Return to Whitley Bay

This year, all going well, I plan to take a short holiday at Whitley Bay, in Newcastle. I lived there for four years when I was young, and although I do not have many pleasant memories of the place, it was after all, a coarse and anti-intellectual coal-mining community back then, it does feature as a prominent location in the novel I'm writing. I therefore plan to return for research purposes. A few nights ago I returned there rather earlier than I had anticipated, in the land of nod. 

In the dream, I drove there with my wife and daughter, a long journey from the south coast. My parents are planning to come with us in real life, but in the dream, I had forgotten to make plans with them. I was sending them Whatsapp messages to the family group, throughout the dream. The first recognisable location we drove past was Seaton Delaval Hall. I explained to my wife that as a boy I was driven past this foreboding mausoleum on my way to school every morning, eels twisting themselves into knotted nerves in my belly, for it was a grey and vicious school, and I hated it. 

Each morning, as we approached the gravel drive, where we would have a brief glimpse of the estate, walled in by trees, we would crane our necks and frantically scan the many windows, seeking a glimpse of the fabled White Lady. Like so many of these stately homes, she was reputed to haunt the grounds at night, and could often be seen by locals standing at an upstairs window. None of us ever did see her, but that didn't curb our enthusiasm. I explained to my daughter on the back seat that there was a ghost in the building, passing on the excitement to the next generation.

Our glimpse of the hall was over, and we were on the stretch of road that led to my old secondary school, Seaton Sluice Middle School. A terrible place if ever there was one, but I wanted to see it again. It was a weekend and the school was closed, but the gates were open and we were able to go in to explore. We explored the canteen, a place I don't have any memory of, but in the dream, I was surprised to see that nothing had changed from my 'dream memory.' The old plastic tablecloths were still draped over the table, showing their age, a polar theme stamped upon them, ice floes and seals. 

We left the slightly creepy canteen behind and reached the seafront, where there resided the iconic Spanish City, a former amusement park with an elaborate entrance resembling a Sultan's summer palace, bleached white. The place had seen better days, and now resembled a crumbling ruin with chipped paint and exposed meshwork. The whole promenade was dead, a forgotten glimpse into a past that had not moved on. Lonely, bleak, and utterly uncompromising in its melancholia, I watched the tired sand dunes as we drove farther up the coast, seeking out our budget hotel.