by Jon Bounds
It's the sort of station the teenagers we pass quietly under an ornate bridge by the front of Clacton Pier would listen to. Making what I realise are classist distinctions based on their clothing and deportment, we hurry past with our heads down. We fear a shouted confrontation given our 'outsider look'. It will come after we've passed and there is no response that won't just provoke laughter. No wit that will hit home, we will just have to keep going. I don't confirm this with Midge or Dan; I just know that it's how 'alternative' people think.
* * *
From underneath the footbridge the white edifice of the pier unfolds in front of you: the sign promising free admission is clearly visible and certainly more legible than that of 'Clacton Pier'. Through the doors are a selection of rides, including the 20p single-person rockers normally seen outside supermarkets, cups and saucers and dodgems, all painted the usual gaudy funfair colours.
These rides and bunko magic booths spill out onto the open large deck that extends before us. The sky is the same grey colour as the sea and they merge together like an image placeholder until someone can be bothered to fill them in.
CLACTON-ON-SEA
Opened: pavilion) 1871 (Architect: Peter Bruff; Kinipple and Jaffrey for the
Length at start: 480 ft (146 m)
Length now: 1,180 ft (360 m)
Burn baby burn? A 1973 fire caused significant structural damage.
Clacton Pier was officially the first building erected in the new resort of Clacton-on-Sea. In 2009 the pier was taken over by the Clacton Pier Company, who installed a 50-ft helter-skelter. Originally built in 1949 and used in a travelling show, this slide has also featured in a Marks & Spencer advert. Clacton's famous Cockney Pride pub is now the Boardwalk Bar & Grill, and you can attempt the Stella's Revenge roller coaster to cure any hangover the next morning.
Clacton Pier itself looks well. It's expansive and cared for, without being glossed. I spend some time taking photos inside the beautifully tiled toilets, admiring the way that the old Edwardian workings have been allowed to stand, to gather just the right amount of chips and scratches. There's something about older architecture that allows this growing old gracefully. Decay as design, working with the ageing process. I manage to take a few shots without getting mistaken for a sexual pervert rather than a pier one. A 'piervert'.
The boardwalk is wide and welcoming, and rides and concessions are placed around in a not exactly ordered way. The place feels organic and homely, like it's evolved to how it now is, but I know from friends that stuff has changed. I've been talking about a 'scary clown' we are supposedly looking for but I know now it's long gone. Things change, people change.
Then, standing with all the grandeur of an A-road cafe, near to the coin-op dodgems, is a yellow hut, and I almost see a reason for us to be here. The windows are guarded by bars on the outside and covered with faded graphics on the inside. The front is festooned with pictures of dogs and poor cartoons. It's a T-shirt-printing stall and I know we have to get one each.
* * *
Getting to the door, we see it's shut. The sign says 'back in ten minutes' but it looks as if it's been there for about ten years, and the transfers displayed on the windows are so faded with age we're not sure the place is still open.
'We have to wait,' I say to Jon. The shack is untouched since the eighties, and I remember begging my mum for a T-shirt with rude versions of the Mr Men ironed on it when I was a teenager.
'Well, even if we just missed 'em, they'll only be ten minutes,' says Jon.
Clearly Midge is annoyed at this, but he knows us well enough by now to know this is one of the things that we have to do that he won't understand.
* * *
I sometimes mistake the act of buying as something that will comfort me. In the tatty souvenir stalls we've looked at, my guts cry out that I should make purchases. If I get the right thing, I'll be happy for a moment. So far the present on Hythe Pier and postcards are the only things I've bought. I really wanted something stupid, just to have it and remind myself that I exist in a world with other people.
On a school trip back in juniors – I must have been ten at the most – to Barry Island near Cardiff I made maybe the most disastrous buying decision of my life. (Except maybe that Crash Test Dummies album.) I had saved the money my mum had given me all day and splurged it in the joke shop as we were about to get back on the coach. I saw a box that was labelled 'Fart Detector'. It cost a couple of quid, everything I had, but I knew I needed it. I had visions of some amazing machine that would smell them and know who had dealt them. What fun there would be on the bus on the way home, childish fun of course, but I was a child.
And it turned out to be a false nose. Capitalism disappoints.
We do the slow waltz of shy people around the T-shirt shop, pretending to make decisions and admire the stock rather than striding right up to the counter and getting what we want. Only the supremely confident, the posh and the foreign can do that. We have to do this dance, and as there's two of us – Midge having snorted derision and being off looking for chips – we also have to do the nudging for the other one to do the actual interaction. I win this. With most people I do. I'm the best at being shy.
* * *
Inside there are wall-to-wall transfers of metal bands from the eighties, generic football teams, dolphins in the moonlight. For 20p a letter we can get whatever we want ironed onto a T-shirt in lovely red velour letters in a font we both spot is the traditional Cooper Black.
* * *
Dan orders the shirts: he wants XL and white; I want L and black. I think a large will probably be a little too tight on me, but I am enjoying pretending to be slimmer than Danny. While the guy behind the counter places the furry letters on the cloth we make a kind of aggressive small talk with him. We're both unfailingly polite, as we always are with strangers, even one that seems to be trying to trip us up with questions about the quest, about The List. Danny does most of the talking and is doing well – apart from being unable to remember the chap is called Peter and not John.
'So, how long have you worked here, John?'
'Peter,' I say quietly.
It's been a long time.
'Is business getting worse or is it about the same, John?'
'Peter.'
It's okay, but not as good as it used to be. We hopefully make the overcast afternoon a little bit more profitable.
* * *
John speaks as he moves, quietly and in compact sentences that reveal no strong emotions. He has a scruffy Zen about him as he carefully aligns the letters of 'piervert' in an arc across the chests of our T-shirts. He's been on Clacton Pier for 29 years. Before that he was a tailor. As one of the first people in the country to import Lacrosse he was partly responsible for the soccer-casual look of the eighties. You really get the impression he loves what he does, but business isn't great after three bad seasons weatherwise and the recession.
'It'll get worse before it gets better,' he warns darkly as he sets about aligning the second set of letters on Jon's shirt.
'Weird thing to have on a T-shirt, we know, but we're doing this thing, you see,' I stumble to explain.
'You're visiting every pier in England and Wales in two weeks. I wondered when you'd get here,' he says without looking up.
Stunned, me and Jon look at each other and he lets it sit in the air for a few moments.
'You were in yesterday's paper.' He reaches under his desk and produces the paper. Sure enough, in one of the corners there's a couple of paragraphs about our trip.
'How many have you done so far?' There's a smile to his eyes.
'No idea – we started at Weston.'
'What's the shortest pier?' It isn't a request for information, it's a quiz.
'Burnham,' I say automatically.
'It used to be the Harwich, called the "halfpenny pier", did you know that?'
'Yes,' I lie.
'The longest pier?'
'Southend,' I say. 'Easy,' I think.
'I don't know,' I concede.
He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head slightly.
'This one?' I ask, and he smiles for the first time, happy to have caught me out.
'There's a really good book I've been reading about the Victorian seaside and piers.' He reaches under the table and brings out a beautifully illustrated book. We chat some more. He seems clearly a little bitter that the trade relies too much on just the dwindling tourists. Midge arrives and that's our cue. We thank John for his time and leave the wise man in his cave.
* * *
Peter, who shall be known as John, represents the slow decline of this type of pier and seaside life. It seems that the attractions are built for the transient tourist and don't have anything to offer the locals. The pier isn't part of the community. He's no time for the locals: they'll come on to the boards when it's a handy viewing platform for the air show but 'they want something for nothing' and he'll not see them for the rest of the year.
* * *
Someone had painted 'LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL' on a wall near Frinton. I think about John and wonder whether he'd agree. I think he would, with just a small nod of his head.
* * *
Walton-on-the-Naze is another in a series of place names that I had preconceptions about without any real knowledge. I had no idea it was anywhere near the coast. I had pictured a sleepy Cotswolds village, thatched houses with climbing roses bookending a babbling stream.
* * *
By now the grey that had become the sky and the sea in Clacton has enveloped the land, bleaching out the colours, making everything seem like a depressing documentary. We park on a hill with the coast a steep walk down. We pass the Thames MRCC (Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre) and outside are black-marble panels with names and dates. Reverently I take a look and realise that, far from being a list of people who died at sea, this is a list of all the people they have saved over the years. This cheers me until we crest the hill and see the pier.
* * *
Iron, colour powder coated, and lettered in the same seventies font that adorns our chests. While it is warming and fuzzy over our hearts, it is bland and unwelcoming over the gaping entrance to the pier. It looks more like a parcel depot than a palace of fun. It's dark and dingy, chintzy name or not. The day is ending, but the sun's waning doesn't make the large youths hanging around the entrance threatening – that's just their stance and their presence. The 'open all year pier' looks like a warehouse.
WALTON-ON-THE-NAZE
Opened: 1898 (Architect: J. Cochrane)
Length at start: 2,600 ft (162 m)
Length now: 2,600 ft (792 m)
Burn baby burn? 1942, and serious storms in 1978.
Up until it closed during the war, passengers were transported along the pier on an unusual battery-powered car.
The pier is big yellow bastard the size of a small aeroplane hangar squatting on the coast, with the promenade emanating from behind it. Ugly in its desperation to appear fun, the bright yellow seems perverse in the grey climate. Three men stand in the doorway next to the closed shutters.
'Look, it's closed,' says Midge, clearly hesitant.
'And it's fucking spooky. Looks like somewhere Scooby-Doo would visit,' I say.
'Do we have to go?' asks Midge
'Yes,' me and Jon say in unison.
The three gentlemen outside look very much like Eastern European movie gangsters, their cheap tracksuits and roll-up cigarettes matched with all-too-obvious jewellery and unnatural nonchalance. We say nothing as we walk past. Neither do they. Both groups pointedly saying nothing.
The structure is massive inside and dotted about are the funfair rides and arcade games of 20 years ago. Most of them are turned off, which highlights the empty space. We are alone and it feels like no one has been here for years. Near the exit to the pier itself is a run-down bowling alley. Four or five people are at the bar; no one is bowling. The barmaid looks suicidally bored. We quickly walk up the length of the bleak, wet and unnecessarily long pier. By now a fine rain is making the wooden planks slippery and the wind has picked up to the point where I can't hear what Jon is saying. A well-timed gust of wind and we could lose Midge to the sea forever.
* * *
In the semi-dark the traditional hillbilly shooting range almost looks like a place to sleep. I'm struck with the question of what makes it okay to shoot the hillbillies in these games. They're human lives we're meant to find disposable. I've worked this up as a speech over the last week or so, and am about to foist it on the guys.
This is halted by Danny about to climb into something a little bigger than a shower. It's a 'Hurricane Simulator'.
I'm not about to let him have first go, or spend any money I don't have to spend, so I pull the door open and climb in too. It actually turns out to be very much like a shower, except with wind. I think two of us being in here weakens the strength of the experience, or maybe I'm just not standing under the jet. We pantomime enjoyment for Midge and our antics do not go unnoticed by the surly inhabitants of the pier.
* * *
The vibe is bad and we try and shake it off on our way back to the car.
* * *
I know Harwich is a ferry town. That means confusing road signs and odd turnings of different types, plus elevated roundabouts with no immediate purpose or obvious correct exit. Midge nearly drives us onto a freight carrier of some sort, before we start our now traditional skirt round the back streets of a town looking for free parking. The town is damp, and dark, and empty except for the bar of a hotel we pass. It has no curtains or glass frosting so the view inside looks like an illuminated screen. A super HD broadcast of a normal, snug life we can't be part of at the moment.
The pier is dark wood, and slippery. A droop of benches and railings, sheathed with nets and boats. Somehow the dull light makes the flowers left on the memorial bench, flecked as they are with rain, seem sadder even than they would otherwise be.
* * *
We walk the length of the pier in silence. On the bench near the end lie some yellow roses. Yellow roses, traditionally, are the flower of jealousy or a dying love.
HARWICH Ha'penny
Opened: 1853
Length at start: Twice as long as it is now.
Length now: Half as long as it was.
Burn baby burn? Originally the pier was twice as long as the present one, but one half burnt down in 1927.
The pier bends around to hug the coast and creates a sea area known as the Pound, which also makes its length difficult to measure. The pier – named after the original toll to enter – houses an exhibition on the Mayflower ship and her captain, Christopher Jones.
As we leave town we're assaulted by signs saying 'DRIVE ON LEFT'. If Midge can see them, and I'm not too sure of his eyesight in the dark, I wonder if he too is fighting the anti-authoritarian streak to drive on the other side just to piss them off.
CHAPTER NINE
THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTHWOLD
Jon fiddles about with his phone and a punk song comes out of the piermobile's stereo. There are no speakers at the back so I don't hear it very clearly, but because of where we're going, and because Jon would never normally play punk, I know that it must be a song about the siege at Castle Inn called 'Never Had Nothin' by the Angelic Upstarts. It's a pleasantly melodic song for the genre, with a surprising handclap refrain and breakdown in the bridge. It reached number 52 in the British charts in 1979. We listen to it a couple of times as Midge swears at the ever-patient and slightly patronising woman who lives inside the satnav.
* * *
I can't remember who found out about the Castle Inn: punk credentials would suggest Midge, but I don't remember him suggesting it. Once we had read the story of the place, though, we had to stop here. The pub was the scene of a shotgun shoot-out between the police and a man
called Paul Howe after a botched burglary. Gun sieges are still unusual enough in our country to make one from 30 years or more back notable.
* * *
