I AM NOWHERE, I AM HERE

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Dad

Like my Dad, I spent the first few years by the beach and moved further inland to the town. I think the fondness of his earliest years by the beach never fully left my Dad. He has spent most of this life in towns but has this magnetic attraction to the sea: decorating the front garden wall of our town house with sea-shells.

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Mum

Having grown up in Seaton Carew, my Mum also has an attachment to the beach- as a place of both community and solitude. In moments of sadness, a deserted beach on a rainy day has been a sandy comfort blanket. I can locate myself in this feeling toward this seascape too. Hartlepool has many flaws, but the beach is its saving grace which always warrants my return.

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Nana

Since I was born, I've called my Nana ‘Beach Nana’ and have always associated her with Seaton Carew in her little white house on ‘The Cliff’ across from the beach by the green. Her opposite neighbour is the sea, a view which she is most fond of and which she never had in previous places.

‘The Cliff’ once looked over a crazy golf course, ice-skating rink and public paddling pool. Her house heard the screams and laughter escaping a theme park. Louder screams might be heard from the Victorian swimming baths filled with icy seawater. A bit farther down the road, people were flocking between rock shops, ice-cream parlours, small independent news agencies, and large amusement arcades.

Only murmurs of that remains now. The theme park is now a car park. The swimming pool is now filled with cement. Many shops have disappeared, though some have withstood; only like my Nana’s house, in a different shade of white, flaked by the erosive sea-air. Recently Hartlepool has tried to restore some of its lustre: rebuilding a crazy-golf course and bathing huts. The days of donkey rides and jet skiing are long gone; but the seaside retains its character and like its loyal residents, holds onto it vehemently.

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My Nana is one of those still wedded to this spot. She grew accustomed to the leisurely pace of the seaside and estranged from the dreary routine, piled houses and clogged air of her old town of ‘West Brom’. She recalls returning once to visit her family and feeling so distant from the place she once knew as home. When she arrived back in Hartlepool, she called her Mum and said she could “never go back again”. She never did.

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In this respect, I think I have always found Beach Nana to be an anchor for me in Hartlepool. All my life, she has lived there and will continue to for the rest of her life. Visiting is like a portal to a time before me, a vision of a Hartlepool I have never seen. These days, visiting can even just be a portal to a younger forgotten time in my own life.

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Today, an ice cream van was parked across from her house. It took me back to when I was maybe six or seven, spending a sunny afternoon at Nana’s, and dancing like a blind mouse toward the musical van for a 99. We strolled a little down the promenade looking for the best bench and settled on one golden with gentle sunlight. This scene brings total happiness to a six-year-old: facing her house, the salty air mixed with fresh-cut grass, swinging legs on a bench too high, hands a little sticky from the unsaved drips of ice-cream, squinted eyes where the sun breaks through.

Glancing at my Nana, also rescuing her ice-cream, her sticky older hands, her wind-blown paler hair. I knew in her squinty blue eyes; she was as content as I was.