A Cage To Hold My Dreams
The Sea-Town
It is the sea we are talking about here, the sea off Southwold,
the wild, rolling, listless, energetic North Sea with its
waves white-frothing onto the sand, foaming, dancing,
sliding, stroking the beach with strips of white lace
which disappear as quickly as they are laid out.
Sometimes the sea is smooth, graceful, poised, up on its toes
like a ballerina, or whispering and murmuring like talkative
old folk at the back of a church, and at other times
it has the loud, uncaring shout of a turbine, angry, self-obsessed,
a fighting machine banging the shore like a bully.
The sea is a clock without hands, ticking, counting, measuring
each hour without knowing or caring which hour it is,
as dark tonight as an alleyway before a murder, wiping its nose
shamelessly on strands of seaweed. Sometimes it tries
to snatch a few moment's rest at the narrow end of night
when all god's creatures are sleeping, but if the moon catches
it slowing down, it is whipped back to work and warned
of much worse to come.
Tonight is clear and moonful, with tiny specks of silver cloud
skulking in corners of the sky like souls forced to wait
on the vast doorstep of heaven. The thunder-showers of
early evening, which threw vicious winds at the trees
and had people darting indoors, have now moved north-east,
away from the town. At the water's edge, and on through
the long night, land-stuck fishermen pretend to catch fish,
their hunger and their women forgotten, while the sea opens
its dark, brooding soul to them.
Alas, the North Sea is not known for generosity and most
of them will go home empty-handed, to half a welcome
and reheated cottage pie. A few thousand people live
in this water-splashed, wind-swept seaside town, with its
narrow streets, double yellow lines, and guest houses
peppering the sea-front with permanent 'no-vacancy' cards
in the windows which allow the landladies to turn people away
without needing to say why. Their rooms are small and clean
and they still serve porridge but you have to ask at the desk
if you want three pillows on your bed.
Its the kind of town which you imagine has its own
chimney-sweep, the vicar is bald, the butcher is fat and has
a Lord Kitchener moustache, and the mail is delivered,
hours late, by a man on a red bicycle. Every morning,
the town wakes to the smell of seaweed and fried breakfasts
and the sounds of delivery vans and the barking of tiny,
double-chinned dogs. Most of the modest, two-storey,
small-window houses, built before the Napoleonic war,
have been modernised and given sea-faring names
and painted the colour of hair-gel or bath salts.
A white fronted bookstore on the main street has everything
you need to know about spastic colons and haunted Britain
and wok-cooking and the Kray twins. This is a town
where money talks louder than a rock band, where
property values climb every year like the kites in expert hands,
where the only way to be sure of a bed at the four-star
Crown Hotel is to be born in it, where the receptionist is
as indifferent as cabbage, and where waitresses smile coldly,
the way icebergs smile at sinking ships.
The town's one and only cinema, shrewdly aware that nobody
gives a hoot for James Bond or Superman, screens
old monochrome classics, (Casablanca last Friday,
Citizen Kane tomorrow night), for an audience old enough
to remember them the first time around. You can reserve
the same seat in the stalls all year round for three hundred
and fifty pounds, and you will get the same people around you
for weeks and months to come, discussing the finer points
of Singin' In The Rain and still in love with Fred and Ginger.
To the north of the town, small lakes excavated a few yards
inland provide birds with a place to meet and gossip
and make love. They are watched through telescopes
by small men who probably once collected train numbers and
now exist on thermos flask soup and brown bread baps.
On the horizon, further than a voice can carry, tossed by
strong headwinds, lonely beyond words, a dredger drifts, as
quietly as a mouse in woollen socks, no movement on board
at all, just one solitary light to tell the world, and other ships,
that it exists.
This is not everyone's favourite place. It is quaint and uncool.
It has no karioke bars or night-clubs or glitzy lights along
the seafront. What it has is the kind of sun which puts
freckles on children's faces and wind strong enough to peel
them off again. I feel at home here, safer than at any time
since leaving the womb. Its where my soul, which no-one
suspects me of having, can see God more clearly
than in any church I have ever knelt inside.
Southwold, Suffolk. 070801
the wild, rolling, listless, energetic North Sea with its
waves white-frothing onto the sand, foaming, dancing,
sliding, stroking the beach with strips of white lace
which disappear as quickly as they are laid out.
Sometimes the sea is smooth, graceful, poised, up on its toes
like a ballerina, or whispering and murmuring like talkative
old folk at the back of a church, and at other times
it has the loud, uncaring shout of a turbine, angry, self-obsessed,
a fighting machine banging the shore like a bully.
The sea is a clock without hands, ticking, counting, measuring
each hour without knowing or caring which hour it is,
as dark tonight as an alleyway before a murder, wiping its nose
shamelessly on strands of seaweed. Sometimes it tries
to snatch a few moment's rest at the narrow end of night
when all god's creatures are sleeping, but if the moon catches
it slowing down, it is whipped back to work and warned
of much worse to come.
Tonight is clear and moonful, with tiny specks of silver cloud
skulking in corners of the sky like souls forced to wait
on the vast doorstep of heaven. The thunder-showers of
early evening, which threw vicious winds at the trees
and had people darting indoors, have now moved north-east,
away from the town. At the water's edge, and on through
the long night, land-stuck fishermen pretend to catch fish,
their hunger and their women forgotten, while the sea opens
its dark, brooding soul to them.
Alas, the North Sea is not known for generosity and most
of them will go home empty-handed, to half a welcome
and reheated cottage pie. A few thousand people live
in this water-splashed, wind-swept seaside town, with its
narrow streets, double yellow lines, and guest houses
peppering the sea-front with permanent 'no-vacancy' cards
in the windows which allow the landladies to turn people away
without needing to say why. Their rooms are small and clean
and they still serve porridge but you have to ask at the desk
if you want three pillows on your bed.
Its the kind of town which you imagine has its own
chimney-sweep, the vicar is bald, the butcher is fat and has
a Lord Kitchener moustache, and the mail is delivered,
hours late, by a man on a red bicycle. Every morning,
the town wakes to the smell of seaweed and fried breakfasts
and the sounds of delivery vans and the barking of tiny,
double-chinned dogs. Most of the modest, two-storey,
small-window houses, built before the Napoleonic war,
have been modernised and given sea-faring names
and painted the colour of hair-gel or bath salts.
A white fronted bookstore on the main street has everything
you need to know about spastic colons and haunted Britain
and wok-cooking and the Kray twins. This is a town
where money talks louder than a rock band, where
property values climb every year like the kites in expert hands,
where the only way to be sure of a bed at the four-star
Crown Hotel is to be born in it, where the receptionist is
as indifferent as cabbage, and where waitresses smile coldly,
the way icebergs smile at sinking ships.
The town's one and only cinema, shrewdly aware that nobody
gives a hoot for James Bond or Superman, screens
old monochrome classics, (Casablanca last Friday,
Citizen Kane tomorrow night), for an audience old enough
to remember them the first time around. You can reserve
the same seat in the stalls all year round for three hundred
and fifty pounds, and you will get the same people around you
for weeks and months to come, discussing the finer points
of Singin' In The Rain and still in love with Fred and Ginger.
To the north of the town, small lakes excavated a few yards
inland provide birds with a place to meet and gossip
and make love. They are watched through telescopes
by small men who probably once collected train numbers and
now exist on thermos flask soup and brown bread baps.
On the horizon, further than a voice can carry, tossed by
strong headwinds, lonely beyond words, a dredger drifts, as
quietly as a mouse in woollen socks, no movement on board
at all, just one solitary light to tell the world, and other ships,
that it exists.
This is not everyone's favourite place. It is quaint and uncool.
It has no karioke bars or night-clubs or glitzy lights along
the seafront. What it has is the kind of sun which puts
freckles on children's faces and wind strong enough to peel
them off again. I feel at home here, safer than at any time
since leaving the womb. Its where my soul, which no-one
suspects me of having, can see God more clearly
than in any church I have ever knelt inside.
Southwold, Suffolk. 070801
