Piers' peers…

CHRIS BENNETT considers a line with hooks and sinkers.

A COUPLE of weeks ago, as I strolled along the promenade at the Strand in Somerset West, I stopped to admire the pier.

It is a completely different design from our rather elegant and shabby pier at Margate. The one in the Strand is long and straight. A couple of fishermen were casting their lines from the sea wall and I asked why the pier was closed. Apparently it had become dangerous. To whom, I asked. To children. I thought here we go again.

Children have no business being on a pier, unless there is a carnival at the end of it, in which case they can hang on to parental hands.

You will have noticed that in this depressing age of litigation-mania it is not possible to enter any premises whatsoever safe in the knowledge that if some prat drops a lavatory on your head from a dizzy height it will be your fault. If the garage man prangs your precious Bentley it is your fault, and so the litany drags on, interminable in its gloom.

My guess is that the pier at the Strand is about the same age, maybe even older, than the decaying molars of our once fine structure.

What I cannot understand is why these things have been allowed to happen. Not so long ago some of our councillors (it had to be more than one because everything is done by committee) assured the good people of Margate, and come to that the bad, that the pier would be rebuilt.

Not before the 2010 World Cup it won’t; and that is what we should have been aiming at five years ago.

The pier’s purpose seems to have been forgotten somewhere along the line. It was one of the great attractions, as piers usually are. There are those of us who can sit on the beach, and then there are those of us who enjoy the paraphernalia and patience that make a good fisherman. They could no sooner sit on the beach than, say, read a book.

Added to this many of the fishermen of Margate come from inland, especially during the quiet season. They fish for different reasons; some for sport, some for gain and some to feed their families.

That our council has not been able to grasp these simple facts is perhaps understandable; what is not so easy to see is why the work has not been done. Maybe the problem at the Strand is the same. Nobody knows how to build a pier any more. The operating memory has gone. Nobody has been trained.

Looking on the bright side of things, the council has been quite diligent of late in keeping most things in order. The verges are well kept, and, with some exceptions, the roads are good.

Talking of roads, I hear that the turnoff to Munster on the Ezinqoleni to Port Edward road, which was recently tarred, will have to be done again.

Now I wonder why?