Norman Moss responds:
Personally, I found the description of the burning of Hastings pier as ‘tragic’ a bit OTT. But then, I don't have your memories or sentiments attached to it. It sounds like sentiments rather than happy times. You make it sound like a place from which to throw oneself into the sea.
Well! I confess that I hesitated over the word ‘tragic’, and considered ‘sad’. Moreover, the description of the event as tragic hardly fits with my experience of the pier as a place on which there was little to do — short of sitting in a deckchair with a knotted handkerchief on your head!
Then, I wonder if tragedy does not refer specifically to the fate of human beings. Could the destruction of the 16th century Stari Most bridge in Bosnia Herzegovina during the war in former Yugoslavia be described as tragic? I do not know.
I would also admit to thinking that piers often look like vast wedding cakes — or absurd confections — on stilts! Ambivalence is probably what I feel.
I should also say that had I witnessed the burning of the pier when I was a small boy I — and my friends — would have been thrilled by the spectacle! As we were on the day we saw a plume of smoke rising from West Marina. We ran down to the area, and discovered that a storage warehouse for soft drinks had caught fire. The bottles kept exploding, and then — the piece de resistance — the roof caved in. It couldn't have been better! And the fire station was in the same street as the warehouse...
1 comment:
Peter: It is not good or bad, just the way it is. It is part of life, which includes death. It is certainly not worth a leap from a bridge, which turns a fact of life into a tragic situation, but it does make us more isolated from our past. A memory intentionally destroyed is tragic. Otherwise, it's perfectly normal in the universe we share.
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