Wonderful Worthing Promenade Part 2
Candy floss, seaside rock, smoothies, and flags sporting
Union Jacks
Replace the old traditions of striped deckchairs
And Kiss-Me-Quick hats.
Chipwicks for our salt and vinegar fries
And their pole-and-line freshly caught local Cod;
The Vintners Parrot: For thick sizzling steaks,
Cabernet Sauvignon, roasted hams cut high off the hog.
Grandads wearing knotted handkerchiefs, their pleated trousers
Rolled up to their knees,
Splashing with squealing little children
Who squabble and inhale upon the bracing sea breeze.
Linos, gritty blankets, wicker picnic hampers,
Out of reach - forever lost - far bobbing balls;
Whilst over it all: The song of the swelling sea
With its constantly reverberating roars.
Red parboiled fathers of odd shapes and all sizes
Squeezed into ill-fitting string vests;
Lumpy roly-poly mothers in one-piece bathers,
Highly irritated - doing their very vexed best!
For in the absence of pollinating plants, flowering bushes
And budding trees:
A droning procession hovering across your checkered tableclothes -
Swarming across sugared cakes, potted meats and creamed cheese.
Little George thrashes away with his crabbing net;
Maisy, beside herself, aboard the plodding donkeys slow, agitated gait;
Great aunty Mabel daintly glowers, and then -
Demands the absolute necessity of reclining prostrate!
Punch swings his cruel bat at Judy;
Fat old uncle Phil gives a loud gluttonous snore;
His long past-caring wife of forty years turns her back to him...
Reopening her paperback romance on page twenty four.
Lashings of mountainous vanilla Cornish heaped onto a crisp
Yellow cone;
The decorated sandcastle competitions: Adorned strange starfish, seaweed hung,
Complete with available cutlery brought from the home.
Just evocative memories are jolly August-Bank-Holidays once played out
Over this tremulous sounding stage...
Now: only the anglers, the joggers and cycling keep-fitters...
Marking-time throughout electronic clicks from loudly brazen, flashing arcades.
Half-oval shaped Lido cafe for morning coffee:
Bring the fidgeting kiddies - bring the dog.
Beech house fronted terrace for live nightly music -
Excellent southern brewed ales of cold frothy amber grog.
And if in your ambles your appetite has been well whetted
By the smells from a flotilla of mouth watering fares:
Coast Cafe De Artistes just east of splashpoint -
Seaside bistro of the most "de la extraordinaire"!
Austere gas lamps flicker to awaken in the groping twilight
As dimming outlines begin to hurriedly fade;
Black asphalt drifts into the distance of your lost horizons -
Thus witness the charming elegance of nightly Parisian masquerade.
The drawing radiators are starting to bang and gurgle;
Chambermaids pull firmly across upon splendid silken cords...
When the stiff colonel tops up with another whisky and soda -
And the Storm petrel over beautiful Worthing promenade twitters and calls!
(.....Oh how i so very much adore you magnificent old Worthing town!! )
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