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I started my walk
in the Town Centre and drifted, allowing myself to go wherever my fancy took
me. I first walked towards the sea which is what I love and the reason I live
in Hastings and then I drifted to whatever attracted me. It seemed the colour
red was a beacon today –until greed got the better of me.
I drove through a
red traffic light. Sorry green traffic light I didn’t wait for you. Sorry red
traffic light. I wasn’t ignoring you. It was just that at 6.30 it was far too
early in the morning for me and I was unsure of where I was going.
After that, red
seemed to take on a certain significance.
Was I wearing red?
I had on my maroon bra, somewhat of a favourite since all those days of white.
I think of white bras, wearing them until they almost fell apart, safety-pinned
for Games then, embarrassingly, straps pinging mid match. And school pants,
worn under sex-destroying, brown over- knickers. White, off white, turning to
grey and then to dusters or shoe polishers.
I had almost put
on a red necklace but that felt too dressy for a breakfast meeting. I prefer, Unadorned.
A single ring. An occasional necklace. It is such ages since I wore earrings
that the pierced holes have long grown over.
It was only later
that I noticed red popping up. Admittedly I am in the Fairground on the Stade.
And if you can’t be colourful there, where can you?
The place is
shrieking colour. But oddly not a lot of noise. It might be sunny but the kids
are at school, so the fairground is quiet; screams of delighted, excited,
mock-terrified children are absent. They are at their lessons. School is not
out for summer.
However, there are
some takers for the rides. A father and late teenage daughter are having time
together. Daughter urges Dad onto the rides. Father looks faux reluctant.
“I wouldn’t do
this for anyone else”.
“Oh come on Dad.”
Pretending to drag
his feet, gurning at me in supposed terror, they clamber on to the Twister. Up
and down, round and round. Stomach lurching, I can’t see if Dad is smiling or
grimacing.
However, on scrambling
off the ride they make a bee line for the token kiosk – Dad in the lead. The ride,
The Caterpillar, a not too risky roller coaster. I laugh.
“Come on.” He
calls out to me, “You know you want to.” And I probably do but I leave Dad and
daughter to their private thrills.
I wander off and take
some photographs until I feel a presence. I am being watched by a man from the
Fun fair.
Sometimes people
don’t like you taking photographs. Health and Safety, Citizens Rights can raise
their ugly heads. I explain I am taking pictures for no particular purpose
except for fun. We talk. He had been a Londoner and had married into the Fun
Fair family – the daughter of the owner. He loves it: Hastings and the fun fair.
He has four children, bought three linked flats on the sea front for a song –
that time just before Hastings began to go somewhat price crazy.
He tells me about
vandalism, of thoughtless kids – “I blame the parents” – kids had once removed
pins from the rides that could have had terrible consequences; how he always
gets in an hour before opening and tests all the rides. You can’t be too
careful and Alton Towers squats on the conversation.
He offers me a
sweet. I hesitate only because I don’t really eat sweets. I smile inwardly as I
hear my Mum’s strict warnings that, as a child, I never understood – ‘Don’t
take sweets from strangers’.
“It’s a good
sweet. Werthers.” Brown butterscotch. Good.
I look around the
sign writing on the side of the Twister, handbags, hats, leaves, house tiles, scattered
to kingdom come by the Tornado. A man is painting a white swan, whiter. Red
lights silhouette the giant, spider-like arms of the ride; a masked figure, red-
jumpered stares out of the side of a yellow waste paper basket; ‘Two tokens per
person’, ‘Don’t forget your mat’ shout in red letters against yellow. Red and
yellow must be the colours in the fairground attention-grabbing consciousness.
I meander off,
cross the road and look at the blue and white huts selling soft shell crabs,
fish cakes, jellied eels and prawns, then down George Street. Always busy with
people sitting outside cafes or just wandering, aimlessly, holiday-fashion. I
glance at the shops that so aptly describe Hastings – the macabre displays in
the bric-a-brac shops; – a head strewn with nails, a stuffed deer, a gas-marked
mannequin, a bust of Beethoven, next to an old-loved teddy; two kitsch
figurines, next to a Madonna. Another shop sells stylish clothes – an indicator of Hastings change as more
Londoners are migrating southwards. The ubiquitous seaside rock, candy floss
and old fashioned sweet shops; and an old tobacco shop clinging on and reach
out to cigarette, cigar and pipe smokers.
I drift down towards
the pier, in my sights the red umbrella of William the Cone-Queror selling his not-to-be-passed-by
ice creams from his bicycle. He doesn’t have my favourite salt caramel today –
so I, boringly, buy Vanilla and go onto the pier to contemplate the sea and
think how lucky I am to live in this place that celebrates the melting pot of
the rough, the smooth, the tacky, the stylish, the edgy and the creative.
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