burnt down in the 1970s
I stare out at the gangrenous remnants of a burnt-out and buckled boardwalk.
I once walked along here in my long white gown to my wedding reception at the pier’s head.
A teenage discotecque, held every Saturday afternoon, paraded the latest fashions.
Mecca Ballroom danced the night away, and in the early hours there were women
Weeping over fights among bouncers and drunks.
New wooden jetties, hoping to entice wealthy yachts and bearing ‘No Swimming’ signs, have become diving platforms today for sunburnt disobedient boys in trunks.
Diving through oily green waves of frothy seaweed, they wiggle down with the pipe fish and grey mullet to boat wrecks, over-stewed and stuck in the bed of blue-grey clay, razored with cracked cockleshells and broken bottles.
Here is the underworld city to hermit crabs, sea slugs or the occasional murder victim anchored by heavy slabs of concrete.
by Southampton Old Lady – August 2013
‘Kuti’s Royal Thai Pier’ in 2010
I just love decaying old grandeur. Man builds homes made from Earth’s riches. These compete with embellishments of wealth and status. Then, Mother Nature creeps in and slowly claims it back again. I took this photograph of The Star Hotel in Southampton.
She changed her costume for each number and had the energy of a zebra (which one of her costumes resembled. See left). The crowd loved them – Just as they loved Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Tony Benn at Glastonbury. Some of the young crowd assumed that we too must be ancient stars, being elderly, and my husband was asked for his autograph. Bob Dylan is playing here in the autumn and to quote his lyrics: “May you stay, forever young”.
