Summers of the Assumption

“Here is the ghost of a summer that lived for us”

– William E. Henley

In the summer, sea pinks and lavenders climbed the cliffs of Pegwell. We did our best to follow them. Once, I scaled the upper reaches of the western rocks above the ‘Chine’, a beautiful old cliff tunnel that cleaves open the way to the bay. I was trying to achieve a better position for my catapult. I reached the top and stared into my intended nook; another boy was already there and fired instantly. I remember the pain in my chest- it took my breath away for a full minute and I thought I might die. As my lungs heaved, I became aware of two things: first, the panic of my would-be killer, as he patted my back and thought his alibi out aloud. The second was the scent of the sea pinks, which rose tenfold and travelled down my nostrils, deep into my gut. The taste was pure terror.

These incidents were common in a Pegwell childhood; today, I’m not so sure all such experiences were necessary. Nonetheless, we learned from them.

We grew up near the cliffs, on the former grounds of the Convent of the Assumption; it was torn down to make way for our houses, which expanded Pegwell Village west, away from the saltmarshes and closer to Ramsgate.

Remnants of the old Convent live on- the outer wall remains in place and stretches around Pegwell like an ancient bailey; most of the new homes were built inside its limits. Where we lived, the wall delineated our front garden and we weren’t allowed to damage or alter it in any way. The entrance to the Convent was also left untouched, about eighty yards uphill from us.

Other than the outer walls and entrance arches, the nuns’ cemetery remains; these days, it finds itself in the middle of a 1970s housing estate.

The sign says to keep out; try telling that to a gang of 80s kids raised on a diet of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ and ‘Willo the Wisp’. I’m ashamed to say we played leapfrog on the gravestones and made treehouses in its resident elm.

Lord forgive us.

The adults certainly didn’t. In junior school, I had a headteacher who was genuinely called Mr Payne; he was a nice man but never outgrew the customs of his generation. He had huge hands and once slapped me so hard it made my head spin.

In the Pegwell of the 1980s, we were chased endlessly and if caught, many grown-ups felt it well within their rights to administer some corporal correction. The most sinister run occurred on the Chine in ’89, just prior to secondary school. One of our gang dropped a water balloon onto the roof of a car that was passing under the cliff; this was a silly thing to do as it made a huge bang, not disimilar to a cliff-fall. Sillier still was that it invited the occupant of the car to get out and give chase.

Post-detonation, we ran over to the other side of the pass to watch the soaked vehicle emerge, but it never did.

The driver was wise to us; he’d stopped his car inside of the tunnel, doubled back and climbed up the rocks to the rear of the Chine. Seven of us were still facing toward the exit gap when we heard some chalk breaking behind us. Looking back, we saw an absolute ape of a man clambering up over the top of the cliff railings; he possessed those twin totems of 80s thuggery- a closely cut skinhead and a bomber jacket- and appeared to be punching the air as he bounced ever nearer to us.

None of our tribe needed to be told to run.

Nor where to go, for that matter. The redoubts for such an occasion were long-established: we boasted a well-worn network of tunnels in the cliff and about the Chine; a tired promenade shelter with various holes in its roof; and an old oak in the local park, behind the Courtstairs Country Club. We split up, most of us going for the tree. One by one, the gang filed up its trunk like fire ants; about twenty feet up, we squeezed in and hid cross-legged on the base level of a treehouse we’d abandoned the previous August; we never got much further than installing the bottom platform, but in high summer the tree grew the rest of the house around us.

Once ensconced up there, we were well hidden from the grown-up world; so it proved for all but one of the gang, who had lately grown too large to climb up. The child in question looked much older than his eleven or twelve years and wore size fifteen shoes. Nowhere in England stocked that size and his mother had to import them from America; the most affordable option looked like basketball players’ trainers. After an abortive attempt to scale the oak, the boy hid behind a local bush. When the skinhead entered the park, he noticed our friend’s prodigious feet protruding from the foliage; dragging him out, he took him for a much older lad and laid in with his fists. We were a loyal gang, and instantly the treehouse erupted into action; a catapult was passed up to the best shot, who duly fired out a dozen or so of last year’s conkers. Shamefully, all but one hit the victim.

“He’s just a kid!” we chorused… “Leave him alone, you big bully!”

“Get stuffed!” replied the brute.

It was only when our pal really started to cry that the man stopped; until then, I don’t think he’d realised just how young his opponent really was. Suddenly, he was apologising and equivocating. Sensing a retreat, more conkers were hurled down- alongside a much more daring choice of insults. The man backed off; there’s every chance we quarrelled again later that summer- incidents like this usually had sequels- but I don’t recall.

After such a hammering, the gang would relocate to one of the many ‘X’s on our tribal map. Our favourite was the west cliff boating pool, between Pegwell and Ramsgate; they had a small arcade there with air hockey and a ‘Double Dragon’ machine. Today was a little more serious, though; our friend’s beating had shaken us. Jumping on our BMXs, we fluttered between several of our holier marks: the ‘Dark Alley’ (which merits several stories of its own), the Nuns’ Cemetery and Westcliff Villa Woods were all visited but summarily dismissed. The only spot to hold us that day was ‘the Unbreakable’- a rock that had appeared on the shore below the Chine, following the Great Storm of ’87; a lifetime ago, in our early world. It was sacred to us because it had remained. No other rock on the local shore lasted; they were continually reducing and moving on with the tide. The ‘unbreakable’ stood three feet high and measured eight feet across at its widest; it hadn’t moved a single inch in the two years since the hurricane.

By the time we reached the shore, our gang had doubled to a dozen or so- possibly the largest amount of children to ever launch an assault on the unbreakable. When we reached the rock, it was late and the tide was out. Six or seven aside, we rocked the monolith back and forth until a small fissure appeared on its surface. The smaller boys were then sent to gather junk metal from the caves, until we found a rod sturdy enough to prise the crack open a little further. Each time the gap got wider, it made a hissing noise; then we’d shake harder and insert more metal. After two hours, we had chiselled to within a foot from the bottom. Half the group then climbed on top of the rock and started jumping on the crack, while the rest of us kept up the shaking back and forth.

Just as the first hint of purple appeared over towards France, the unbreakable neatly split into two.

It transpired that the bottom section of the rock had been concave; a legion of crabs had made their home there. For the second time that day, the children of Pegwell were chased. In the failing light, the crustaceans seemed to merge into one stream as they chopped forwards through the rock-pools. Some of us were wearing flip-flops and suffered nipped toes. Woe betide the boys with loose shoelaces; two of my friends suffered this fate- one abandoned a pair of Nike Airs to the foreshore, as he made good his escape. My most ghoulish memory of that dusk is the boy with a crab attached to his little finger; accompanied by a cacophony of prepubescent screaming, he swung it around for what seemed an eternity. When it finally detached from his digit, it flew directly into my forehead, leaving a dent that lasted until the autumn half-term break.

I still think of that rock, when faced with a seemingly insurmountable task. Although in my dreams, it remains a monolith- a child of the Great Storm: unbreakable, just as we all were back then.

Not so, now.

I wonder how many more summers I will pass under the Chine? Some of the boys have already made their final descent.

As for Pegwell herself, she shall see us again in our children.

And their children after that.

She’ll treat their follies with great, salty doses of clifftop lavender…

And clothe their endless summers with sea pinks, tree houses and crabs.