COAST AS A SERIES OF NOVELTY CRUET SETS

That cruet set at the cottage in Beadnell in the shape of two stumpy lighthouses. A cruet set, one with MY SAND LIFE, one with MY PEBBLE LIFE on, in a sandy/pebbly font. Which is salt and which is pepper? You decide. Those two rusting forts in the Humber Estuary off Cleethorpes; imagine the wide flat water as a wide flat tablecloth and the two forts as a salt pot and a pepper pot. In an odd way this humanises them, makes them less rusty and more welcoming. Which is salt and which is pepper? You decide.

Those two gulls on the back of that bench by the sea, the bench that often has a little posy of flowers by it, in memory of someone who loved that view of that particular tranche of changing light. One could be a salt gull and one could be a pepper gull. Slowly, because a pair of (novelty cruet set) yappy dogs are approaching, they wheel into the sky in a way that no cruet sets have ever done unless they were chucked comedically in a seaside hotel breakfast room row. (‘Look out! It’ll be the toast rack next, lad!’) Unless of course they were automatons, those mechanical precursors of robots that amazed people in cathedrals. An automaton gull novelty cruet set; imagine those for sale in a gift shop in a Cornish seaside town. How could you ever resist them? Imagine them cranking up from the table and creakingly flapping around the room, reminding you of that holiday, those endless days.

Old couple in huddle mode novelty cruet set in a shelter on a drizzly day as the North Sea appears to look bigger and wetter and less welcoming than it actually is. He is, valiantly, trying to read a newspaper. He’s from that generation that buys a tabloid then folds it into the size of a pocket square. She is gazing into space, thinking of when they were young and he could fold the paper so tightly that it could never be unfolded. If they’re a novelty cruet set, then the eternal question is beckoning: who’s the salt, who’s the pepper?

Ah, to check that out you’d have to walk past the shelter and then, on some pretext, look at the tops of their heads. Three holes in the top of his flat cap? One hole in the top of her headscarf? Vice versa? That’ll tell you.

He’s folded the paper to the Quick Crossword, and as he often says in moments of holiday exasperation, ‘If that’s a quick crossword then I’m Freddie and the Dreamers’, a saying that feels neither sage nor wise. He reads the clues aloud to his unimpressed wife and today they all seem to be coast-related. He says: ‘Cliffs crumbling away question mark: Summat R summat S summat summat summat.’ ‘Erosion’ his wife says, her words hanging in the damp air. He writes it down. He says ‘Temporary beach structure: Summat summat summat summat summat summat summat summat summat E.’ ‘Sandcastle’ she says. ‘I’d have got to it after a bit’ he says. Close relatives of the novelty cruet set are the snow globe and the funny but heart-warming jigsaw and the oddly shaped and brightly coloured fridge magnet. Imagine these two in a snow globe, maybe on a winter break, shivering in this shelter. Imagine these two on a funny but heart-warming jigsaw. Yes, they’d end up in a charity shop, but we all will. Imagine them as a pair of fridge magnets like cartoon versions of themselves magnetised to a white metal door in some kind of eternal torment because they can smell the contents but never get to taste them. All these variations are fine but in my mind the novelty cruet set is best.

Summer sun and summer moon as novelty cruet set. Don’t look too closely at the sun of course; maybe look at its reflection in a bucket of water and you’ll wonder why nobody thought of this before. That late evening you and her walked alone on the quiet promenade, with the full moon like a mystical monocle. You gaze at the sky and wonder why nobody had the cruet set idea before. The way the sun defined your holiday; the search for it, the way you tried to use the power of your will to force it out from behind the clouds. The way the sun dictated how much sun cream you put on and how big your sun hat was. The way the sun whispered to you: ‘Go on, take your shirt off, nobody will ever notice that scribble of hair around your belly button’ and you believed the sun and you did and they did. The way the moon seemed to be your friend, just lighting the sky for the two of you. The way the moon seemed to be telling you that you would be young forever and that, year after year, like a couple in a romcom, you would return to this spot and walk holding hands under the full moon and the waves would be crashing just for you. And then one day in a charity shop you’d see the novelty sun and moon cruet set that we have together somehow dreamed into being and you’d buy it and take it home and when you had fish and chips you’d pretend you were at the seaside and the salt and pepper would cascade on to the chips in a way that made you think of sand.

Two caravans as a novelty cruet set, and two tents. Two sticks of rock as a novelty cruet set, and two giant humbugs. Two postcards home rendered in ceramic and turned into a novelty cruet set. Weather pepper, wish you were salt.

The tide comes in and the tide goes out; stand there, both of you, and imagine what it would be like if you stood there forever. Like a novelty cruet set might.