The Laughing Sailor

The Laughing Sailor

Life was beginning to get like an amusement hall penny cascade again this week.

You know the form, you push the coins in the slot trying to time them to drop just so and a domino effect causes the teetering pile to tumble into the hopper- or one or two at least, and you immediately put them back in. In reality, they get pushed to the top of the pile, underneath the pile, down the side tube, into the back of the machine never to be seen again, and the pennies hang over the edge impossibly balanced, taunting and teasing, until you go for more small change and just as you step away, there is an avalanche and several urchins appear from nowhere, scoop the pennies up and vanish back into the flashing lights from whence they came.

So it seemed that the metaphorical pennies were piling up in my head. Things to cope with, things to attend to, decisions and meals to be made, the trivial and the life changing butting up and tangling together in a game of naked and baby-oiled Twister. It felt that something had to give, but somehow it didn’t. It wasn’t tidy, but hung in there, precariously, like sanity.

In the Penny Cascade, cheap watches, cigarette lighters, key rings and other flyblown faded tat lie on top of the crust of pennies. Pound notes, (when we still had them) five pound notes, even a tenner in the 10p machine, quiver seductively with no chance of falling down into the hopper. People shove their pennies in the slot, desperate to dislodge these useless items they could buy for the amount of pennies they feed in, but would not dream of wanting to possess except if they can only just win it..just..another few pennies... landing edgewise on the tray...tipping... in the right place should do it… just as the pushers go back ..hold their breath as they go forward... push the coin down to the next tray... move the crust of balanced pennies fractionally forward where they stay. But one falls on the next bay into the scoop completely unconnected to the action in this one.

A couple of years ago we were at the North Yorkshire coast for some filming and stayed on for a few days’ holiday in the Moors. I had some business to attend to and my friend decided to pass the time in an amusement arcade on a restored pier, in a resort which looked as if it had been left behind in some glorious golden age summer sometime between the fin de siecle and the Great War.

When I had done what I had to do, I braved the Golden Nugget and its flashing lights and sirens , having swallowed a couple of paracetamol hoping to stave off the migraine it would surely give me, I tracked him to the Penny Cascade. Which of course these days takes 2p coins, but look like the old pennies, except smaller, and Britannia does not rule the waves on the reverse.

‘Just get rid of this change’ he said ‘then I come.’

I stood back and watched. At the other side of the machine an older man bent double squinted upwards at the overhanging coins. Tongue poking from the side of his mouth, frowning, he fed the machine with his coppers as if they were gold sovereigns.

My friend spun his coins into the slot, coin for coin dropping into the hopper, which he fed back in. I wished the machine would stop giving them back to him. The other man scowled each time one rattled into ‘our’ tray

.

The scowly man at the other bay ran out of coins and made his wife go for more, which she returned with in a plastic cup. A ‘token ‘ dropped into my friend’s scoop. The other man was livid and kicked the bottom of the machine , making sure that the old woman attendant in the change kiosk could not see him. I doubted she would have cared that much, even though a big flashing notice exhorted players ‘Do not hit or kick or tip the machines’. She was reading a Mills and Boon paperback, her catsbottom lips puckered.

‘Go get an attendant’ my friend ordered me. Obediently I trotted off after a blonde girl with a name badge that said Ludmilla. I explained that my friend had won a token and needed the machine to be opened so that he could chose his prize. She smiled and replied, ‘moment please. I come very soon , Just I must fix this bandit.’

I smiled back and returned with the news that Ludmilla would be there shortly. Meanwhile, the man banged the machine with his fist and snatched the token that fell from the hopper as if it was the alchemist’s stone. He ran across the arcade, grabbed Ludmilla’s arm and dragged her to the machine which she, eyebrow raised at such enthusiasm, opened. The token could be exchanged for

1- a small plastic model of a collie dog.

2- a packet of bubble gum

3- a key ring with a pea whistle

4- a blue furry dolphin

or you could save it and win more tokens for more valuable prizes, such as furry octopuses, Corgi cars and princess purses. The man chose the collie dog which he proudly displayed to his wife , looking sideways at my friend with a glint of triumphalism in his eye.

My friend asked me what we should have. By this time my indulgent amusement had given way to incredulous embarrassment, not to mention impatience, and I forced open his hand which grasped the precious token prised it from his fingers and gave it to an astonished woman with a child in stroller who chose that fortunate moment to be passing.

.

‘Get something for the little girl with it,’ I said, magnanimously.

The man opposite looked at me with murder in his eyes.

My friend feverishly fed another five pennies into the machine and two plinked into the hopper with a desultory plonk. He scooped them up triumphantly.

‘Okay, we go now. I win.

‘How much did you win? ’

’a fluffy kitten.’ He produced a plush toy from his pocket and thrust it into my face, and 4 pence.’

‘How many pennies did it take you to win that?’

‘£4.37’

‘Niki, you are wearing a money belt with £2000 in cash .You could have bought the kitten for 99p.’

He shrugged the shrug of a man who knows no matter how much he explains, you will never understand.

‘I did not win the goldfish because I did not play for it.’ He said, a propos of nothing.

We went out into the September sunshine, walked along the pier. I felt slightly dizzy from the contrasts between the dark corners, coloured chasing lights, the sun shimmering on the sea, hooters, clangers and the incessant squall of gulls. Looking down through the slats to the water sloshing around the pier supports made me feel sea-sick. The foamy wavelets swished the pebbles back and forth over the beach. Seaweed lay like electric cables on the tideline.

‘Hey, look at this old machine. Give me a penny. ‘

As a child, I had loved the laughing sailor at the entrance to the pier at Southsea. ‘Please can I have another penny Dad’ echoed down the years. This shabby relic was probably no shabbier than that Sailor in his glass case was then, but children do not see the shabbiness, only the magic. This sailor seemed vaguely sinister as he rocked and laughed, the bisque lips curled over unnatural teeth, the paint grey and chipped. How it never frightened children, as an adult, I found hard to imagine.

He pushed the coin into the slot. The Jolly Sailor rocked and his mouth opened, teeth bared he laughed. And laughed. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. AAHHAAHHAA. It shook manically, it cackled like a maniac. The mechanical movements were uncannily human, but in such a way as might be produced by dead flesh and bone like a ghost of a drowned man wandering underwater on the wreck of the "Mary Rose". We stared , partly in horror, partly in fascination. The unblinking eyes, painted wide open gazed back at us, then the eyeballs rolled from side to side daring us to smile, to laugh back at the stuff of which nightmares are made.

‘Personally,’ I said, taking his hand rather nervously ,‘I preferred the one where you pulled out the cold smooth silver coin tray, put the coin, I think it was sixpence, (a real treat) flat down in the space made for it, pushed it in with a smart snap and the elephant glided round on the track into the hole in the rock , his tail twitching, and came out of the other cave with a white box on his howdah, which he tipped into the mine and it fell down on to the shelf into the sunny world outside, into the hands of children, or specifically the child that was me. That elephant could be depended on to deliver. That elephant did not mess you about. That elephant kept its promises. That elephant’s gift was truly treasure from the Jewel in the Crown, from the mines of King Solomon.

Standing like Canute against the tide of stress and work, thinking of the Jolly Sailor in his glass case grinning for a penny made me smile. There are worse things than making mistakes or not getting through on schedule.