Le Spleen de Whitley Bay

Early one Sunday morning in summer on The Promenade a congregation of eight drone hymns of praise to the waves, with an accordion accompaniment, close to a chalked 666. Something to do with rising sea levels?

A little later some reckless bathers wake up and smell the sewage, while a lone child builds a sand castle that looks like a baby’s grave-mound.

Conversazione: a mid-day gang of middle-aged women at The Fire Station’s stained sticky outdoor tables boozing, babbling, cackling, shrieking.

A cobbler’s shop called SOLED OUT, up for sale.

Brazen-tongued birds of the sea soar and glide and swoop, describing elaborate arabesques in the voluptuous air outside Laura’s Fish bar.

In dismal coalescence, an old lady with a stick takes her arthritic old Labrador for a hobble.

At the entrance of an amusement arcade a little lad with an ice cream cone in his hand and mist in his eyes gazes at the ranks of flashy machines and mutters: ‘I wish our house was like that.’

The adverts on the wall at The Playhouse (the Globe of the North) include a tribute act, a tribute act, a tribute act, a hypnotist, a tribute act, a tribute act and Baga Chipz.

‘A week ago he only had one haemorrhoid, but now…’

A grey guardian angel guards the hairdryers in The Junkyard II.

Savour the Hanging Gardens of Whitley Bay: signs in flowerbeds simpering LOVE GROWS HERE and SOWN AND GROWN BY A DOMESTIC GODDESS; a two foot tall Queen, complete with handbag and corgis; a spyglass and a limp Jolly Roger atop a miniature mast; pavilions of splendour (five feet high, plastic); a bare metal arch leading into a tropical weed forest; a large, fat pigeon that crashed into a dining room window lying on the lawn like a downed B-52 bomber.

But what is that hulking building with no name in Norham Road (barred windows; front door and side gate permanently closed; occasional lights on inside), at the far end of the road from the eff-off tree? Endlessly intriguing and infinitely sinister, in a commonplace kind of way.

The Ahar Indian restaurant murmurs to passersby: KEEP CALM AND CURRY ON; while DE MEO’S RADITIONAL ITALIA AFFÉ AND PIZZERIA SIT IN OR TAKE AWAY LUXURY HOMEMADE ITALIAN ICE CREAM fanfares its LIQUARE COFFEES.

A nosy old man in the new bookshop’s doorway gapes at the full shelves, gasps in wonder: ‘That’s a lot of books,’ then hurries off, back to banality.

After drinking opaline during l’heure d’absinthe at The Fat Ox I see Bosie’s slim, gilt soul walking between Greggs and Subway, and Theodore Wratislaw searching, searching, for a temple of coloured sorrows and perfumed sins, in Percy Street; I see a matinee at the New Coliseum (tridents and nets, blood on the sand, and the crowd surging and baying as Sunderland supporters are thrown to the lions), and Bergman filming mould-specked skeletons of jesters and minstrels inside the bankrupt Royal Banqueting Hall; I see Gérard de Nerval promenading his pet lobster on a blue silk ribbon for a leash, while Dali paints sudden seals levitating and displaying stigmata at the foot of St. Mary’s (melting) Lighthouse.

But the next day I see drizzle, shuttered shops and a litter bin that has had too much spewing Styrofoam and black plastic bags of dogshit; and Ennui bestrides Briardene, yawning.

Spangly Xmas lights on October lampposts, merely showing up the shoddy.

‘What’s all this shit about global warming? I’m fucking freezing, man.’

In the little CO OP by the sea a solitary assistant savagely sweeps the floor, mops out, stacks shelves and scowls when asked for assistance with the automatic check out; in another supermarket a school teacher drops a tin of spam into the collection box for The Bay Foodbank, while a man in dejected glasses eyes the security tags on the joints of beef.

Ah, the smirk of that sepulchral angel with a chipped lip, as the hearse’s driver smokes outside the crematorium.

A rough sleeper in a charity shop’s doorway, rehearsing for death.

At Spanish City, where the funfair once stood, do I hear the ghost of a ghost train rumbling on between Valerie’s Tearoom and the Beefeater’s crammed carpark?

Twelve-year-old Bo steps out of the beauty salon and splinters in the sunlight after her vampire facial.

In a care home, flickers of fear in her eyes, someone’s unwanted mum, parked in an uneasy chair.

Relax whilst you enjoy your meal in comfortable surroundings – the industrial ambiance of the Weyayetalian eatery, featuring a room as big as a factory and an assembly line of pints, improbable pizzas and pasta all Geordie.

On one of the benches on the seafront, rented to commemorate the dead, a damp little teddy and a fifth birthday card from Mum and Dad; beneath, on its side, a crushed Stella can.

Supine nearby, a bored-stupid schoolboy cries to the sky: ‘When will anything happen here?’ The moon replies: ‘Oh, don’t worry, son. Look over there – on its way for a nice long stay at the seaside – yes, it’s a superstorm.’

Paul Murgatroyd