by Jon Bounds
'We meet again, stranger.' I can see him more clearly now. It's the guy from near Weymouth. I think. I'm still groggy from the impact.
'You gave me water that I might drink and guidance that I might meet my quest. For that I thank you.'
I'm staring at his belt, off which hangs a sword. A bloody big sword.
'But I must ask more. Our quests are similar, I feel, and I need your assistance.'
'It's not exactly a quest…' I don't want to offend a man who's just stopped me pacing over a cliff, or who has a blade that big.
'You're circling the land, looking for the source. There's a magic afoot and the county must be saved.'
'Okay.'
'Albion.'
I say nothing. I'm not sure I get it. I'm not coming round.
* * *
My back is sore. The climb over the fence last night must have twisted something I didn't notice due to the cushion of booze. This morning it feels like an animal is biting the nerves on the base of my spine and dripping electric piss down the muscles of my right thigh. I've had a bad back for a few years. I dry-swallow a couple of Tramadol and grit my teeth as I pack the car. It's quite a drive to Skegness, which is either a good thing or a very bad thing.
* * *
In a trip that's meant to evoke our childhood, stopping off at a Little Chef, as I've spent every moment since we woke this morning persuading a reluctant Midge and a woozily truculent Dan to do, means nothing to me. Exciting as roadside dining seemed to me as a kid – and still does – it was not something that my family would ever have considered. If a trip really was to go on for hours over a mealtime, cobs would be prepared and wrapped in plastic. They would contain ham, or cheese. They would be distributed piecemeal without stopping to eat and accompanied by a bag of crisps. A Little Chef with melamine tables and menus seemed impossibly exotic.
Food has become a bit of an issue on this trip. None of us are ever suggesting we stop to eat, maybe because we're not that interested but also because it costs money and we don't really have any. I'm starving, and I bought some custard creams – the cheapest brand at the cheapest petrol station biscuit – when I blew another 50 quid on fuel just now.
I figure that even if it isn't within our own memory, the chain roadside cafe is part of our collective consciousness. It's just the right sort of faded for us; aesthetically we should be all over it, the red of the logo and the padded leather of the seats. But it's only as we turn the radio on that Danny and Midge are won over.
Joe Pasquale is not a comedian we'd profess a liking for. Too recent to be ironic and with a mainstream taint that tells our brains he must be doing something distasteful even if he isn't. This morning he's on some odd roll and as we hear the end of Brett Anderson's new single he's assuring the host that he can do an impression of David Essex in a chip shop. The impression isn't recognisable, but a Little Chef is a chip shop of sorts and David Essex is our thing right now. We pull into a car park and practise ordering sausages and chips in strangulated cockney tones.
Little Chef roadside cafes have recently and famously been given a celebrity chef makeover; they are at a fulcrum in the way culture's changing. Even if often it's no more than a modern cladding on the oldest of things, most places won't let you see beneath the reality-show gloss. Here, though, if there's cladding it's peeling off, revealing the inner workings – a reality-show extra on a digital channel, at best. Things haven't got a gloss here yet; there are tears in the padded bench seats and the open view into the kitchen is accompanied by the reassuring smell of grease.
We sit at a table for four and read the laminated menus: for a vegetarian the options are back in the seventies, so I order tomatoes on toast, which isn't on the menu but seems not to faze the waiter. Danny has toast, I think, but what I note is that Midge only orders a drink. I worry he has decided he can't afford to eat. That's uncomfortable because I understand but would gladly pay if only it was possible to offer.
I look across at the furniture and a table that is listing at 20 degrees. The alarmingly camp maître d' bounds over eventually and takes our money, and then returns to boyishly bickering with the short-order cook, who has bright eyes beneath a head of tight black curls.
* * *
A couple of hours later I take another pill, trying to take the edge off. I get the warm fuzzies, but the electric piss dribbling down the nerves of my leg has turned into a river of knives, so I figure I should take another as I've built a tolerance. We arrive at Skegness to bright sunshine. As Midge and Jon do the usual 'where shall we park' dance I take another couple of pills, as it's been four hours since I took the first couple, right? We pull up to the kerb and I'm out of the car before the engine's off. I fall out of the door onto the pavement, my back not quite taking the weight to stand. I need to stretch out a bit, so I lie flat on my back with my knees bent on the pavement. I let my legs fall one side and then the other, easing the nerves like my physiotherapist has taught me. It's sunny but my vision has soft edges, like an old movie or that moment just before you pass out.
'You all right?' Jon's looking down at me concerned. Midge is standing away, clearly embarrassed.
'Yeah, back's a bit bad this morning.'
'You look a bit pale, actually.'
'Shhhhh,' I whisper in pantomime. 'I took some painkillers.'
'How many?' says Jon with a hint of concern.
I hold up four fingers. 'Two or three.' I don't want to worry him. It doesn't work. He frowns a little, so I jump up as quick as I'm able and force the words 'I'm fine. Let's go.'
* * *
Skegness is so bracing, as the old railway poster had it. Today Skegness is also bright and sunny. We park and head straight for the arcade. It encompasses and overwhelms the rest of the pier, clad in beaten plastic. It's obsessed with tenpin bowling: a sport that occupies a space for early-teenage boys as one of the few places you can legitimately take a date to.
The pier seems something of an afterthought, as the tram sheds are the thing here. And they multiply, like outbuildings: the Pleasure Beach, stalls of novelty and sugar. An Anderson-shelter McDonald's mirrors the industrial-estate vibe. The pier juts out of the back, a lamp-posted boulevard to nowhere. Open sea and the distant thrust and parry of another wind farm are all that's out there.
I see from photographs – which feature a pier unadorned by bowling sheds – that the boardwalk once led to a smart white pavilion, but now it just stops. The lamp posts right now are festooned with tea-cosy-like knitting. It's an odd look, but it doesn't surprise me. I've known they were going to be here, as they've also been installed by some artists local to where I live in Birmingham. They call it guerrilla knitting, and call the group… wait for it… Stitches and Hos. It's a name that perfectly reflects the kind of ironic hipster crafters they are, and so that didn't surprise me either. The artwork being in Skegness is odd. Middle-class Southwold I can see, but one wonders heavily – and I do, aloud to a blank-faced Midge – what the residents and holidaymakers here think.
'They'd be right not to like it. It does just look scruffy.'
Midge says nothing more. He's found the handle of a broken spade and is poinging it off the railings in an act of punk rebellion. Or boredom.
* * *
Skegness Pier started in 1881 at 1,817 feet long with a T-shaped head. Time and the usual disasters – storms, drifting boats and World War Two – have whittled it down to a mere 387 feet now. It's fairly busy when we get there and I bump through the arcade like a pinball until I reach the promenade at the back. The sea air hits me hard and my vision swims slightly. Jon looks up.
'You all right?' he asks.
'Yeah. Just thinking, we haven't interviewed a lot of people, have we? Let's change that now,' I say as I march over with a head full of drugs to an old couple sitting on deckchairs staring out to sea.
Brian and Sheila are a lovely couple. Brian is wearing a pair of sand-coloured slacks that you only ever see old people wear and a jumper that the office pes
t would have worn in the eighties to prove his wackiness. It looks neutral on him. Sheila is wrapped in a large anorak against the wind that I am aware of but can't actually feel.
'Excuse me,' I smile. 'My name is Danny Smith, can I ask you a few questions?'
Brian looks at Sheila and says, 'Yes, I suppose you can.' Sheila turns her head round and smiles. Either she's not all there or a little deaf. I ask if they come to Skegness often.
'Every year,' answers Brian. 'We've been to Yarmouth and Weymouth and north Wales, but we always end up coming back here.'
'Did you go to the piers in Yarmouth and Weymouth?'
'Oh yes,' says Brian. 'We like the shows.'
'Who did you see?' I ask. This cracks Brian a little. He visibly relaxes.
'Everyone, we've seen Morecambe and Wise, Des O'Connor, Bernie Winters, Matt Monro.'
'Tony Christie,' Sheila shouts up.
'Tony Christie,' confirms Brian. 'Oh, and the other two fellas.'
'Little and Large?' A stab in the dark from me, but it seems about right and we're obviously not talking about anything else until he finishes the list.
'No, they were policemen in that film.'
'Cannon and Ball,' I answer, thanking my years of consuming obscure English pop culture. The film he's talking about is The Boys in Blue, made in 1982 and Cannon and Ball's only film. I remember it being set on the coast and featuring smuggling, a crime that is serious enough to merit being investigated but not distasteful enough to turn a family audience's stomach (see also: all the Famous Five books and Scooby-Doo).
'How has Skegness changed?' I ask. This is it, our elders are a connection to the past and, if the past is another country like L. P. Hartley asserts, then the older generation are our explorers, bringing back exotic tales and objects. I focus, but the grey round the edges of my vision is starting to get deeper and sometimes the voices are switching from stereo to a flat mono but I pull it all together for his answer. Brian thinks for a second.
'It's more bloody expensive,' shouts Sheila.
'Yes, it is that,' agrees Brian, who then goes on to explain the increments in which the B&B where they always stay has gone up in price. They start to talk about the price of different holiday objects and I give in.
'Thank you, you've been very helpful,' I lie.
SKEGNESS
Opened: 1881 (Architects: Clarke and Pickwell)
Length at start: 1,817 ft (554 m)
Length now: 387 ft (118 m)
Burn baby burn? Hit by a boat in 1919 and sectioned during World War Two. Floods damaged the pier in 1953, and it was battered by a severe storm in 1978. In 1985 a fire gutted the theatre they were dismantling anyway.
An online review (in January 2015) says that the 'walk through under Skegness Pier stinks'. That might have been our fault, sorry, as it was okay when we got there.
Despite the ironic statue, the fairground, the bowling, oh the bowling, the copious amounts of sugar for sale and even volleyball nets on the sand, no one seems to be having fun. I eavesdrop on the conversation between three generations of Black Country cliché, gran, young mum and baby.' 'E wants 'is dinna.'
For sustenance we pay two quid for a plastic cup each and mix our own – non-branded – slush drinks. I go for one based on the lyrics of the Bob Dylan song 'Country Pie': raspberry, strawberry, lemon and lime.
* * *
I'm staring at the doughnut machine, which looks like something you'd see on Southwold Pier, a Rube Goldberg contraption where white Os of dough are shat into a pit of boiling oil, snagged onto a conveyer belt, flipped over and sprinkled with sugar. It's fascinating, all the parts working together. Jon nudges me.
'Come on.'
He begins to walk off. The row of stalls extends right the way down the front. I spot four different fish and chip stalls next to each other and give the logistics of that some serious thought. The crowd at the picnic tables in front of these stalls are in tank tops, gold chains and football shirts. Everyone is smoking. I get a push.
'Come on,' pleads Jon again. I take another long pull from my slushie, all crushed ice and syrup. I bought a 'large' and mixed cola with bubble gum to produce a delicious brown sludge. I can't complain though, as the sugar and E numbers are providing a decent-enough high to counter the painkillers. 'I'm speedballing on tramadol and sugar,' I think to myself and giggle in my head. Or was it out loud?
'DAN!' calls Jon. He's set off without me and I run to catch up.
* * *
Cleethorpes is the seaside of Grimsby. While coastal, it is more fishing port than resort. It's also the home of Grimsby Town FC, who made me the coldest I'd ever been when I was watching them play an FA Cup tie at some point in the nineties.
* * *
Cleethorpes' front is empty. The road runs right next to the beach and ends at the pier. The journey has been made uncomfortable by the sugar crashing out of my system, and my back hasn't taken kindly to getting in the car again, so I take another couple of painkillers. My guts have started to cramp up. My insides are not happy and need to vent.
* * *
It's a little warmer now, as we pull up in the shadow of the fences surrounding the pier, but the shadow is weak. The sun's low and drizzle is starting to form in the air. I offer my remaining slush to Midge, but he's not in the mood. Not in the mood for anything at all. He grumpily stays in the car as we unfold ourselves from the bags, clothes and bits of paper we're accumulating. I pop my slush into the first bin we come to.
The pier is shut.
So is most of the seafront.
Shops offering rock, candy and fun are shuttered against the gusts coming across from the North Sea. Some are closed for the season; others are concrete and boarded, desolate against the sand like the small towns outside Las Vegas. I walk up until the metropolis peters out and then back towards the car. It's a long drive to Whitby, where we've decided to spend the night.
CLEETHORPES
Opened: 1873 (Architect: Head Wrightson)
Length at start: 1,200 ft (366 m)
Length now: 335 ft (102 m)
Burn baby burn? A concert hall burnt down in 1903 and the pier was sectioned during World War Two.
When the seaward end was demolished after the war, some of the salvaged material was used to build Leicester City a new stand.
The sun is bright but the blurred bits around the edges of my vision are getting bigger. I stumble into the arcade, ricocheting off one of the fruit machines as I try to focus. I see a sign at the back and remember thinking, 'I hope that's a toilet sign, not a fire exit, because I'm shitting there whatever.' Feeling sick, stomach cramping and not really knowing where I'm going, I come to the toilets. It's a turnstile, 20p to get in. I pull my hand out of my pocket in an explosion of change. I've only got a pound coin and some coppers, not worth checking the floor now. I can't bend over. I run to the change cashier and slam the change onto the counter.
'20p pieces, please.'
She's gargoyle-impassive but I look into her eyes. She's scared. I smile and remember that we humans are the only creatures who show our teeth to prove we're friendly rather than the opposite. She pushes a button on a machine set to the left and 20p coins appear down a slide. I grab them and throw a 'thank you' over my shoulder.
The toilets are a familiar blue, lit by UV lights to stop junkies finding their veins so they can push drugs through spikes straight into them. Poor bastards, why don't they just get a Slush Puppie speedball instead? Oh, yeah. I don't bother checking if the door has a lock before I sit down. My stomach cramps for a last couple of times and I'm done. The relief swims my head, the blur in my eyes becomes a black and starts to thicken. My thoughts become not connected to much…
No. I refuse to pass out in a junkie, shooting-gallery arcade in Cleethorpes with my trousers round my ankles. Think. DEEP BREATHS. Okay, maybe not too deep. Concentrate. The song that plays in my head whenever I fuck up plays. I grab it and sing along.
'You do it to yourself, you do, an
d that's what really hurts, you do…'
Wipe, pull up your kecks, stand, a little unsteady but not too bad. '… you do it to yourseeeeeeeeeeEEEEElllf.'
Right, vision fuzzy but better. Fluids, drink from the tap, warm but: whatever. Reflection, hair not bad, a bit eighties metal, eyes a bit sunken. I'm a bit grey, when was the last time I ate? Must do that soon, I suppose.
'WwwhhhhooooooOOOOOLLLN noooowlln whhhhhwl.' I'm singing the guitar solo now. I'm okay.
The arcade is bigger than I remember running into, and darker. I head towards the front that appears like a bright letter box in front of me. I notice a couple of attendants near the toilets as I come out. The change lady must have said something. I head out into the sunshine and the front at Cleethorpes is empty; a few food stalls are closed and a big fence is barricading the pier. Nothing is moving. It's like we travelled too far into the future, or maybe the past? Anyway, it's barren and spooky-quiet.
