Thom Kofoed: The future of Hastings Pier starts now
It is not here, it is gone. Nothing but space now.
I drove to work with Joni Mitchell blasting from my car stereo ('......reading the news and it sure looks bad. They won't give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had.')I didn't sing along, just drove in stunned silence, scarf weaved tightly around my neck. The air changed half way down the hill. It became heavy and thick and grey.
In truth it felt like there was death in the air, I suppose in a way there was.
It was hard to tell what was smoke and what was fog- regardless of what it was the town was dark and seeped in melancholy. The faces in the cars as I drove passed all relayed a similar story, all connected by a common heartache. It was like when the snow stopped everything in January and people gave each other knowing glances as they walked across iced roads. "My day has been messed with too, everything is harder."
Except this time the upset won't just melt away.
The pier.
The pier.
The pier.
We all woke to the news that the pier was alight, attacked by arsons.
The pier, that had stood proud, stoic in Hastings for more than 100 years was burning, falling into the sea, disintegrating and disappearing. Giant shards of the town's history were breaking off and floating away.
However selfish it is I can't shake the feeling that something has been taken from me. I feel empty and violated, as though Hastings has been an unwilling victim of some gnarly sex crime. Beyond all else I feel cheated and sad. Hastings has changed, become different and new. It feels bleak and incomplete and hollow and wrong.
I watched the news. Saw the man standing at the pier's entrance, nothing but burn and black and dust behind him. I think he talked about the arsons but I don't remember. I was too busy trying to catch my breath, finally confronted by the fact that it was gone.
It was gone.
Now in the aftermath the town is trying to pick up the pieces, to come to terms with whats been taken from them. I hear rumblings of a movement starting. People want to see the pier restored, to rise, as it were, from the ashes.
The pier may be gone but we are not powerless. We as a town, nobody else, get to decide how we react to this. We can be upset and then forget, carry on with our lives, doing the things we do to get by or we can use this as the catalyst to make a difference, to change the piers story.
Let's not let this be the moment that defines its history. Let's not forget everything that it was once, that it had been long before this, to us, to the town.
May we come together and create a new, greater pier. May we create something worthy of Hastings. May we rewrite our towns tomorrow-because we can, because we must.
On October 5 2010 the pier was written into history but its future IS NOT inevitable.
Above all else that is what we must remember today.
For more from Thom Kofoed visit www.thomatronics.com or follow him on twitter @thomkofoed
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Hastings
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South
