Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside!

August Bank Holiday....  

            Great British traditions.... 

Everyone delights to spend their summer's holiday 

down beside the side of the silvery sea. 

I'm no exception to the rule, in fact, if I'd my way, 

I'd reside by the side of the silvery sea.

Especially, I think, when it's a Bank Holiday weekend, and there's a bloody virus all about.....

But when you're just a common or garden Smith or Jones or Brown,

At business up in town, you've got to settle down.

You save up all the money you can till summer comes around

Then away you go to a spot you know where the cockleshells are found

This is just a £3 dish of cockles and whelks, with lots of vinegar (and grit....), from.....

But my friend....

had the works.... by which I mean, a pint of cockles, a pint of whelks, two pints of shell-on prawns, two dressed crabs, two punnets of jellied eels, some smoked mackerel, and almost everything else that was on offer (though I lost count.....)

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! 

I do like to be beside the sea! 

Oh I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! 

Where the brass bands play, "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"

So just let me be beside the seaside! 

I'll be beside myself with glee 

and there's lots of girls beside, 

I should like to be beside, beside the seaside, 

beside the sea!

Timothy went to Blackpool for the day last Eastertide 

To see what he could see by the side of the sea.

As soon as he reached the station there the first thing he espied

Was the wine lodge door stood open invitingly

Grinning to himself, he toddled inside and called out for a wine

Which grew to eight or nine, till his nose began to shine.

Said he 'What people see in the sea, I'm sure I fail to see'

Then he caught the train back home again and to his wife said he

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! 

I do like to be beside the sea! 

Oh I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! 

Where the brass bands play, "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"

So just let me be beside the seaside! 

I'll be beside myself with glee 

and there's lots of girls beside, 

I should like to be beside, beside the seaside, 

beside the sea!

William Sykes the burglar he'd been out to work one night

filled his bags with jewels, cash and plate. 

Constable Brown felt quite surprised when William hove in sight. 

Said he, "The hours you're keeping are far too late." 

So he grabbed him by the collar and lodged him safe and sound in jail. 

Next morning looking pale, Bill told a tearful tale. 

The judge said, "For a couple of months I'm sending you away!" 

Said Bill, "How kind! Well if you don't mind, Where I spend my holiday!"

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! 

I do like to be beside the sea! 

For the sun's always shining as I make my way,

And the brass bands play, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay"

So just let me be beside the seaside! 

I'll be beside myself with glee 

and there's lots of girls beside, 

I should like to be beside, beside the seaside, 

beside the sea!

I have to say I love it, and I wouldn't trade it for all the tea in China (nor for all the Novichok (which actually means 'newcomer') in Russia, or elsewhere.....

"I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside is a popular British music hall song. It was written in 1907 by John Glover-Kind and made famous by music hall singer Mark Sheridan who first recorded it in 1909. It speaks of the singer's love for the seaside, and his wish to return there for his summer holidays each year. It was composed at a time when the yearly visits of the British working-class to the seaside were booming.

"It was, for a long time, used as a signature tune by Reginald Dixon MBE, who was the resident organist at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, between 1930-70."

(Thank you Wikipedia)

Not Dark Yet

Time will say nothing

Shadows are falling and I been here all day

It's too hot to sleep and time is running away

Feel like my soul has turned into steel

I've still got the scars that the sun didn't let me heal

There's not even room enough to be anywhere

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well, I found myself in the middle of a dark wood, mulling over the obscure paths we follow in life, and it occurred to me that my sense of humanity was going down the drain....

Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain

I saw this haunted, frightened tree, its trunk smashed by the wind, and, the thought occurred to me that,

I just don't see why I should even care

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

So, being a little footloose, and free of fantasy, I closed the heavenly door of my private and personal  dwelling, through whose leaded panes the sun was winking goodbye,

Wished the fish in my moat farewell, envying for a moment their gelid blood, their fourth degree turpitude,

And, choosing not on this occasion (that  ontological option - free choice! or is that epistemological?) to extricate my old bicycle from the clutches of the spreading bracken,

I light out for the territory, fearful that some Aunt Sally might try to sivilize (sic) me....

You know, I really can't stand it?  I been there before.....

Well I been to London and I been to gay Paree

I followed the river and I got to the sea

I've been down to the bottom of a whirlpool of lies

I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes

As the dusky gatherings confuse me, and  the wheels fall off and burn, (the seat covers fade and the water moccasins die),

Well, there's too many people

And they're all too hard to please

I take refuge by the fireside of a quiet inn, picking at the warp and weft that hold together our current chaos.....

I feel the spinning of the world, the careering past light and dark so blinding as to take away my inspiration, my very breath....  Outside the bric-a-brac of accumulations sits fixed upon the shelf,

The tin of 'Brasso' out of reach behind the closed glass of time.

Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Down the street the dogs are barkin'

And the day is a-gettin' dark

As the night comes in a-fallin'

The dogs'll lose their bark

The tower of St Mildred's looms above me, bells chiming in practiced peals,

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

It is night and the light is dead.  I touch the boards above my face, the claustrophobic walls of seeming gentle life, wishing for a dawn against my will.....

I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from

Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer

It's not dark yet 

but it's gettin' there.

Not Dark Yet 

Bob Dylan

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If I Could Tell You

W H Auden (1940)

*     *     *     *

Footnote:

Not Dark Yet was recorded in January 1997 and released in September that year on the album Time Out of Mind.

In the Chapter entitled Paul Smith, at the top of page 213 of my 2011 Picador edition of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho, I read the following sentences:

Nancy asks, "How's the shad roe at Rafaeli's?" Right now, outside this store, it's not dark yet but it is getting there.

Whitstable

Nothing is what it seems.....

I am staying at the Palace Flop House, Whitstable.  Don't ask.  But, trust me, it's OK.  

It could have been worse.....  

I could have been staying at the Premier Inn.....

The Duke of Cumberland was full.  

Or so they said.....

There's a touch of the Caribbean about Whitstable, 

if you look hard....

And there's a spooky, Dickensian fog about the place as well.  I am buzzed by paraplanes near the Old Neptune.....

A pub that reeks of pitch and pine, not built for the flying age....

The machines rise, their motors sadly contrary to their imitations of the birds....

But they are almost the only things that move in this eerie dusk by the muddy shore.  

I am transported....

There are reasons to be in Whitstable.  One could be to pay tribute to Peter Cushing, famous for his appearances in various Frankenstein and Dracula films, (though possibly best remembered for repeatedly trying to get due payment from Morecambe and Wise) who lived here until his death in 1994.  

Another could be to indulge in the quintessence of the sea, by eating oysters.  A yellow tractor scurries about on the mudflats carrying baskets of the molluscs to the trucks on shore.  I watch, the salt spray mingling with my saliva....

Sadly the Royal Native Oyster Stores, incorporated by the Royal Free Fishers and Dredgers in 1793, is closed, but I find Wee Willie Winkle busy at the shuck in his kitchen and a poem comes to mind:

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,

"Is what we chiefly need:

Pepper and vinegar besides

Are very good indeed—

Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,

We can begin to feed."

But what is this?  Here I am in Whitstable, and what do I consume?  

Aw, Shucks!  My filter-feeding bivalves have swum here from Carlingford!

(They are delicious though)

(And I did buy, and eat, them in Whitstable.....)

Nothing is what it seems.....

But I digress.  My true reason to be here is to pay homage to David Rodney Aubrey Pearce, (otherwise known as DRAP)  who for 33 years taught English at my school, so was, in part, through his early involvement in my love of literature, responsible for what I am becoming (though I hold no grudge!)  

He died almost exactly two years ago, and, in belated homage, I have come to this modest seaside town clutching his wonderful book of poems, entitled The Street. 

David was born in Whitstable, and would recognise much of its quirky geometry, and signs of the past.  His poems take their title from a narrow promontory of shingle, shell and pudding stone which stretches a mile or more out into the sea here, entirely submerged at high tide, but enticingly exposed at low water.

Sheppey's bluff across the bay
Is sharper in the evening ray,
While eastwards to Reculver towers
The stacked onset of darkness lours,
And lights around the estuary
Half ring my patch of open sea.
Nor light, nor dark, nor sea, nor land:
Between uncertain worlds I stand.
One day, not now, I may not hide
From Time's encroaching, Night and Tide.

David was not only my teacher.  He was a friend, and a very good friend of my parents too.  He was also, in later years, a joint founder of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, which now enables an annual Greene-fest in Berkhamsted.  One of the last times I saw David was at a rare showing, at one of these festivals, of Dr Fischer of Geneva  (1984) a tv film of one of Greene's stories, starring James Mason, Alan Bates and Greta Scacchi.  Greta, in person, was with us at the screening, and it took an immense presence of mind for David to elude the sinuous advances of the diva.....

I don't think I could have resisted.....

Respect....!  Such mindfulness!

So..... I'm in Whitstable:

Pocked limpet rocks and puddingstone; concrete

Debris of the 'Invasion' scare; starfish

Stiff orange-fingered in the shallow wash - 

Are my boyhood remembrance of 'The Street',

Which at low tide thumbs our a mile to meet

The sunsets firing over Sheppey hills.....

David Pearce

'The Street', Whitstable

29th September, 2014

In the morning it is time for quiet contemplation and prayer, and I find myself seated in the chapel of St Edmund's School, Canterbury, just up the hill from Whitstable.  Here, just after the second world war, David was a pupil.  We stand to sing an advent hymn, and I hear his voice beside me:

O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high,

And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.....

Nothing is what it seems.....

In Memoriam, 
David R.A. Pearce

September 24th 1938 - November 11th 2016

[All pictures taken on my iPhone between 14.47 and 15.23 on Tuesday, December 4th, 2018]