Silence By The Sea
By RAWLE KNOX
THE lights are going out all over Gala Land ; the Ghost Trains haunt their platforms in desolate immobility and there are no more Honeymoon Rides for yet another year. The last stick of rock has been sucked to its gluey end. Yet in spite of the drear prospect of winter, the season of our seaside
entertainers does not fade away in slow despair ; with neither bang nor whimper it is cut off while still at admirably full tilt. Last week at Scarborough the Fol de Rols in the Floral Hall were still making jokes about Manchester's rain and Dr. Sununerskill's
margarine. The dare-devil Javelins, their torsos blue-tinged in a strong north wind, were diving acrobatically into the swimming
pool before a well-muffled but enthusiastic audience ; their only compromise with the weather was to warm their feet at the fire which had been used to ignite their leader for his forty-foot plunge in flames. Today the town is one of shuttered silence.
To pursue an occupation from June to late September on the unblinking assumption that the sun will always shine and the customer be always happy requires a spirit which, in these days, we are popularly supposed to lack. Yet round Britain's shores this winter there will be plenty of men gazing out into the driving rain and visualising the profits they will make from a Giant Coaster next blazing summer. In the twilight world of seaside entertainment there is only a gritty living to be scratched, and it is harsh to classify a man as a drone because he spends four months of the year collecting pennies from pin-tables. For him, October descends with the clang of an iron curtain. There are a few, like the respect- able middle-aged lady who runs a flea circus, who can turn their eyes to the winter heights of Olympia. But she was specially trained by a Belgian flea professor, even down to the little jokes in her patter about the affection of the performers for their audience. As an amateur, she used to take her troupe with her to parties to perfect her technique ; she gave the matter much thought before turning professional.
For the common run of deck-chair attendants and ice-cream men there is nothing but hibernation and hope. The "conference trade" tides a number of people over the winter, but catering for the sharply varying whims of assorted politicians, scientists and chess enthusiasts Is not a very gratifying business. It is surprising how many of those who depend on holiday-makers for a living really enjoy doing so. The man who owns the telescope that picks out the satellites of Jupiter by night and the herring fleet by day would not change occupations with anyone. Mr. Billy Cook, of Scarborough, although a trained mechanic, is sure that he chose rightly when he became a hotel porter twenty years ago. And one cannot say that he lacks the spirit of adventure ; he volunteered, quite unnecessarily, to join the R.A.F. during the war. It was not his fault that they stationed him in the hotel opposite his own.
It was by chance that I attended the season's obsequies at Scar- borough, but it proved as good an observation point as any—neither a Frinton nor a Clacton, but a bit of both and enough of neither. Both physically and in social ton it descends from the rarefied hotels of the South Cliff, fronted by passionately blazing flowers and by well-preserved old bodies doing a steady minuet round the putting green, to the more easily definable air of the rock shops, amusement arcades and whelk stalls that are the background to the harbour. Thence the streets climb again, as do the prices, among the board residences of the North Cliff. Almost any visitor can find his own level.
As the lids slam down for the last time on the ice-cream tubs, as the tripper-carrying M.V. ' Coronia,' whose Captain Baker must surely be the only skipper to croon to his passengers during the voyage, takes her annual trip to be refitted, and as the landladies retire to the kitchen for the winter, one section of the town's trade bursts into brief life. The big shops have hired out all manner of goods for the season, from the bicycle which nobody quite managed to win at skeebeil to the bed, perhaps, on which you were sleeping ; the Whip, the Giant Wheel and the Dodgem Cars have mostly
been bought on the never-never ; and the victuallers have allowed credit to run on. Now is the hour of the money-collectors, unless they want to whistle until the end of another season. As far as Scarborough is concerned, this extended credit system works well, and any business arrangement that works well for Yorkshiremen must be based on sound sense. But the season just over, they say, has not been a good one. There have been visitors in plenty, bronzing themselves under the free and unusually generous sun, but the money has been sadly lacking. Down in subterranean Gala Land, where for the sixpenny entrance fee you could listen to Don Pedro and his band (with a not too tactfully blazoned " D.P." on each of their music stands), the audience filed warily away at the end of each performance, easily resisting the blandishments of the old lady who invited them to knock over two empty cigarette cartons with one billiard stroke.
With the departure of the visitors and the hundreds of temporary employees—very many of the latter to their homes in Ireland and Scotland—the people of Scarborough begin to creep back into their own. The father of Philip Mickman holds court in the George ' and recalls the season of his schoolboy son's Channel triumph. The landladies go shopping and make it plain that they do not expect to be charged holiday prices. A local boy and girl walk into one of the town's more expensive bars. "Did you do that write-up in the paper tonight ? " she asks. " I covered the story," he corrects her with some importance ; then, polite in his turn, " Weren't you in any of the shows this year ? " " I was away in the South of France when the season began," she says effectively, "or I expect I'd have been with the Fol de Rols. Ballet's my speciality, you know." Native Scarborough is reasserting itself.
At the Town Hall, situated adroitly between the Heights of Scar- borough and the harbour, the councillors sit back and scheme another season. This year they grabbed at the Ryder Cup as a tourist. bringer, and promptly voted the Professional Golfers' Association £5,000 worth of assistance. What can they find for next year ?, Of one thing you can be surprisingly certain. Whatever the enter.: tainments thought up by the town councils of Britain's seaside resorts for the next season, you, if you visit the seaside, will duly go and be entertained by them. There is a streak of the holiday camp mentality even in those who look down the longest noses at the unblushing Mr. Butlin—and these summer planners know it. Holiday resorts impose, themselves upon us, however much we protest our individu- ality. With only two or three weeks' holiday at our disposal, we like to know what fun we are going to get ; we shut our eyes to the fact that long before next summer those seaside town councillors will. have decided just what fun we are going to like.
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