Selsey Bill v The Manhood Peninsula Oct. 13, 2006

Looking for a hook on which to hang your romance? Come with me to Selsey Bill, West Sussex on the south coast, the hidden holiday-home of all my years and, as such, one huge wilde romance…
But you’ll have to ride with me for I am the only one who can soften its every guilt edge (cornfields smack up to the sea – just beyond the bramble, the wildwoods, ‘the hole’, the tree camp, the swan-clearing in the rushes, the worked fields, the strawberry steal, the old police house, the golf links (and the 19th hole) cycling through THIS the summerset cycle this side of heaven.
Selsey Bill harbours a Pontin’s holiday-camp (it did – this is memory now), great long crocodiles of “Hello, Morning” campers file out of Pontin’s along Seal Road, ever ready with their greetings “Good Morning” they say to me sat their on my doorstep; “Good Morning” to the man up to his neck in roadworks; “Good Morning” they say, even when it is NOT !

Selsey on the west side hides away the largest caravan site in the world (smaller now for the storm) and on such sites you and I are having the times of our lives…

‘We’ are the kiss-me-quick contingency on leave from Lewisham, East Ham, Fulham, The Isle of Dogs (before the yuppiedom) for one all too brief swimwear week in July or August. Not enough. With a deep intake of south-sea trade winds, Londoners have dared give-up their London jobs that they might stay on as citizens – cleansed a bit by the elements; with the prospect of endless fishing and fisherman’s blues.
For their children, poxy and white, their hair as yet bleached only by the bottle, they seek solace around the “Hot Stuff” chip shop on Saturday nights.
All aches, wounds and resettlement scars shall heal in the salt air. Reopening in the winter when without disco and the feeling ‘all is here’. The tide has taken the summer trade. It’s all gone!

No it hasn’t.
Selsey has a lot of old and retired people who name their house Four Seasons or the town from where they came. Still, something about a sea wind that cuts you to the quick, blows you the present – the feeling THIS MOMENT is real.
The generation gap is disguised by rust and sprayed, the old aside the young on squeaky paint peeled bikes that SHALL keep going, kingdom come.
There are cars of course, antiquated, cranky as if found during a garage turnout. The young are mostly on mopeds, there being no railway connection now between this Seal Island and titchy Chichester, Roman sea city of the south. The carriages, if not actually from this rail, were dragged down to the beach to be made into houses.
Without any transport (not true : there’s buses now) one must walk or hitch the one wonky road that offers a lifeline. And along comes old folk in their late teens “Hop in” they say. They like to do favours like secretly leaving gifts of fruit and veg inside another’s window ledge. They like to do favours – keep an eye on another’s husband or wife. Then they retire back to the comfort of their fire, made of broken breakwater wood that snaps and crackles and inspires hallucinations…
FIREWORKS IN THE NIGHT you might think “firework night” or am I dreaming. NO, it is a fright – two rockets herald someone at sea in distress, or just careless.

In any case, before the flares have faded from the night sky, the lifeboatmen are ALREADY on their way, throwing caution to the wind whilst their bikes in a heap against the station steps. Seconds late and they’ve missed the boat, the position filled by another QUICKer volunteer.

And off they go! In a blue red and white Blue Peter bought boat presumed unsinkable (and I won’t spoil the tail just now)... IN SEARCH OF… all in the dark amidst the giant swirling sea. HERE , give me that map!

In the morning, FIRST THING, former sea captains man the bridge with binoculars – we are on land here – joined by the wives and the men who didn’t make it. The trip out to sea that is. They wait on that speck on the horizon, speculate on heroic rescues (quite unheroic in most cases), all accounted for, chalked up like a cricket score inside the lifeboat station. Talk is on their return (thoughts on who gets what and who, if they don’t return).

Once, several years running and jumping in fact – from this very station ramp, men and women would flap their flimsy wings (some well designed) in mostly pathetic attempts to be a bird beyond 30 metres and win £3,000 in the process. It was “The Birdman Rally”.

But Selsey has surrendered its claim to fame – moved up the coast to Bognor Regis – more complete with candy-floss.

In reply Selsey has its mind on development. Although everyone denies it, says its A SCHEME. But someone, insiders and offcomers are up to it. Selsey is doubling and doubling in size. Not just because the people are overweight. Its fast becoming “Little London by the sea”; a population not hundreds but THOUSANDS. And with such the URGE to concrete unmade roads, lower its High Street and line it with profitable (looking) shops, BUSINESSES and one pound penny arcades. All bequests proper planning and thus overtly proper prices for those train carriage shacks I imagined were traded in terms of shillings and sixpences.

Serious stuff! And how can you get serious at the sea? You’ll be getting violence next, all the year round.
If course, as Selsey somewhere gains it somewhere else loses. This is in keeping with tidal action – fashions of constructive and destructive wave forces… only now the ebb and flow is under the influence of the land prospectors and lollipop sharks-who-roam-the-beach looking for customers and of course “I will buy” “Just this once” “Spoil myself” “Seeing as we are on holiday”.
But hold on. News of a new bargain. Never mind that its a disaster, think of all the trade, the village one big construction site, the fast food rush around lunchtime when come grubby men from BUILDING A NEW HUGE sea defence. You won’t be able to see the sea over the top of it, nor the sea’s advance. Yes folks, Tomorrow’s World programme has targeted Selsey as under water by 2040 by reward of THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT – the rise in sealevel. All could be washed away. In the meantime, commonal garden storms keep us busy (bit like domestic disputes).

Go to : http://www.homesoffootball.co.uk/gallery/people-versus-place/selsey-bill-v-manhood-peninsula/