SIX PENNYWORTH OF SEA By Colin Greenhalgh

SIX PENNYWORTH OF SEA

By Colin Greenhalgh

As a very young boy aged five or six, I lived with my parents at the North Shore end of Blackpool.  It was my father’s habit to stroll along the seafront from the Cliffs to the North Pier, and occasionally he took me with him.  One evening in the early Spring we made this walk and Dad met an elderly man sitting on a bench close to the wall near the North Pier.  The sea was choppy and lapped against the sea wall, tossing little spumes of spray over the railings.

We joined the man whom Dad called Len, and after a few minutes I asked Len if he was a farmer.  Dad was in a small business supplying cattle food to farmers on the Fylde.

“No lad, I was a fisherman out of Fleetwood but now I’m a salesman.  I sell buckets of seawater to trippers at sixpence a bucket to remind them of their time in Blackpool.”

This didn’t seem at all strange to me. After all the trippers bought so many things:  sticks of Blackpool rock in many sizes, shapes, flavours and colours, post cards galore, cups of tea, candy floss, ice cream, fish and chips and even vinegar bottles shaped like the Blackpool Tower, so the idea they would buy sixpenny worth of seawater to take home didn’t strike me as being the least bit odd.

Several days later, dad and I took the same walk and came upon Len on the same seat by the sea wall near the North Pier.  Dad joined him and I leaned on the railings looking out to sea.  The tide was at its lowest ebb – even the pier was sand locked, with shallow water only under the pylons of the fishing jetty at the end of the pier.  Bland, damp, golden sand stretched for miles in either direction, on the left to South Shore and on the right to Bispham, Cleveleys and ultimately Fleetwood.

With Fleetwood as a trigger, a thought suddenly exploded in my young mind and I wheeled round and trotted towards Len.  As if by some telepathic wave, Len fixed me firmly with a steady gaze and without a hint of condescension or even humour, he said “Aye lad, I’ve had a very busy week”.