hopefully friendly but non-committal.
The first guy, long hair and a wild look in his eyes, but too sad to be dangerous, says, 'No, man. We might be able to help.'
'We've seen some things. Maybe the things you're looking for.'
'The white dog, he owns us all. Cold, cold.'
They stare out to see across the charred lines. I mutter something that's meant to sound like 'okay' but could be something else if challenged.
As calmly as possible I walk down to join two slightly saner people.
We're playing the CD in the car as we move on. I put the case into the glovebox with some difficulty and there's a faint sound of plastic under stress when I close it – the car is full to the brim and tightly packed. Almost as soon as I've reconfigured my bag and other stuff around myself, spreading the map back over my lap, I want to read who this song is by and have to dismantle it all again. It's all local bands, well or at least competently produced, a mixture of rock and acoustic. King Bathmat is a great name for a band but the track itself doesn't quite live up to it.
Midge beams and to my mind's delight, but my stomach's chagrin, presses a little harder on the gas. It's a fair distance to Deal.
* * *
On the way to Deal the clouds make it darker earlier than it should be. Autumn is coming, the sky is telling us. Don't be fooled.
* * *
There's something ordinary and suburban about Deal. London suburban at that. We park in a side street outside a gloss-painted, shuttered snooker club. It's a regular town. The closed doors on the vaguely municipal building in front of the pier sit in a neat row, and the bus-shelter things along the pier are evenly spaced and uniform in their emptiness.
DEAL
Opened: 1957 (Architect: Sir W. Halcrow)
Length at start: 1,026 ft (313 m)
Length now: 1,026 ft (313 m)
Burn baby burn? It is the third pier to occupy the site. The first one (1838, J. Rennie) was lost due to storm damage and sandworm, whilst the second (1864, Eugenius Bir
ch) had a boat drift into it. The current pier suffered some storm damage in 2013.
A notice on the pier says that it is the same length as the Titanic, which was actually over 100 ft shorter.
The grey sky complements the concrete of Deal Pier. And highlights the loneliness of the single fisherman. Fishing is silly; all the benefits that anglers boast about – you get to sit and relax, it's an excuse to drink, it's nice to be out of the house – could easily be achieved without having to potentially stove an animal's head in. In fact I have been able to do all three of those things most days without having to get up at 4.30 in the morning. I'm secretly suspicious of people who fish, because it's like they enjoy hurting the fish but have managed to wrap it up as a harmless pastime. The guy fishing looks innocent enough, but if you really look at his equipment – the hooks, knives, clubs and net – you realise that if he came into your bedroom in the middle of the night with it you'd shit yourself.