Bohemia Village Voice

A Rockanorey Story

Once upon a time, on the East Coast of Britain, at that time of year; the moon a fingertip pushed through cardboard, up to our ankles in poems about leaves, trees with roots spreading into centuries, branches ending in upturned kippers, slapping down on their fellows like Yugoslavs in downtown Detroit, like being left holding a ladder in the desert, a sideway’s grin from the Cheshire Cat, shows the moon has become a key text.
Yes, it is surreal to live in Hastings. I worried if a Yorkshireman like me would be accepted, but I soon found that nearly every Hastings resident is from somewhere else.
When I first arrived I stayed at Hayley’s place in Bexhill, where I’d got an interview in the morning. She persuaded her landlord to let me rent a flat in Hastings. She moved from Yorkshire four years ago. She’s half my age, and we inhabit different worlds, and not just politically. For Hayley, life has to be amusing, never threatening or dangerous. That night, we watched programmes I call bubble-gum for the brain.
As a child, my T.V. viewing started with Wrestling, followed by Doctor Who and Bonanza, then we had supper. My family would watch The News, all about Beatles and Stones with Maharishi Yogi, Mandy Rice-Davies, Christine Keeler, Richard Milhous Nixon, and Charles Millis Manson. After my bath, it was Callan, and then bed.
In the morning my interviewer is so camp, behind his desk, shoeless in lime green socks. I’m Key Stage Four, on work placement. He’s aware of my condition and the pills I’m on, so he decides on office work. He asks if I’ve read about the fight in town, I nod, he giggles. His attitude reminds me of Hayley, so I try to shock; I mention the man sleeping rough, frozen to death. He looks up from examining my file.
“He was one of you, K. S. 4.”
He takes a careful sip of hot tea.
“He failed,” (another sip), “to meet the conditions of his jobseekers’ agreement; his benefits were stopped and he dropped off radar.”
I’m despondent when I meet Hayley. Her jolly chatter on the bus to Hastings makes it worse. I ask to see The Stade and we go into the Fishermen’s Museum. We see the exhibits very differently. She sees the quaint boat, the fishermen’s photos, comments on their kind and gentle eyes, and likes the cricket ball, found 5 miles out. I notice the cannonballs from a forgotten age, weapons from both World Wars, pieces from enemy planes, and part of a flying bomb. Hayley exasperates me by saying it was too macho, and something more feminine should be on display. Once outside, one of our customary arguments was in the air.
Suddenly people were running, and then we were running, following down to the edge of the water, where we joined some fishermen. A Beachy Head storm brought up a suicide to be caught in a Hastings net, half a torso, stripped clean by tide and fish, looking like one of Anthony Gormley’s figures we’d seen on the Delaware roof. Fishermen pulled on gloves to release the bones, the nets being too valuable to cut.
Looking at that pathetic grisly reality, I wanted Hayley to say something amusing, trivial, and dismissive. Instead she held my hand for the first time ever, and I squeezed hers tight in reassurance. We both sensed in that moment, that although I was left wing, and she was right wing, our long friendship, like any bird, needs both wings, in order to fly.