MARY'S BIT or THE SANDS OF TYNE
It was a rite of summer. Sunny Sundays invariably saw an exodus from the city, as the electric railway carried load after load of families, older members laden down with baskets and towels, younger fry frisking at the leash, away, away, away to the windy shore of the North Sea. It was time for a trip to the seaside! To Tynemouth, perhaps, or Whitley Bay, or North Shields. Which would it be?
Fortunately for us impatient youngsters, preparations were quickly made. Mum packed a shopping bag with meat-paste sandwiches, bread slices cut thick from yesterday's loaf. There would be apples, green and crisp, which she ate with a spoon. There might be biscuits hidden below her handbag, and bags of crisps with their individual blue paper twists of salt, and, lastly, a huge thermos of tea, well-sweetened and milked. Ordinary fare, to be sure, but the food of the gods after the long walk down from the Victorian railway station, taking us past rows of boarding houses with their neat little gardens and mercurial signs flashing VACANCY or NO VACANCY. We tumbled by, the smell of the sea already in our nostrils, scorning the fairground we passed on the way, with its rides and stalls and lounging ne'er-do-wells. It was the beach which called us.
And what delight it gave! There, seaweed made a slippery carpet on limpet-encrusted rocks around dark pools of water trapped along the shoreline, microcosms of the ocean. Small, dark crabs lurked boulder-like in them, the occasional rippling fronds of a sea-urchin dancing lightly in the current. Round, raspberry-like sea creatures lurked in sinister clusterings near the waterline. Were they really the bloodsucking mutant jellyfish with which we scared each other? Taking no chances, we paddled in pools scoured clean of marine life each time the tide turned.
But the adults were less squeamish about jellyfish, more coy about clothing. Men rolled up their trouser legs to the daring height of mid-calf, slung their jackets over their arms and entered the surf for a paddle. Even dad, who was rarely seen without a tie and immaculately polished shoes, got his feet wet. We children, in scratchy woolen bathing-suits, rushed in and out of the water, frolicking loudly. We had donned our waterwear by modestly contorting winter-pale bodies behind towels held up around us by tightly permed and corseted mothers and aunts. Later, these female relatives would brave the briny themselves, holding frou-frou petticoats above their knees, Kiss-Me-Quick hats perched at a jaunty angle on back-combed hair stiff with hairspray. The salty wind cutting in from the horizon to give us all goosepimples had come "all the way from Roosha", our parents commented, downing another cup of hot, sweet tea and munching on sand-gritty sandwiches.
But what cared we? There were sand-castles to be built, intricate fortifications topped by a piece of grey driftwood, waiting to be captured on black and white deckle-edged photographs for the family album. The castle's underground network of tunnels carved haphazardly in the wet sand were a constant snare for unwary beach cricket players. Caves which were under water at high tide had to be explored, as we scared each other half to death with tales of kids perishing in kicking agony, trapped by the raging tide.
Along the railed promenade, deckchair men sold tickets for renting wood and canvas loungers, which invariably took ten minutes of wrestling to get ready for use, with much muttering under the breath as renters grappled with the Escher-like pieces of furniture. We just sat on a blanket, if we could be dragged out of the water.
Meanwhile, a brass band played gamely on, melancholy and slow, over the sound of crashing waves, mewling seagulls and music from the fairgrounds, blended with hoarse shouts from sideshow men and the screams of teenagers splashing each other with sea-water. And over it all lay that distinctive seaside aroma, a tantalizing mixture of salt air, frying chips, drying seaweed and the occasional dead fish temporarily overlooked by the swooping seagulls.
If we were lucky, we might be treated to those delights available only at the coast. There might be paper cones of snail-like "whellecks", winkled out from their shells with a free pin. Or candy tuft, cloudy and white, sweet on the tongue for a few moments and then gone as quickly as summer was speeding by. There were long ropes of licorice, and hard-crusted toffee apples whose flat tops defied our teeth even as the apple juice ran down our wrists. And when we had eaten, we scavenged along the shore-line, booty popped into our sand buckets. There might be chalky coloured, ridged barnacles, or a weathered piece of bleached and knotty driftwood, or waxy yellow, brown or white shells which had survived the grind of the surf. Long strands of brown-olive seaweed were collected, pulled from piles deposited against rocks, for its wetness or dryness, so it was said, accurately, predicted the weather.
And so the afternoon rolled by, as our city-pale skins were burnt scarlet by sun and salt. We played until the setting sun's liquid gold path made a bridge from horizon to shore. Then, because it was Monday the next day and that meant work and school, it was time to pack up the towels and the thermos, the shells and the seaweed, and go home. As stars twinkled and winked over the restless sea and strings of coloured lights popped on along the promenade and in the fairground, we toiled back up the street to the railway station, our shoes uncomfortable with sand. On the return journey, half asleep, we children looked out at the backs of houses as we travelled by, clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack, all along the shining rails to Newcastle, nodding, dozing, dreaming.
AND FINALLY
According to Lord Byron, writing letters was the only way to combine good company with solitude. In reminding subscribers the next issue of this newsletter will disturb the solitude of their inboxes on l5th October, we trust their thoughts do not immediately fly from Byron's aphorism to Hubert's angst in Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John when he announces the receipt of horrible, black, and fearful news.
Whatever the news may be two months hence, we'll see you then!
Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing pages of links to free etexts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/
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