Lockdown - Day #29

The Monday night queue for Dixieland is full of a slew of new Mods, old Punks, Soul Boys, us Dole boys and hundreds of smoothies and regular punters. A couple of New Romantics totter along the wooden plank floor. Below us all is the enticing maw of the English Channel. Rubbing gently against the iron legs that prop up nightclubs, pubs, bingo halls and half Seaside’s teenage population.

Inside the darkness, the stench of illicit cigarettes clings to the red velvet. The clash of Blue Stratos v Old Spice v Brut 33 goes on. The sweet cloying stickiness of the latest perfume merges with hairspray and tons of Country Fayre gel. 

A maximum of 3 songs per tribe… The funketeers dominate the dancefloor, meanwhile tribal conflicts simmer and the sordid lure of infidelity permeates every conversation. 

I promise I’ll dance with you next week…

Lockdown - Day #28

Loose change jangling in Levi’s pockets. Chip shop vinegar on the tiled floor. The Blue Room beckons. A day spent watching Pete play Space Invaders, Air Hockey tournaments that went on for the length of the summer holidays.

Along the Langney side of the pier, beyond the midway bar with the girl from Nottingham handing out the free pints and expensive kisses. Tourists grip the side rails or hunker down in the deckchairs.

A small souvenir hut full of dull shells and inaccurate replicas of the pier. Stuffed seagulls and badly made beachballs.

The sound of money spinning out of the hands of the unemployed into the bingo-masters back pocket. 10cc’s maudlin hit plays on repeat. One day, some bastard is going to torch the whole lot and retire to the Canaries on the insurance…

Lockdown - Day #27

In the passenger seat, twiddling the radio dial, messing with the cassette player, trying to finesse the soundtrack of another day. The Mini/Triumph/Morris Minor/VW Golf glides up and down the seafront at dawn/dusk midday/midnight.

The girl at the wheel, the boy looking seawards. The postboxes are full of Valentine’s cards and the phone boxes echo to the latest dial-a-disc hit. 

Stop in the bus bay by the pier. "Just drop me here..."

Meanwhile the cassette finally plays the track he'd been searching for since Princes Park.

'If you ever feel the time to drop me a loving line
maybe you should just think twice
I don't wait around on your advice
You tell me I can go this far, but no more
Try to show me heaven and then slam the door
You offer shelter at a price much too dear
And your kind of love's the kind that soon disappears

So don't brag how you have changed
And everything's been rearranged
I thought all that was over and done
But I still get the same from Each and Everyone
Being kind is just a way to keep me under your thumb
and I can cry because that's something we've always done
you tell me I'm free of the past now and all those lies
then offer me the same thing in a different guise...'

Lockdown - Day #26

There is a green-grey Morris Minor heading for a breakdown just outside Southampton, trundling from Stone Cross to Paradise Drive via the seafront. 

Two boys, two girls. The music fills the car. 

Behind the car, the School Bus. Upstairs, at the front. A Grammar School boy ponders The Jam/Ramones, Ramones/The Jam. A yellow and green Max Records back on his lap.

He looks beyond the immediate.

The English Channel stretches left to right (as it always has done), lapping softly against the bloodied shingle. 

Despite the best will in the world. This ain’t no Rockaway Beach.

Lockdown - Day #25

The flags on the pier are cowering from the horizon, bullied by the eternal sea fret. Marine Parade (an interloper in the Grand scheme of things), smothered by the worn rubber of a million tyres. The Corporation buses grinding full-on Leyland chug, from the Point to the Head and all stops in between.

A Deux Chevaux stutters and shudders from East Dean to Churchdale Road. It takes a boy and a girl to drive AND change gear. The cassette player chews the latest release by St Pancras Records.

"Hegemony, hegemony...

You are the fairest creature

You are the fairest creature that ever I have seen,

And it's all for Monopoly

On all those pretty sexibles/sensibles,

That rot and raise a nation the capacity for change

An honest day's pay for an honest day's work

You can't change human nature

Don't bite the hand that feeds you…"

Lockdown - Day #24

A disarray of Seagulls on the sun wounded rooftops behind Leaf Hall, 

early on a Sunday morning. 

 

The crack-clank-rattle of the milk float, chinking up Marine Road. Hungover Mods swaying on lampposts, benign besuited beggar men, drifting towards the damp cradle of the beach.

Frosted kisses burned into the back of the heart. 

She never looked that beautiful, until now.

Darkened back room, sunflower curtains

and half a bottle of oakysmoke, 

easy to remember, 

inevitable she’ll forget.

These streets, eroded by memory, occasionally swept by the council. Blood money loose change, sluiced down the drains… ghost barmen still serving in the Burma Star Club…

A sweet tender suffocation, another cancer, another death.  The afternoon haze collapses beneath the ash swirls, buffeted by the prevailing South-Westerly.

Humour me and pretend we are all free...

Lockdown - Day #23

The taste of another Kronenbourg night reminds me where I am, not alone in a single bed. Dressed, out and up the steps back onto Marine Parade. Back over the rode giving the flying fists of The Crown & Anchor I wide berth.

The tide is inching back, the gulls are hopping from bin to KFC box. I can clearly make out the miles of anti-landing wire & wood rolling along the beach. All the way from the threat of Operation SeaLion to VE Day.

Six young men in two different bands, split into two teams and yet another rusted can of Pepsi is converted into an Adidas Mondial. A blur of tartan shirts, Levis and chukka boots. A brace of bikes stolen from outside the town centre Library are leaning gently against the dark blue railings. 

Final score: Hip Troop 13 v 12 Aztec Camera... 
(Based on time-honoured last goal stands tradition)

Lockdown - Day #22

It is tempting to leave the seafront and just pop into the Marine for a pint or two but we’ll leave that for Christmas Eve (or post cup-final lash ups). Equally tempting to pop into Fusciardi’s Ice Cream Parlour, all the while remembering Dayville’s ghastly but memorable Bubble Gum ice cream…

The rear of The Leaf Hall (never did know what it was for) looming over some rooftops, backrooms and bedrooms. The Seagulls starting to mass on the rooftops and railings. The humdrum, dead-drunk pubs become more plentiful.

Waking up in one of the back bedrooms, to the sound of gulls bending TV aerials and tapping against windows. Going to sleep in a damp basement flat, with the sound of taxi’s careening round the corner at club closing time, with the taste of Rico’s Special Burger on my lips.

Lockdown - Day #21

A young George Orwell escapes from his prep school (St Cyprian's) for an afternoon. He finds himself on the eastern side of the pier, he misses the tiny clutch of New Romantics edging their way home from Dixieland after another brush with the Soul Boys. He also fails to see Frederick Engels taking a lunchtime break from editing the Communist Manifesto.

Eric Arthur Blair (as he was then) is too busy looking at the fishermen selling their daily catch under the pier, meanwhile Douglas Bader and Tommy Cooper pass each other 45 years apart

Time strolls along the seafront. Sir Peter Blake's Butterfly Man barely visible in the distance. Roger Moore leaving his penthouse for a barely relaxing walk. The famous and notorious arm-in-arm, stretching the length and breadth of history...

All the while, the tide shuttles to the rhythm of the moon, relentlessly shimmying up and down the beach. Picking its way over the pebbles, seaweed and the daily decay...

Another day, another wedding ring lost at low tide.

Lockdown - Day #20

Meanwhile back on the other side of Royal Parade, the B&B’s and Guest Houses transform into Hotels (no motels or Holiday Inn’s). The number of potential party venues increase. Eighteenth and Twenty-first, Wedding receptions and cricket club dinner and dances. 

Inside the sound of Southern Freeze warps minds. I don’t know what this is but I have to dance to it… On the road itself, the itchy/scratchy sound of FS1E (Fizzy’s) ricochet between the parked Capris and Allegros. The Hailsham Boys are in town, all Saxon and Iron Maiden. 

Meanwhile, Claude Debussy takes his daily walk along the promenade with his inamorata the young Emma. His life in exile only enlightened by the memory of her delicate kisses in the morning and the music of the sea… the eternal music of the sea!

Lockdown - Day #19

The smell of the seafront, all damp salt, John Player Special and the distant tang of Sarsons. Above our heads the row of lights sails on to Holywell. 

Jumping down on to the shingle, loose stones tumbling towards the dried upper sand. The permanently waterlogged groynes, used as wind-shelters, goals and wickets. 

The arc of the stone from hand to sea.

Lockdown - Day #18

It isn’t all sunshine, murder and Christmas on this walk. Now that the green to the right has disappeared, the taste of Creamline Toffees starts to invade the pallet. The prom is strewn with “toffee wrappers and this mornings papers”… 

Young spirits hold hands and try to ignore the feral lust that washes over them like waves. In the distance, satisfaction, recrimination, isolation and ultimately reconciliation melt into the horizon. She looks at him through a deep fringe and he looks at her through the silence.

The low rumble of the corporation cream and blue number 3 single decker merges with gull skaw from behind the retreating Redoubt. The sounds of teenage years push in and out… A telecaster skank step, a Rickenbacker hum. 

Lockdown - Day #17

Torn old copies of the Eastbourne Gazette and Herald, smudged newsprint and yellowing paper stuffed under the seat of THAT seafront shelter. The ripped clothes and the naked body of a girl on the beach. It is Christmas Day and the Sussex Constabulary swarm over the cold windswept pebbles. Still remembered and still try to say a prayer for her on Christmas Day. Poor Nicole (RIP).

Another winter and THAT shelter is home to a different kind of tragedy. An old homeless man, regular visitor to Seaside off-licence, wrapped in differing editions of the Gazette/Herald, moves along the bench to a cold teenage boy. Raised voices, a misunderstanding, shouting and the youth runs away towards Langney. It was just a misunderstanding.

The pace always quickens when walking by... So, time to move on from THAT shelter. Seagulls pirouette above, the sun silhouettes them high in the Sussex heavens and the (at first tinny) sounds of a ghetto-blaster reach out from above the shoulders of a group of golden souls… 

“Run for the shadows, run for the shadows

Run for the shadows in these golden years”

Hero of the British Art Resistance

Billy Childish formed the "non organisation" The British Art Resistance in 2008. An exhibition was held under the title Hero of The British Art Resistance at The Aquarium L-13 gallery in London. It featured a  collection of paintings, books, records, pamphlets, poems, prints, letters, film, photographs made that year.

The recent sad loss of Andrew Weatherall (Jan 2020) led me to seek out interviews featuring the 'reluctant superstar DJ' and all round top chap. I was delighted to see in one interview that he was wearing a 'Hero of The British Art Resistance' pin. A fact that reassured me of his credentials as a champion of the under-achievers of the world. 

Apart from being a DJ, musician, remixer, record label owner, fan of A Certain Ratio and artist - he was a gentlemen in the truest sense of the word. Courteous, generous and wore a fine suit on occasion...

His succinct mantra seems perfect for a world packed full of pomposity and stupidity:

"If you're not on the margins, you're taking up too much room”

Lockdown - Day #16

Once the corner turns at 90º, the first thing that hits you is the Pier in the distance (a few days further along on this walk). The shingle shelf falls from stage right down to the gunmetal water. Ragged tooth groynes reach tentatively into the sea, whilst piles of imported stones weigh the land end down, making sure they don’t simply drift into oblivion. 

Inside the Redoubt, the remains of old wars and model villages are trampled in the rush to buy yet more ice-cream.

A film crew sets up in the catacombs. We are frozen in time. The sweetened scent of Country Fayre gel fills the whole room. “Lights, Camera, Action.” Her dark fringe gently caresses her eye-lashes. There is nothing more all-encompassing than love in the summertime on the Sussex Coast. 

No cannon fire today. Outside - The corporation railings, dark/light blue, broken by regular steps onto the shingle. Overhead the nightlights shimmer from here to Holywell. A sun lounge café squeezes itself onto the edge of a sliced and diced triangle of perfectly cut grass. We are spoilt for choice… More than we will ever knew!

Lockdown - Day #15

The English Channel, the tangerine sun and the Downs bounced wind often combine to create small rainbows that hover in the foreground when looking west towards Beachy Head. Meanwhile on the right, Treasure Island, a scene of late night raids and Smirnoff fuelled escapades. 100 paces on the bowling greens look in remarkably good condition as the Redoubt looms ahead. I never could remember when the Tank on the road side of the fortress actually arrived and why it ever did. There must be a plaque attached but I’m blowed if I can remember it.

The close packed fleet, avoiding the high-tide advances of La Manche, sit close together and the riggings clang in rasping harmony. Only an idiot would leave their oars in their boat – too many pubs and too many other idiots. The Lifeboat House behind me, with the beach winch, called out far too often and far too late to rescue members of the Harp Lager Appreciation Society (Marine Div). 

Turn left at the Redoubt towards the long glass and wooden fronted café. Stride by the discarded serviettes and the tomato shaped sauce bottles sitting next to the sugar shaker on the empty formica-topped tables behind the glass. I can hear a distant chikka-chikka from The Beech, a Friday night Ska band, drenched in Pernod and Black. The James Bond Theme skank-style saturates the sticky red carpet. One day my band will play in this pub, one day…

Lockdown - Day #14

Many thanks to all those already in the know. And to all of those who were up until now unaware. I can exclusively reveal that today I have been honoured by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and will henceforth be known as:

The Rt Honourable Lord Langney 

The Royal Beach Poet Laureate in Extremis

I am eligible to to take up this appointment and my place in the House of Lords effective from today.

The broad extent of my dominion.

Pay homage