South-End on Sea

Once upon a time on a gloriously hot bank holiday Monday in the
middle of the twenty-first century, full of the high hopes of an eight
year old's summer, I was walking along the glistening sea-front of a
vibrating South-end. I remember the feel of the throbbing sun beating
relentlessly upon my arms, one of which was extended as I held tightly
onto my fathers hand. My other hand held a cosmic ice-dream which was
fizzing wildly, an explosion of manufactured flavours on my heat struck
tongue, caressing with its sugary coolness. I'm not sure why they still
called them bank holidays when the last real bank, I mean the kind your
average Joe like me or you would have their salary paid into, the kind
that had cashiers and mortgage advisors, had closed nearly a decade
previously. Money is just a concept, just a river of electronica in our
virtual veins and I think that's why Dad used to take me to the
amusment arcades. He said that he missed the sound of clinking coins
clasped in clammy hands, the smell of copper, the rattle like a
sidewinder in your pocket.

On some day trips on the shuttle from London, we'd try out the games of
over ten arcades, but we always started at Mr B's and the welcoming
shock of the air conditioned shady recess greeted us along with the
haze of dope-smoke. Mum didn't like Dad taking me into places where
people could smoke and used to go off on one about how cannabis should
never have been legalized. We'd go up to the counter and Dad would
localise his fiscali-chip in his hand and swipe it under the changing
machine which in return would spew handfuls of old money, of real coins
into a plastic cup. Most of them were five pound coins, the faded image
of William V, bore deep scars from the machines.

I liked playing on the new machines; virtual space groover, deep chasm
warrior and the psychologically comforting prayboy. These didn't
require coins. I could run my own fiscali-junior.c under the game's
scanner and download some of my pocket money in exchange for a ride.
Hurtling through a hurricane of such silent speedy space, and the
lights. Lights like they were exploding in a whirlwind of neurones, the
synapses, slow sensuous, steamlined. In the body suit that fed the
games into my mind I was always a super hero, a swift runner and a very
special little girl who was the lead role of this almost actuality.
They were the action games but I'd always save enough money for a turn
on the prayboy, whose beauty was that it metamorphed for each
individual user, gave comfort in whatever form they needed it. On the
rare occasions Dad used it, he came out red faced and breathless, and
though young, I guessed what he needed. My prayboy world was one of
being held by a woman who was not my mother who became my mother, a
cradle like cotton wool, a tender love like tendrils of warmth
enveloped me. Immersed in comfort for the ten minutes the game
afforded, Dad let me act out my youthful fantasies until I'd spent my
last Euro in a moment of blissed out electron oceanic serenity, then
he'd take me back thirty years or more to his time, to his life, the
bets, the risks, the emotional rush, the highs, the loss, the
despair.

All the arcades had a relic section, which housed antiquated machines
that only used old money, and Mr B's had the finest collection on the
whole south coast. There were miniature racecourses upon which, ran
real looking miniature horses, perfect copies, muscle for muscle, flank
for flank. One of them had a head that was coming loose, probably too
many punters banging on the game's plastic casing over the years,
begging the goddess of chance or luck to smile at them. Mechanical
mechanisms showed through the damaged nag's neck, shiny, hideous. Dad
once put a twenty pound bet in her slot and she won, streaming like a
teardrop, passing the finishing post, wires poking through skin and
head bobbing frenetically. There were flight simulators of by-gone
fighter jets, racing games by some company called Sega and ski
machines. Dad said he went real ski-ing in some of the last ski resorts
in France before the warmer weather made them too unreliable to use
commercialy and the machines weren't as good. I didn't see the point of
any game that wasn't TMPI (Total Mental and Physical Immersion) but
knew better than to say anything.

Of all these remnants of his youth, Dad liked the towering pyramid best
of all, which was purely gambling for the sake of gambling . He said it
was based on a game from my great granfather's era called shove
ha'penny, but I laughed because even though I was only eight, my maths
was good enough to know that half a hundreth of a penny was as
microcosmic as a mitochondria. Dad dropped a coin into a slot, watching
very carefully for the right moment. Several ugly looking chrome
corkscrews charged towards the coin and knocked it down onto the next
shelf where it would in turn be pushed so that more coins fell onto the
next shelf down. At the last shelf, any falling coins would run down a
shute and land in a silver coloured tray with a terrific clattering
sound. I think that's what the attraction was - the high pitched drum
of a win.

After all the old money and my new money was spent we'd buy some fish
and chips. Dad being completely lost in his nostalgia would tell me
about the taste of real cod before the seas were so overfarmed they
became an endagered species, then he would slip his arm around me and
guide me through the dazzling dusk onto the shuttle homebound. As we
eased out of the town, before entering the tunnel, I looked through the
window and watched the neon teenagers drinking space-pops in the
streets, and all the sea front lights reflected off the waves, a
million jewels in the crown that was a day off school, a day off work,
a timeless once upon a time for ever.