Marine Court (and the stiff signal)

1.

The address of the rave was texted to us. A car full of 19 year olds, driven by a guy in his thirties. Greg wore designer knitwear and styled his hair with gel like the posters I saw in the barber I used to go to because it was empty.


We drove through the crowd of baggy hoods and neon traces and parked on the edge of the field. A few different sound systems stood apart stoning us with walls of trance. Greg disappeared from the car and gurned his way back home to a rave that had died ten years ago. 

2.

We wriggled through the shallow tunnel under the Glastonbury fence, having thrown school bags filled with pants and socks 3 metres over the top. Waiting for darkness from the lights of patrolling security, we ran through the gap between the perimeter and the festival.


Having camped up we set to the stone circle and approached a man with clumped hair, clothing from the incense shop with the statuette of Ganesh. He opened up an Alice in wonderland book they’d doused in LSD and sold us a page before disappearing back to the same festival he attended ten or twenty years ago.

3.

It’s a sunny day in St. Leonard’s on Sea. By the beach, a speaker strains. In its gravity, men and women my age shuffle to the music. Lost to cans, weathered facades, favourite shirts, staring into the UV of memory. 


I see two women I went to college with twenty years ago outside a cafe. I meet an old friend and talk about how as life goes on, the signal lever becomes stiffer to pull to change track. But if we don’t, maybe we become lost to highs of the past.

4.


Marine Court peels away. The tallest residential building in the UK in its time. The white paint crumbles yellow. Ninety years without a trip to the GP. The rich played with us a bit before something shinier came along. 

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