The briny wind casts freezing foam across the jetties and makes all the little bells and bones chime and chitter. All the sullen buildings with their faded paintworks stare out at the harbour with the empty sockets of their dark windows, where the denizens of this place gather on the outstretched pier around a raised platform.
Lording above this cluster of shacks, the church with its bent back and twisted spire bemoans the strain on its timbers and the sad state of its empty rookery. Its halls long abandoned. The prayers mumbled into its cushions now forgotten leaving the spittle to fester into rot.
While down by the harbour the pale sea works itself up into a rabid fury at the provocations of the sycophantic chanting. The pastor’s black garb stained with the slush of the sea. The frenzied gaze of his wild red eyes. The hypnotic sway of the crowd and the undulation of their staggered hymn. Then the sea before the town bulges as a great mass stirs beneath it and the peoples faces contort into manic smiles as they begin their welcome.
Paddy Dobson
1st September 2021