Jo Blogs...
The lure of the coast- why do we always come back to the edge of the land to worship the sea?
As a teenager I
remember the pure joy of living on baguettes and chocolate milk for two weeks
in Cap Ferat, sleeping beneath pine-groves – that is, until the gastric ulcer
took hold. The mistrals at night were terrorising. Where the day was scorching
lazy, and positive, at night everything
not nailed-down would shoot past you, bin-lids, rubbish, metal fences! Then,
the same paradise becomes a scary clanging windy hell – too simple, nature too near.
We seem to be drawn at the extremes of life to the lands
edge – old people cluster on rainy boardwalks to glimpse eternity, and children
dig all day within sight of endless waves.
Some distinct coastlines, snapshots real and imagined: The
Croatian coastline - we found bombed out
concrete shelters with nappies burst in the woods, past steel shipping
containers used as homes for soldiers, and now poor people – to arrive at the
beach as we expect them, sunbathers, holiday-makers, but also a kind of apartite
beween Russian bars and the local ones – the Russian bars with pounding disco
beats in the middle of the day and leering gangsters with gold bracelets
sitting at the bar.
There are coasts I have never seen but feel I own a part of
- the fantasy of the new England coast, the Isle of White which I feel calling
me;
I do remember childhood visits to truly stunning beaches on the
north Scottish coast, empty for miles and miles with just the cry of a
corn-crake above; 
I can go way back in my coastal journey to Polpero, Cornwall
in 1973 –ants as big as your whole
thumb, humming birds, and tropical plants – had we passed through a vortex that
took us to not-England? – this was so exotic;
Suffolk – the absolute dream of Aldeburgh, one of the purest
landscapes I had ever seen, at a pure time of life – Malcolm, my mentor at
drama school took us out of rehearsal and on a train, to the beach, to
experience the magic of the east coast light, as we were doing a play set on
America’s east coast – he died young not long after we came back, but his
spirit, the belief that quality is out there to be discovered, of which the coast there has been a reminder - has never left me;
An awakening of sorts – Port Merrion in the epic summer of 1982 where ‘the Prisoner’ was filmed – I remember it was during the Falklands
war, the country was sending harrier jump-jets to a distant coastline while the
family watched on the telly, and I made-do with assignations beneath the
belltowers during a rain-shower.
Sleeping on the beach, never as good as it sounds, I thought – cold and exposed, and sometimes chased off by guards.
Certain magic places – I always wanted to try out
Dungeness-bombed bleakness, nuclear power lights glowing over the shingle. But
I’ve never been.
We lived near the sea in Dublin ,
a huge smile of a bay that has industrial striped chimneys overlooking it, and
Joyces’ Martello towers, stunted, wartlike defenses against napoleon when Dublin was Englands Cap Ferat – and the celebrated kick-off point of Ulysses’ hero. I
canoed around freindly seals, and nothing could do better to round of your
day than that, and a pint.
Arriving in a huge storm, as flooding waves were coming over the seawall – Christmas day, driving the car round the beach in crazy patterns – feeling like escapees, but the other side of running off to the coast is desolation.
(west wittering)
I remember my first holiday alone, experiencing solitariness for the first time, wading through chest high water and looking out for miles over the glassy
I can’t see I will ever tire of the coasts, there always
seem to be more that come into focus, that Ive heard about - there are murmurs of somewhere everyone likes in Norfolk,
and I shall have to find out.
