Time machine
Bognor to Littlehampton
A padlock speaks of commitment far more deeply than a ring. The metal circle may symbolise forever - going round and round, but it’s easy to remove. The padlock, however, locked to the mesh at the end of the pier, is something else. It’s a fastening, a bondage, more than a promise, more like an incarceration. Locked shut with the key thrown into the waves below. The metal body devoured by salt, sand, wind and water until it falls into the sea too. Meanwhile, the lovers walk away down the pier having made their commitment, they leave it to be consumed by time.
Time is in a discreet pocket in Bognor Regis. The Victorian hotels and guest houses remember when this was a popular seaside resort. Somewhere that Londoners could come for their two week holiday away from the city and into the fresh air. R C Sheriff’s 1930’s novel, The Fortnight in September relives that experience.
And when fresh air wasn’t enough, Billy Butlin’s amusement arcade of slot machines, dodgems and children’s rides pushed the seaside experience into money for amusement.
Bognor has built its own time portal on the seafront. A red trilithon with connectivity to a virtual experience into the past. I pointed my phone, stood in the painted footprints and nothing. The past was not revealed to me, only the present that moved at the normal digital rate.
Walking east along the esplanade past the classic British seaside cafes selling strong, hot tea and fish and chips, past the empty amusement arcades, and looking out for the ‘land train’ that wasn’t running, and wondering about the ‘sea’ or ‘air’ train alternatives.
Bognor ends with Butlin’s holiday camp. A mysterious gated community of fun, a little world, covered to protect its inhabitants from the British weather in a survival capsule for the holidays. Perhaps this is what our Mars bases will be like. Endless buffets, music, dancing and hangovers.
Beyond Bognor, the upmarket Middleton-on-Sea residents have built their own concrete bastions against the waves. Millions against erosion, a contest only the sea can win. The coastal path ducks behind beachfront mansions along a private road. It is possible to walk along the beach below the groynes at low tide, but as the sea rises the wooden groynes become an assault course, a slow hurdle along the shore.
Climping beach is my favourite along this walk. Time moves differently here. The beach is being washed away and I’m walking along the edge of disappearing fields. There’s a gate to nowhere hanging in the air, a matching portal to the one at Bognor, here the future will be revealed. Through this one we might see the Dr Who film crew making episodes that pretend to be in Scotland or Australia, and travel in space and time. Archaeologists are exploring this newly revealed land before it disappears under the waves. There are Stone Age flint scrapers, and Bronze Age and Roman remains.
Time shifts back and forth with the tides: past, present and future.
Young herring gull drawn in black biro. Sue Webber 2024
