Pier Review
Page 23
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MEN IN BLACKPOOL
We wake naturally early, smiling at each other in recognition of a night spent comfortable and warm. Sharing a bed with Jon wasn't at all awkward or weird. It felt natural, comforting even. All three of us at some point or another had woken up with our faces dangerously close to each other due to sloping campsites. So that night was as far as I'd been from Jon during bedtime for a week or so. I turn the TV on while we take turns in the shower and find the news telling us that the Cutty Sark has burned down overnight. Given how prone piers are to catching alight, I consider this a good omen, but that could just be the solid seven hours sleep I've had. After the news comes the weather. As the weather guy is sweeping his hand over the country I can't help ticking off the places we've visited, like a boy swapping stickers. Swap, swap, need, need, need, got, got, got.
* * *
For the first time ever in a hotel I'm at the breakfast table as the window of full English opportunity opens rather than closes. We've already washed, packed and loaded the car by 8 a.m. – this is a lie-in. The breakfast is hearty and fills my cramping stomach to its edges.
The drive up to Saltburn is spectacular, deep green hills and glimpses of ocean. I twitch and grumble and try to banish dark thoughts brought on by history and sickening chimneys. Three men slide past in a bathtub and the handbrake is pulled taut on a cliff top.
* * *
'Was nice to sleep in a bed last night,' says Jon, half turning in the front seat so I can hear him in the back. I lean forward so I can join in. We'd had a nice breakfast and for once felt ready to tackle the day.
'Yeah, and that view last night was amazing,' I say.
'It was nice,' agrees Midge.
'That Susie…' I begin.
'DON'T YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT HER, SHE WAS LOVELY,' snaps Midge before I can finish. Stunned, we sit there for a while. Jon's eyebrows are raised.
'Mate,' I say, 'I was just going to say how nice she was to let us up there, that's all.'
Midge thinks about it. 'Sorry, I thought you were going to take the piss, you know what you're like.'
'No, mate, I was going to be nice.' I think about mustering some offence at his presumption but to be fair he's not far from the truth. The car is quiet for a bit, the window for somebody to say something funny to diffuse the situation is closing rapidly.
'Midge, mate?'
'Yeah,' answers Midge, furiously concentrating on the empty straight road ahead.
'If you're having feelings for the first time that are confusing you or you don't understand, you can…' I don't finish the statement. Me and Jon are laughing too much. Even Midge smiles.
* * *
Dogs run on the beach, pausing only to piss into the sand.
* * *
The car park for Saltburn Pier is high atop a cliff. So high and steep that after the pier was built in 1869 it was concluded that the cliff walk was putting people off visiting the town after their trip to the beach. More importantly for the pier owners, it was also discouraging people from the town from visiting the pier. The solution was the cliff lift. The lift we see today is the replacement opened in 1884, which is now one of the oldest, water-powered funicular rail systems in the world. Of course, it's not open today.
We look down at the pristine, muddy-golden sands of the beach in the distance. Two people are riding horses along the shoreline, and next to the pier a group of schoolboys are wielding the equipment of a field trip. The white cliffs jut into the sea and the dramatic grey sky is a swirl of cloud. It's beautiful and very English.
The pier is mostly red timber with cream panels and looks like a historical reconstruction, an element reinforced by the arcade being closed and forcing us to do nothing but enjoy the view. I also have time to admire the giant cock and balls the boys have drawn in the sand with the measuring sticks they're now using to hit each other with.
SALTBURN
Opened: 1869 (Architect: John Anderson)
Length at start: 1,500 ft (457 m)
Length now: 681 ft (208 m)
Burn baby burn? Storm damage in 1875, 1953, 1959 and 1961. Damage to the piles finally caused the pier head to collapse and wash away in 1974.
In early 2012 a 160-ft, Olympic-themed, knitted woolly scarf appeared unexplained on the handrails of the pier. In 2014, the Bollywood movie Shaandaar, starring Shahid Kapoor (PETA AsiaPacific's Sexiest Vegetarian Man 2011) and Alia Bhatt, filmed a scene on the pier. Bemused pier-goers were roped in as extras.
Standing on the pier you can look into the future and the past. In one direction unspoilt cliffs loom over the waves. Turn and you can see shadows stretching into the sky from a comic-book factory. A fishing boat is pulled up onto the shore by a tractor just as jets roar our gaze upwards. It feels like war is warming up, armaments being made and landings hastily organised. Wet khaki, heavy with dirt and salt, struggles home.
Whether this is what I really feel, or whether being told that the Dunkirk beach scenes from the film Atonement were filmed here has filled in the paint-by-numbers tourism brochure in my mind, I don't know. We are interviewed by a guy making an anniversary documentary to celebrate the 150th year of pier. I manage to stonewall him and feign interest in piers. I hate them right now. I also attempt to sound chirpy to the local paper reporter from Blackpool who calls me as we set off.
* * *
Back at the car I try calling Pontins again. It has been a couple of days since I tried moving the booking back a day, and I haven't quite been able to confirm the booking in the first place. For ten minutes I'm passed from person to person, all of them changing their name shortly after speaking to me. I once worked for an accounts payable helpdesk in a large catering company and we were encouraged to give false names in order to delay payment. This practice was stopped when the names we started using became increasingly surreal: I remember giving my name as 'Stroke' in a broad Texan accent once. Not one person knows anything about the booking, but I am told that the PR person who wasn't in the office yet does have a Post-it note on her desk about it. This is worrying.
'How did it go?' asks Midge when I walk back to the car from the top of a picnic table to get reception.
'Fine,' I say. 'All sorted. Bloody call centres, eh?' I make an eyeroll shrug.
Midge agrees and climbs into the car. He is driving from one coast of the country to the other in about five minutes – he doesn't need the stress. Jon, who has been using the public toilets to wash a couple of pairs of socks comes back and catches my eye.
'All sorted?' he asks as he winds the back windows up to trap the socks. I make a wide-eyed gesture of fear.
'Not at all, going to have to phone back later,' I say, out of earshot of Midge.
'Bad?'
'Not great, I'll sort something.' I have no idea what. It isn't just somewhere to stay. Southport Pontins is important. Both me and Jon have spent many family holidays there, it appears in both our memories as the typical family holiday, and our experiences are near exact copies of each other and probably tens of thousands of other working-class people of our generation. Plus, it would be the last night of the trip where we wouldn't be in a tent. Beds, hot showers and using the laundrette seem far more important than hitting any interesting nodes at this point.
* * *
We now have to cross from the east to west coast, the longest drive of the trip at nearly three hours.
Signs whizz past, places we've only heard of on news bulletins and sporting classified checks now exist in metal. I'm consuming the country. We pass the curious village of Works Access Only and turn at Scotch Corner. We've seen signs for towns rooted in Englishness, like Sheringham and West Beckham, and we've passed places we'd not been sure really existed, like Little Snoring.
Now we're on the M6, heading south towards Blackpool, and it would be so easy to ignore the M55 to the coast and just keep going on it. This road would take us home. We don't, and I wonder if that's because we don't want to go home, ever.
* * *
Lulled by the hum of the car and the gentle thwipping sound of Jon's socks drying in the breeze, I sleep for the journey across the country. It is the gentle squabbling about directions that wakes me. We are driving in a mainly suburban area, but the grey, oppressive sky is getting bigger and you can see Blackpool Tower poking up in the distance. We approach Blackpool from its back and get to see behind the artifice from the start.
* * *
We're listening to a song about George's sticky penis as we enter a vile concrete runway. It traps us and spurts us onto a dented belly of a car park.
* * *
The car park is grim, the ground is littered with little squares of glass from a hundred busted windows and the ticket machines are badly defaced. Immediately the vibe is soured and we genuinely fear for the things we keep in the car, scrabbling round to hide anything valuable under the seats or in the boot.
Next to the car park a shop is advertised on a large yellow sign, 'JOKES – Masks, Wigs, Fancy Dress – Central Air Rifles – Naughty Adult Only Section Now Open'. The font is impossibly jaunty and the sign is grimy with age. Inside, the large shop is covered in every tacky plastic joke, gimmick and trick. Novelty sunglasses next to glitter wigs and flick combs. Fake vomit and dog poo, and chewing gum that turns your tongue blue. Some of the packaging has been here for years, the print gone yellow. Some things are relatively new, like the layers of tat hanging from the walls. The glass cabinets of the counters house air pistols and BB guns, but the staff discourage any real inspection. Grim-faced and angry at nothing, their eyes never leave us the entire time we are in here.
We stumble into the 'Adult' section, but it is harmless 'postcard-raunchy' stuff, the same things that have been titillating schoolboys since my dad was one: naked playingcard decks, pens where the bikini disappears, furry handcuffs and penis-shaped straws: the sort of tat that gets stapled to the bride-to-be's veil on her hen night. In other circumstances it would be adorable to see such things billed as 'adults only', a throwback to a more innocent time of postcard double entendre and Carry On raunchiness. But here, under the aggressive stare of the counter staff and the fading stock, it all feels like a lie.
* * *
It's the third circle of a dusty hell. Luminous cards and marker pens draw attention. Faded printing behind a beaded curtain offers incites to auto-stimulation and flaccid sadism. The floor is an ashy concrete, the smell is of cobwebs.
I couldn't muster an erection in here no matter whose help I had. It is a new and exciting experience, though, as our balls have been weighing heavier and heavier, as if the centripetal force of our circumnavigation has been pulling them outwards. We take in the stock with a circle of vision, stuck to the centre of the room by sour, hate-filled gazes, then exit.
* * *
'I'm not looking forward to this,' says Jon.
'What?' I ask.
'Blackpool. It's horrible, it's going to rain and it's terrible. Did you see in there?'
'Yeah, but it can't all be that bad, can it?' I reason, but realising that by the end of the sentence I don't seem so sure myself.
'Look at that, that's the type of place we're at.' Jon points to another large vinyl sign. It's advertising 'Braddy's Sunday Lunch' at a place called The Flagship, with the face of a man, I presume Braddy himself, smiling on the right-hand side. But Braddy's face is contorting into a horrible grin, like he's about to laugh and be sick at the same time, his red face squinting at the mirth of what I can only guess to be torture off camera.
'The thing that baffles me,' says Jon, 'is that they must have taken a number of photographs that day, and that, with his red sweaty face, must have been the best one.'
'He must be some sort of monster,' I agree.
* * *
We run for the front, Midge making sure we watch out for trams. This is the first place we've felt any danger. There's traffic up and down the wide road that separates the gaping shops from the gaping sea. The pier offers a familiar safety, and the high roof frowns over a low arcade door as I touch an Elvis. Then we hear, unmistakably, the theme tune to Coronation Street.
Outside on the pier a mini carousel spins howls from trapped babies. I feel like we're being followed, watched and circled by the malformed and misshapen. A stall hosts a lynching of waistcoated meerkats. Taller, heavier than Midge, they hang by the neck, swinging the creak of the dead. By one of the attractions, a man in a stained boiler suit sloshes blood from a bucket into a drain. The planks are slippery and stained.
BLACKPOOL Central
Opened: 1868 (Architect: J. I. Mawson)
Length at start: 1,518 ft (463 m)
Length now: 1,118 ft (341 m)
Burn baby burn? Fires in 1964 and 1973 gutted the theatre buildings. The jetty was demolished in the seventies.
The Central Pier has always been considered the 'fun' one and boasted the installation of an automatic chip dispenser in 1932. Fire Station Manager Sean Hennessy leads practice exercises on Central Pier and says about the difficulties: 'We have to take our own water and run hoses for up to 300 metres as there is no other access. We can't use the seawater as it is too far away for our pumps.'
We wait outside the Central Pier for a reporter from the local paper to meet us. While waiting, Midge seems to resolve something in his head and says:
'Guys?'
'Yeah?' we say.
'If they take your picture for the paper, can I be in it?'
It seems such a little thing (the issue, not Midge) and as both me and Jon are far too shy to throw our weight around as far as who gets to be in the pictures, we don't say no.
'We'll see what happens,' I say, immediately nervous about the added pressure of getting Midge in. I ask Jon: 'So this reporter, did she sound all right?'
'Yeah,' says Jon in what only I recognise as his best Sid James. 'She sounds a right sort.'
It's funny because it's the exact opposite of what Jon would say, and we enjoy a mental liberal high-five at being above that sort of thing.
Blackpool isn't what I wanted it to be. Screaming 'FUN' from every surface, it looks anything but. On the grey of a cloudy afternoon in September people wander around in shell shock, waiting to be told how to enjoy themselves next. A homeless guy sits in a doorway reading. He looks like the most cultured person for miles.
Opposite the pier is a row of seven or eight gift shops selling exactly the same stuff. A large sign on one reads 'BLACKPOOL ROCK, NOVELTY GIFTS, TOYS, LIQUID GOLD', seeing no tension or irony in selling buckets and spades next to amyl nitrate.
Blackpool doesn't know what it wants to be. It seems torn apart by its two personas, as the family destination of the north on the one hand, with its illuminations, funfair and award-winning beaches, and as Brighton's poorer, darker, older brother on the other, a sort of stag and hen party Gomorrah. The pubs that advertise as 'family friendly' also have faded patches of vomit on the driveway and only serve in plastic glasses in case two parties of stags meet. The veneer of FUN! FUN! FUN! is cracking, the signs are getting dirty and worn, and the 'cheap and cheerful' attitude is slowly losing the 'cheerful'.
* * *
There are two more piers to go here, but first – with our backs to the greying waves and the rusting railing – we have to have our photos taken. It's for the local paper. We crush together and try to look human. The reporter is blonde and young. She has questions and enthusiasm. She smells incredible. She's alive.
* * *
The reporter seems to recognise us immediately, probably because we look like we've been dragged around three-quarters of the country. Maybe it's the near-hysterical unreality of my weary brain, or it could be the complete lack of female company for nine or so days, or perhaps it's just the sight of a friendly face in such a grim, brash environm
ent built entirely on facade, but she is stunning. I know that it must be mostly my mind fucking with me, because real people are not surrounded by a halo of light.
The interview flies by, and she's smart enough to know which bits she can cull from the press release and skilful enough to get us to say the quotes she can use.
'What do you think of Blackpool?' she asks.
I panic, knowing anything I say will have to be a lie.
'We've only just got here,' says Jon smoothly, 'but we can see it's going to be a big part of the book.'