Heaven on earth
Jeremy Clarke
Sunday morning I woke on the top bunk of a child's bunk bed unsure of my position, geographically speaking. Then I remembered. I was in Southend on Sea, Sarfend on Mud, where I first came to consciousness 45 years ago. The night before I'd been to a reunion of our class at South Benfleet County Primary School. The flat I'd woken up in belonged to the chap I'd sat next to on our first day there, when we were five. It made a big impression on both of us, that first day at big school, and we've been friends ever since. Neither of us were hippies, but for some reason he calls me 'Man' and I call him 'Man'.
We went for a fry-up at the Barge, one of the cafés underneath the arches on Southend sea-front. It's a Sunday morning tradition. Only this time we went there on Man's new Vespa. We wore his 'n' her Vespa designer crash helmets. 'I'll be Gregory Peck and you can be Audrey Hepburn,' he said as we got astride his scooter and wobbled away.
I love Southend. I haven't lived there for over 20 years, but it's home. After a winter of isolation and depression in rainy Devon, being on the hack of a Vespa on Southend sea-front made me feel as joyful as Ratty was on that spring morning at the start of The Wind in the Willows.
Man is on Prozac as well. He's always hated mind-altering drugs and me for taking them, and Prozac is the first one he's knowingly taken. But needs must in his case and now he's a convert. He bought the scooter as part of his recovery programme. As we sped along we childishly pretended to be members of the Prozac Posse, a feared motor-cycle gang that either loves its victims to death or drives them mad with complacency.
At the caft's underneath the arches on Southend sea-front you can sit at tables outside and gaze across the sea (if the tide is in) to the oil refineries in Kent. The light is brilliant, the air soft, and after being holed up in Devon, the space immense. Passing between us and Kent, even at that early hour, was a promenade of Harley Davidsons, American cars, custom cars, gleaming convertibles, joggers, strollers and roller-skaters. While waiting for the Barge brunch to appear, Man and I raked over the coals of last night's reunion.
The reunion had been at a pub on the marshes run by ex-classmate Martin. It was a bit strange to see a bloke you last saw in the Juniors, who looked more or less the same as he did then, presiding over a boozer.
Beforehand, I was apprehensive about meeting friends I hadn't seen for a generation. The main thing I remember about South Benfleet County Primary School is that we couldn't stop laughing. A fond memory possibly, but it's the one I've been left with. I worried that the passing years might have made us cagier, prouder and less able to laugh at ourselves as we used to, which would have been disappointing. But I needn't have worried. It was a hoot. It was as if a week had elapsed rather than in some cases 35 years. We spent the evening laughing, shouting reminiscences across each other, taking the piss out of each other, and on the way home bellowing all the songs we'd made up when we were kids.
And everyone was fundamentally exactly the same as everyone remembered them. We couldn't get over it. Dot was bewildered and witty, Man was the manic comic, Fie was the only one with any money, I as usual didn't have any, Ash was modest and smoking, Rick was profoundly sad, then briefly happy, then emotional, and landlord Martin was deadpan and nothing was too much trouble.
And as usual I was the one offering the drugs around. This time Viagra. But there were no takers as no one had any need or use for it. Not even Ash.
The only banality offered all evening was this: Fie started going on about the fox trouble he was having at home. He said they'd been ripping open his rubbish bags and scattering the contents all over his new drive, It was quickly seized on. 'I bet,' said Dot, that if someone at Bentleet school had told you that 40 years from now you would be sitting here chuntering on about foxes going through your rubbish bags, you wouldn't have fucking believed them.'
Man and I gazed across the sea to Kent as we did the post-mortem on the reunion. When they came, the fry-ups and the waitress who placed them in front of us were the Full English and the Essex Babe in their ideal Platonic forms. If heaven's anything like Southend sea-front on a Sunday morning, I'm changing my mind and applying.
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