THE CHANGED MAN

Rob Crossan returns to a never-changing idyll in Filey, Yorkshire

height of spring tourist season. What we had found jutting out of the sands perplexed us; a monolithic cube of lichencovered concrete with a small, slit window on one side. Our confusion quickly gave way to that particularly acute type of early adolescent, bombproof certainty: an appearance on Calendar with Richard Whiteley to discuss our amazing find was likely only hours away.

Our parents weren’t so sure. “It’s a pill box from the war you idiots,” I remember being told. “There are dozens of them along this coastline.” Our response was to go back with buckets and attempt to cover the relic with sand again. Needless to say, within an hour we were pumping pennies into the one-armed bandits at the arcade, our folly already forgotten.

I rediscovered that same pill box again last year. Perhaps it was a little more deeply submerged in the sand. It’s hard for me to say for sure, because although Filey remains the same, I’ve graduated, married, divorced, worked, receded, drunk, smoked and, latterly, deteriorated in the intervening three decades.

I’ve been gradually losing my vision since my late twenties. Navigating my way around much of Britain these days isn’t always easy. But Filey’s never-changing smells, sounds and sights are almost Proustian in their ability to take me back to a better-sighted time in my life.

I hear the creaking doors of familyowned haberdasheries, I smell the fish and chip shops on the corners of narrow Victorian terraced streets emanating the distinct aroma of batter and vinegar into the sea air. I catch ancient fairy lights, strung between lampposts, gently groaning in the amber dusk. Then there are the cymbal crashes of the North Sea beyond, mixing with the urgent cries of gannets and guillemots aiming for the nearby Bempton Cliffs nature reserve.

The older me, white stick in hand, strides across the sands. Where are Chris and Tim now? Alicante and Liverpool, respectively, as far as I know. University, hormones and differing aspirations all cut their fatal wounds into childhood friendships.

But the pill box still stands. I rub my hands across that wet, salty lichen. And, just for a moment, I’m convinced that, maybe, just maybe, it really was an ancient castle after all.

i Blyton-esque: Filey, in North Yorkshire