Save our souls

Margate is a ghost town.

That’s not to say it’s dead, or even that it resembles the Ghost Town that The Specials sung about in 1981. Although it once did. Too much fighting on the dance floor, apparently.

No. What I mean is that Margate is a town of ghosts. It is built on lost dreams, lost ships and lost innocence. Lost souls.

To be honest, It’s mostly the lost souls. You can see them out of the corner of your eye on the stone pier. The Stone Pier. Never the Harbour Arm. Leaping. Falling. Flailing. But too late. Much too late.

Bodies washed up on the beach. Lives washed up in one room in a former-B&B. Salvation always just out of reach. Always just over budget.

These are our ghosts. We helped to make them. Tread lightly. You have to know where the bodies are buried.

The names of these lost souls are still incanted in pubs. A glass raised. A smile raised. A shake of the head. Film makers came to talk about plagues. But Margate already had its own, thanks. We’re still counting. Even though the names and the numbers are fuzzy now.

Yet still they come. A room with a view. And a balcony. Look at the funny man, Mummy.

Whatever. Margate still takes its toll. Claims its tax. It must. It always needs more ghosts. Every story is a ghost story. Every streetlight’s glare hides a darkness. Every square is a 3am burial ground.

Veni, vidi, emi. Every Instagram account starts with the Lido and ends with the sanding of floorboards. A different kind of life. A different kind of death. That’s Essex, mate. France is that way.

Don’t rile us. We grew up facing the North Sea. Our blood is colder than your blood. Always will be. Only the salt stops it freezing. We’re not chavs. Well, we are to you.

We eat chips for tea and have chips on our shoulders. We’ve never had supper, ever and we can’t be blinded by wooden blinds. Sash or Crittall? Sash or Crittall?

They say that everyone has plans until they get hit. Everyone else has planning permission for a loft conversion. It’s not apartheid if you pay for it, is it? Show me where they hurt you on the wooden dolly.

But it’s not just the souls of the corporeal. Margate’s ghosts are far more spirited. Beneath your feet lie ancient civilisations. Remnants of the Space City age.

Whalebones and wingnuts. Cut-throats and cat meat. Archaeologists will wonder at a layer of perished rubber carnival flowers and sharpened two-pence pieces. After the tear gas came the laughing gas. A strata of broadsheet property supplements.

We return to this point, but the sands have shifted. We move on, but an arm drags us back. You can spray paint a slogan on an abandoned car, spit on a handshake or spell it out in sourdough.

Everyone doesn’t mean everyone. You’re so poor, you probably think this meeting’s about you. It always is. For God’s sake, burn it down.

We move on. We move on. Ever winging up and up.

Sous les pavés, la plage. But love will never die.

Iain Aitch, July 2019.