Everywhere you look
you're reminded of the passage of time. Everything from the way the
pebbles that make up the shingle have worn smooth and the evolution
of the plants that grow among them (the sea cabbage especially) to
the sheds people have built, then abandoned. One, on a rise just
behind the shingle, barely hangs together, its rotten planks burst
apart by the wind exposing tea, salt and pepper still sat on a shelf,
a rusty bicycle. Another, its door come away, is full to what is left
of its rafters with brambles, the leaves pressing their eager faces
up against the window.
There are few buildings. Most of those
there are are strung out along the top of the rise behind the
shingle. A few yards inland, there is a small cluster of bungalows,
built in what once must've been a 'cheap and cheerful' style but
which now haunt us with visions of a world for which we can find no
modern equivalent. Mod cons – principally, the internet – have
had to be grafted on.
There is a road down to the sea that
ends in a car park. People come here to walk their dogs, entertain
their children or just sit and look. The tracks down to the shingle
are lined with pebbles people have painted and left there. This is a
pebble painter's paradise.
Sometimes, from here,
you can see the Isle of Man on the horizon. When you can, it's a
mirage: if the conditions are just right, the atmosphere refracts the
light, making the distant island (which lies way beyond the visible
horizon) appear surprisingly close. You can see its principal hills
spread out from left to right. I've never caught it in the act of
appearing or vanishing, though, although, the other evening,
conditions were such that you could only see the tops of its hills
poking above the milky obscurity. One can see how myths arose of
magic islands that appear and vanish and, scanning the horizon to see
if you can see Man from Silecroft, it's easy to start doubting the
science that tells you that what you're witnessing is no more than an
atmospheric effect.
