Monday 23 June 2014

A brief introduction to the graffiti of Margate

I love many things about Margate. One of these things is the graffiti. I am collecting them either in photos or just writing them down. This is my new hobby.

Lots of it is the usual stuff; teenage declarations of love like “Kai 4 Sashy”, so-and-so hearts so-and-so. Lots of those. “Devon loves Niall” at first seemed to be a normal one until I noticed the swastika beside it.

There are some romantic and mysterious equations like "ARSE + TITS" (unfortunately no = so we’ll never know...) and this one, which has to be shown as a photo to be fully appreciated (but not understood, at least not by me...I think/ hope it's a positive message though):


Some graffiti is a bit indecisive; “Hi or hey”.

Then there are the really profound ones: “DAZZER IS A MONKEYCOCK. X” (the kiss after is a nice touch); “Children have the right to say no to war”; “What if the hockey cockey is what it’s all about?” (I like the spelling on that one) and “I am broken.” Quite poignant that last one.

But my favourite so far is some anti-Terry-Wogan graffiti; “Terry Wogan got paid £10000 every year for Children In Need. Greedy pig.” Of all the old BBC presenters to attack, it seems a strange choice...

Saturday 21 June 2014

Pavements

Dead dog on the pavement. I eye the driver’s eyeballs to make sure she really is sorry, like she says she is. I’m not sure if the eyes are wet from the guilt or from the Margate wind. Council van pulls up. It says ‘Waste and Disposal’; some burial. Sleep tight small creature. I turn away as the man in the uniform polo shirt takes a bin bag out of the van and scoops him up, placing him inside another bin bag, ready for the grand wasteland burial, with all the trimmings, the teabags and the coke cans. I see the head flop and the blood on the pavement and I turn away, hand to my mouth.

Another Sunday been and gone. Dead dogs, “Fuck you” written on someone’s front door, beside their letter-box, churches with demolition orders, brothers stabbing each other playfully, bright boys skipping school, there’s shit on the pavement that seems to be seeping up eternally. Boys running cold down alleyways saying, “He’ll pay, I’ll make him pay.” It’s just another day, another day.

I move house from the quaint, quiet haven of the tourist city where an English god looks down on all; the place where god is stacked up in stone blocks that touch the sky, where the streets are cobbled and boys go to the school of kings where they learn how to speak more loudly than the girls and the rest, they learn to thrive and to turn their collars up against the world and barge on through, aided and abetted by centuries of greedy golden bias. I trade in the safe and the bland for the sea and the treachery, the dog mess and the string vests, the fake tans and the empty seaside bandstands.

The boys and girls beside the seaside learn different skills. They are kings and queens wearing stolen copper crowns. They learn how to survive, not how to thrive. They are harder and their experiences more essential, more desperate. They know how cold the wind can blow and they know that there are no spare blankets in the empty cupboards. They haven’t seen mum and dad for some time but not because they are closed off and up into boardings; but because they have never met dad and mum is always at work or looking after the others who are smaller than they. But the sea shines bright in the sun and makes promises of escape to distant lands. The sea keeps making promises that it cannot keep.

Frances goes out in the morning to visit the charity shops. She comes back later with books and concern. She says that she has examined the faces of the people here and they all look as if they are experiencing trauma. I laugh, but yes, she is worried and she is right. I noticed this the other day. The faces are perplexed or angry or worn with suffering and despair. She says that they won’t meet her eyes. Mistrust. Do not make eye contact.

Unless you are Jenny. Jenny makes eye contact with as many as possible. She enforces it. I like Jenny’s rules. Say it like it is, be friendly, be open, don’t board yourself up; that is only for the broken. Never give up. Jenny, 75, braces herself against the wind and the hostilities and aims to make community. Tireless.

Pavements hosting all manner of visitors. Sofas, dirty unsprung mattresses, broken plant pots, egg shell, banana skins but no slapstick payoff, seagulls picking through tatty grease-soaked chip-papers pulled from overflowing sun-baked bins, cigarette butts from here to eternity, empty paracetamol packets, the constant rattle of empty cans rolling home to the gutter, shoes – all sizes all colours, lolly-pop sticks coated in colourful sticky e-numbers, chewing gum fresh from the mouths of babes, a crumpled cardigan settling into the fabric of the tarmac, spit, bottle tops, broken glass, old sewing machine, dirty nappies and feet thumping on through, keep thumping on through; drop but don’t stop, don’t stop.

The days are getting hot and there is heat on our skin, making us want one another. Girls looking at boys as they swagger past, shirts off, muscles flexing. Boys looking at girls, the eternal fascination with legs, legs, legs, short shorts, light summer dresses hanging lazily from sun-brown shoulders. Heads turn and turn and skin burns whilst the adults think ahead to the time when the sun will go down and when heat might pass from skin to skin, lip to lip. Mouth to mouth, we breathe life back into one another in the dark. Just wait for the sun to go down.

The children are absorbed in other past-times. They run and totter on the sand, legs unsteady beneath ecstatic hearts and they cannot hide their excitement at the sandcastles to be built and the bucket and spades do a roaring trade, whilst the adults plaster the sunblock onto their small people and watch them run off into the water, splashing and screaming when that first wave hits their ankles and they brace themselves for the next and the next all day long until the sun gets tired.

Sand in sandwiches, crunching in mouths with warm cheese and wilted lettuce. Shells picked up and cherished until the next favourite is found and pocketed and the last is forgotten. And then sandals and shoes and dry clothes are reunited with owners, always with difficulty and barely-behind too-small towels held by up by mum.
   
A little bit of sand is taken home in shoes and in the corners of castle-shaped buckets that swing from pushchairs as the sun goes to bed and the night sky lights up with dramatic scene-stealing effect and it’s the most beautiful thing that you have seen all day, apart from the one you’ve got your eye on, who, by now, with any luck, is standing beside you, beside you, getting closer and closer by the minute. With any luck they’re beside you. With any luck this is sun stroke; stroking brought on by the sun. The sun makes us fall in love so quickly.