In recent times I commented on a post featuring vintage pictures, I love all vintage photography, recently I also read a post by 
ok so we went from taking beautiful pictures and proudly displaying them in photo albums, beautiful frames, presentation cards, and keepsakes, and in my opinion the victorians did it best with amazing attention to presentation and detail etc. However these days we capture a zillion moments and then leave them on a phone that will be left in a drawer gathering dust the minute we buy a new phone. We never get round to printing them off, some of us may upload to facebook and other social media platforms, personally I have never trusted such a concept and thus never uploaded, I, with many others, have been left not wanting to throw out the old phones because they hold precious memories, yet not ever seeing or appreciating those memories because we forget, lose the charger, can't be bothered, I appreciate many out there do print etc however I am your average mum with kids, a busy lifestyle and I know I am not the only person whose precious pictures hide away in a drawer somewhere, yes I could buy a printer sometime, I choose not to because there are other items on the list of what my family needs that are more important
I also believe we should get as much accurate history along with recollection on the blockchain as possible, one of the main reasons I love the blockchain is placing something here means it exists forever so we can amass a huge amount of information; visual, factual and personal, in a kind of unbreakable time capture
so I decided to combine the concept of placing a written memory with a vintage photo and do this post
The picture I found on an old laptop and it gives me no source of where it came from only a number, it's been on my old laptop around eight maybe nine years so I have no recollection where I found it, I have a huge love of history and especially local history so all I know is this is a picture of the pier that used to be in this small town, I know it isn't that long since the pier was removed; so I have a few memories of it, my earliest is being around five and then it was still used as a social place. I remember going to a disco, getting dressed up in my favourite dress, happy and impatient, it was a popular local event
I vividly recall running excited into the hustle and bustle of the ballroom, it would already be full of all those from town and we felt a real sense of community, relatives of all ages, friends and neighbours all chattering, laughing, dancing, stress forgotten as the adults enjoyed a drink and us kids ran freely among a land of tables legs, chairs, grandads fast asleep snoring in chairs, nannas admonishing their counterparts for being asleep so early in the day, teenage cousins caught smoking in the toilets would yell as we burst in 'gerroutta here' and merrily inebriated aunties fussing over the 'darling little ones' smiling and swaying in their chair as we scampered past, they would laugh happily, indulging our games of playing hide and seek under tables and then the affectionate aunty would join in the spirit of our adventure with a slurred promise of 'don't worry I won't tell mum' as we ran giggling and squealing when we accidentally upturned a table
I remember clearly the tune playing at the time, I loved it, was sugar sugar by The Archies and to this day it is still one of my top tunes, it's a bouncy, happy, tune with a beat you can't resist a little jiggle to, brilliant for a sunny day. The pier seemed huge then as is always the way with childhood memories and to me seemed grand, a real link to our towns much more glamorous past, when we hosted some quite big names in our music halls and boasted three cinemas, this town was a popular, small, seaside holiday town and in the Victorian times looked much more beautiful than today
The pier was built in the late eighteen hundreds reaching peak popularity in the 1950's My experiences stretch from sixties through to late seventies it was demolished around 1980. It survived a few ships go through it, it was deliberately redesigned during the war to make it less of a target, it gained a ballroom, hosted parties and beauty pageants, gave people precious memories
The disco is the only time I remember actually going to an event with any clarity, it was soon after the disco that it shut down and we were told the pier walkway was damaged and it was declared unsafe. After a few years they removed it altogether. During its last years I spent many happy times playing under the pier, probably wouldn't be allowed now but back then health and safety were not a thing and we grew up playing in the rock pools and swimming round the old, limpet encrusted, iron legs when the tide was in. Jumping between slippery seaweed covered rocks, risking life and limb without a conscious thought beyond would we get our clothes wet? Would we manage to dry off before finally going home at sundown happy, tired, and trying desperately to make sure mum would not realise we were covered in half the beach and sodden with seawater seen better days clothes
Crabs would be captured and thrown back soon as they moved, accompanied by squeals and declarations of 'its still alive one bite can kill', we had creative imaginations back then, I am pretty sure the poor thing just wanted to slide away silently into the sea sulking about always being misunderstood surely it was obvious it would only take a nip? and that never killed anyone! I can imagine them grumbling as they returned to their watery home muttering 'must remember not to sunbathe when the small humans are about'
We would scare each other with every sighting of a slightly gelatinous substance, we had an inbuilt child radar able to spot a suspiciously shiny blob at fifty paces, and to us and our dramatic imaginings it was a deadly creature that would kill you if you even went near it, braver older children would be dared to poke at the shiny blob in the scientiific approach of using an old piece of driftwood to validate the opinion of it being a jellyfish, sometimes a particularly foolish child would kick it thinking he earned extra bravery points for actual foot contact, usually it lead to us all running squealing that 'he's got the lurgy' said child with 'the lurgy' would then be avoided like the plague. We never actually had a definitive explanation for what 'the lurgy' was, it would cover a wide range of conditions though they all satisfied the basic concept of it being 'caught' by coming into contact with anything considered yukky. This could be someone sneezing near you, falling in dogmuck, falling in anything stinky or an unidentifiable substance-it was the seventies there were loads of places with unidentifiable substances it was before regulations, we had streams that flowed bright orange, streams that always had a wall of foam, and this beach had signs saying do not eat the shellfish , eating something passed the sell-by date or that was cooked by the permanently 'merry' aunty, being kissed on the cheek by relatives-this is always compounded when being informed immediately after the kiss by mum whispering 'dont squirm! be nice to nanna she's poorly ' and of course touching jellyfish even if it's with your foot which is safely covered by a shoe, 'the lurgy' could be caught in many creative ways,in short kids can find many situations in which to ostracise another child
The mounds of seaweed were regularly positioned by mother nature sentry like guarding the shore stretched for what seemed like miles, waist high and stealthily seeping a stringent stench that could make your eyes water, and which the pensioners would repeatedly tell you 'it was good for the garden', why they thought us eight year old children running squealing from tiny blobs of jellyfish would be interested in what could be used to help your chrysanthemums grow strong, though you would never go near them on account of them being surrounded by a blanket of stinky seaweed I have no idea, yet somehow of all the useful stuff I could have retained over the years the one piece that stays with me and yet I never used is that seaweed is good for the garden
It just feels odd that's all; popping down the beach to collect a sack of seaweed, can't imagine actually doing such a thing, and somehow, I think it's called sods law, but somehow if I go to even so much as pick up a pretty pebble, never mind a sack full seaweed, somehow there will often be a pensioner, possibly the same one that gave such sage wisdom about the seaweed, mentions how everything on the beach belongs to the queen so you can't take it
I imagine I will keep fertilising my garden the usual way; cheap plant food from the local supermarket and the kind contribution of my cats that thankfully go outside to attend to their toiletry needs, and in the result of which means I always wear gloves when gardening
today the regulations in place mean we have a lovely beach and we are not afraid to swim in the sea, the streams run clear and its a nice place to live, unfortunately over the years the local council demolished most of our lovely old buildings and the pier, the town has lost the popularity, the soul, and the sense of community, I still prefer to live here than many other places though and I would love to see a return to celebrating it's Victorian heritage, I believe that with investment and a return to that style of building, in particular the building of a new Victorian style pier, that it would give a real sense of focus, of pride, of community back to the town and who knows it could be the beginning of a new wave of well being and success for the town, this town is a nice town that like many many other towns would benefit and thrive with the right investment, the right approach, the inclusion of the towns citizens on the decision making process, and simply some care and attention, some integrity in preserving our heritage, celebrating our roots and history, I believe in progress through the recognition of our history and the appreciation of our collective experience, in recognising the value of beauty in old architecture, and satisfaction of aesthetic detail, in adapting for a current use where we can such valuable buildings and preserving those we can't adapt in honour of the building, and so the experience of seeing it can still be available for other generations to enjoy, in so many areas of the world we lose history every day to the modern world, in so many areas we lose grasp of memories, I believe in keeping as many of these experiences as we can, history gives us a sense of what has been, memories give us a sense of who we are, we need to appreciate when and where we can the value of both
thank you for reading
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From @beckieg