Dungeness

[squirmelia]

Dungeness appealed to me as a child mainly due to the boats stranded amongst the shingle in the garden of The Pilot, ripe for me and my younger brother to climb aboard and sail across imaginary seas in.

Before last Friday, I was unable to visualise the nuclear power stations that creep behind the black wooden houses at Dungeness. Although I was always aware that they were there, looming, I had erased the image of their eerie presence from my mind. I suppose that when I last saw them, boats were more important to me than nuclear power.

Dungeness is vastly more popular now than it seemed to be when I was a child, but I was drawn back to "one of the world's largest shingle masses" after seeing photos and descriptions in various places, such as at Things Magazine. The poem-covered cottage and garden of driftwood and plants that belonged to film director Derek Jarman is one of the most popular attractions, as is Simon Conder's rubber house with a 1950s silver futuristic Airstream caravan outside.

In various ways, it resembles a desert and sometimes I imagine living there, constantly in fear of the nuclear power station, spending my days not dowsing for water, but instead counting the different plant species, hoping to spot at least a few of the more than 600 that grow there. I'd lie on the shingle to get a better look at them and then I'd glance over at the stripey lighthouse. Maybe I'd eat slices of bread and butter, because as a child with fussy tastes, Dungeness seemed to be the only place where bread and butter tasted not so bad.

(Standing on a boat in the garden of The Pilot in Dungeness in the 1980s.)

Comments

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a great photo! The 1980s really suit you...

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

That particular boat seemed to have sailed away. Of course, if it had not, I would have convinced my mum to take another photo of me standing on the boat, wearing the same outfit.

[solitarywalker.livejournal.com]

It's astonishing how many different places there are... to-day i walked through several different neighbourhoods, observing how they vary and how they shift from one to another... & then of course there are places that are so different than any of them that by comparison they all look the same, in spite of how different they are...

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I've always loved Dungeness, not least because of the twin hulks of the Magnox and the AGR installations. On a day when there's a good Channel fog, the only indication there is of their presence is a low hum that you feel in your teeth rather than hear.

When I was a child and my family holidayed in East Sussex, I'd pester my parents to take us to New Romney so that we could ride on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway to Dungeness. We'd eat cockles and winkles in vinegar with too much pepper, or sit in the beer garden of The Pilot where I'd drink warm pepsi from a small scratched and battered bottle with a non-bendy straw.

[gentio.livejournal.com]

My parents went there a few weeks ago! told me quite a bit about it, although they couldn't find words to describe some of it.. i'm hoping to go there soon :)