Wallsend’s Chesil Beach

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On Thursday I had dinner with Psyche, we chatted about the latest draft, made some minor changes on script and caught up before rehearsals next week. Psyche’s up from London this week working on Northern Stages, Our Friends In The North. http://www.northernstage.co.uk

I caught the metro from North Shields into town for the meeting. As usual I sat on one of the side seats which are in pairs and face outwards. As no seats are opposite them it makes it impossible for any foul oaf to put their filthy shoes on the seat. I have an aversion to sitting in what somebody else has stepped in. Feet on seats drive me mad.

On the journey I got stuck back into my book, I’m reading On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I make a point of reading McEwan’s novels, they are exquisitely written, poetic, intelligent, precise and yet they always leave me a little cold. I feel like an outsider looking in at a middle class world and characters that I cannot quite grasp and have difficulty empathizing with. But I know he is a literary giant, a writer that should be read and so I read his books and remain in awe of his talent, yet read them only once.

The doors of the metro slammed open and a group of chavs stumbled in. The three boys were feral looking, their sportswear needed a good wash and they needed a good meal. Hard, pinched faces, short, slight, bodies, bad skin so pale as to have an almost bluish tint. Scary teens at once both intimidating and pitiful. With the boys were two girls who carried their confidence with less self conscious effort than the boys. They were probably the same age as the boys, maybe younger but looked older. Bleached dead, mercilessly straightened hair and plenty of gold and lipgloss.

I inwardly sighed as one of the lads sat next to me while thee others congregated by the door. The boy next to me called over to them, loud, swearing. One of the girls came over, he pulled her onto his knee where she sat listening to music on her phone and chewing gum. He leaned round the side of her and swore at his mate, they laughed. The girl on his knee didn’t crack a smile. I kept one wary eye on him, but thankfully it was as if I was invisible.

And then I saw him, protected from his friends sight by the girl’s body he leaned in and kissed her pink, nylon jacket softly, his long eyelashes fluttering. It was the gentlest of kisses and he stayed there a moment, his mouth barely touching the material of her jacket. She didn’t feel him or sense his face softened with emotional longing. He looked angelic and so young, so vulnerable. I was entranced.

And then he whispered, twice, into the wall of her back, ‘I love you, I love you.’ His face made open with his need to connect, to be heard and yet to go unnoticed. He closed his eyes and offered up his own unseen, unanswered prayer once more.

The metro stopped, the girl got up and left, she looked over her shoulder, her eyes glassy with indifference and said, ’see ya,’. He tried to smile bravely as she disappeared out of view. His smile settled into a protective scowl.

I realized that I had just seen the Wallsend version of On Chesil Beach and I am afraid it moved me more than the Mr McEwan’s masterly prose which now lay limp in my hand.

At dinner I told Psyche about it and how it had made me think about writing. How what ‘we’ writers’ try and show and which I hope I’ve managed to in Pub Quiz. Those brief, meaningful, intensely personal moments of connection which make the personal universal, and the mundane significant.

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Tags: chavs, Ian McEwan, North Shields, Northern Stage, On Chesil Beach, our friends in the north, Wallsend, writers, writing