The Glass Imaginary

As a small child, before I was of the age to go out and about by myself or with friends, I used to pester my parents to take me on the pier. It was not an easy ask as entrance had to be paid for and of course there was the expectation of an ice-cream, I mean how can you stroll along the pier without an ice-cream, it would be like going to Ascot without a hat!

I loved walking the length of it, the salt tang of the spray as it hit the supports, the wind blowing your hair about and your skirt up.

Not overly keen on the very bit at the end where the anglers would cast their lines, as I knew a girl who knew a boy who had been caught in the face by a hook as an angler was casting his line. So I thought it sensible not to go too close!!

Whilst the penny arcades were always popular, and so many upgraded versions can still be found in classic seaside towns, they were not really what drew me to the pier.

I had two favourite activities, climbing up to the top and looking at the town on the Camera Obscura. The image of the town was displayed in full living colour and real time onto this absolutely huge concave  white plaster bowl and I thought it was miraculous and never tired of walking around the outside of the huge dish watching the  people,  going about their day, down below us along the seafront. If you have never seen one you have missed an incredible bit of science.

My other stopping place was the booth where the glass man made the all the animals, fish, flowers, and all sorts of glass models. He would do it all by hand using straw like lengths of glass that he would heat on a kind of Bunsen burner until it softened, sometimes melting two together and pulling into strands, sometimes blowing to balloon the glass. He used very simple tools like scissors and tweezers or tongs. I would watch fascinated for hours as these strands were bent and shaped into wonderful, colourful, exotic and fragile works of art. I never ceased to be amazed how someone could create such beauty so quickly and how someone could have that vision and imagination.

It is in these precious childhood moments that we first begin to learn the joy of the world around us and the appreciation of the beauty that mankind can create.