Day trip

By Mike Melville-Reed

Head down to Sussex by the sea
Sunny Brighton’s where you’ll be.
Locals hang on the pebbled beach
Burning in the summer heat
with tomato ketchup smiles
eyeing, revealing, beachwear styles,
smelling of overpriced fish and chips
hungrily licking salted lips
as they down pints of ‘Stella’
Arguing over who’s the hardest ‘fella!’
Two piers stand, the first a tourist trap
Aimed to tempt the kiss me quick hat
Of Hens and stags , short skirts
and bags slung over the shoulder
the older generation tut ‘lambs dressed up as mutton’
Disapprovingly glaring
at what the younger generation have taken to wearing!
girls and boys hit buttons
eyes fixed, faces gleam
as Music from arcade machines Scream.
The other pier although never ignored
waits to be restored
or perhaps house the throne
In some ex-boxers home.
In the sea it fragilely rest
Housing a multitude of starling nests.
Tiered children scream
Demanding expensive Ice creams
They tug at frayed leather handbag straps
Until the frayed temper of their mother snaps.
But people walk on.
Walk on and ignore the shouts of the mother
The cries of the sister and the rants of her brother.
Two lovers on the beach kiss
their wrinkles fade into smiles as they reminisce
over some Victorian sunset
a moment they’ll never forget.
From the west pier a black cloud starts to fall
Then rises and falls l
ike the days final curtain call .
And as the sun sinks beneath a mirror glass sea
I think to myself, this is home there’s no place I’d rather be