Fast Fiction: Gradding
...I wasn't prepared for Gradding. I'd expected a quaint little resort.
'This is a howl,' said Len. 'The people, the noise . . .'
Richard Mallinson tells of folly on a pier.
'Where's Gradding?' asked Len.
'It's in Cornwall.'
'Let's go,' he said. An hour later we were on the train.
I wasn't prepared for Gradding. I'd expected a quaint little resort.
'This is a howl,' said Len. 'The people, the noise . . .'
We were swept along by the crowd, right to the end of the pier.
'Steady on,' I shouted over my shoulder, 'you're going to have us in the sea.' But they took no notice.
The sea was choppy. 'Can't swim,' I heard Len cry.
Years later Len said, 'Do you remember Gradding? Let's go again. I'll bring my wife and you can bring yours.'
'What a dump,' his wife said when we got there.
'Look, the pier,' said Len.
'Let's go to the end,' said his wife. 'I want to see where it was they jumped off.'
'Jumped off!' exclaimed my wife, licking an ice cream.
In the train going home Len's wife began to cry. 'Just think,' she said, 'if you'd drowned that day we wouldn't be here now, would we?'
'You're dead right about that, my little angel,' Len said. What a wag he was. And still is, I suppose.
