Tripping On The Edge

 

 

Last week I promised you the other end of the Romney Marsh, that extraordinary wedge of shingle that continuously shifts with every tide of the English Channel, the last of the Kent coast before Sussex begins near the port of Rye. A truly English enigma, every time I drive out from the comfort of the green marsh and onto Dungeness I feel that nothing's changed. And then I realise that everything has. More will have been done to one black-tarred wooden shack, less to another. The weather-beaten sign on the pub may have been altered but already be peeling, and between it all one patch of sea holly will have been replaced by another two yards away. Perhaps the only details that appear not to metamorphose in this eerie landscape are the wires and the brilliant light of a late summer afternoon.

I've written about all this on and off for years, but for the record the roof in my top picture is attached to an old Southern railway carriage, the whole appearing to be covered in bubbling black tar;  the Britannia Inn is still thankfully run by Shepherd Neame (but I can't vouch for Doctor Feelgood still being on the jukebox), Mascot cottage is looking more homely but the boat at its side is still motionless but picturesque; and the Dungeness Lifeboat station looks even more like a still from a Wes Anderson film. I did think of setting the camera onto the self-timer in order to run in front of it in a grossly exaggerated manner about half way down the concrete roadway. Knowing my luck I would have tripped on the edge. Still wish I'd done it though.