Bluetown
A dozen houses no longer painted naval blue, a fishbar, a pub, and Skorpio, where you can go for Adult Fun. And a wall. What a wall. Sir Isaac Coffin's mighty 1825 defence against the low-life, riff-raff, brigands, smugglers and thieves, who may still be there, while Coffin and his ilk are long gone. The wall that by the very act of keeping us out so effectively arouses curiosity and the desire to go inside with equal force, to see what he was so intent on protecting. We drove up and down Bluetown High St looking for a way in. There is none. One entrance at the top end is bricked up, the only other possibility is from Garrison Rd, where barriers guard the entrance to the vast container port that lies beyond.
And just how much and what type of adult fun are the inhabitants of Bluetown and their visitors having? Perhaps Sir Isaac and the other officers would have opened a secret door for the antecedents of these purveyors of Fun. Perhaps there was much back and forth between the parallel worlds divided by the wall and much else besides.
Bluetown. The godforsaken wild east end of the island, on the outskirts of Sheerness. There are committees today of the great and the good, architect's visions of the regenerated but currently derelict C19 church, as an open-plan workspace for the young metropolitans they hope to attract, appearing as computerised versions sitting at desks, or standing by coffee bars in the online model, but for whom Bluetown is not yet nor is ever likely to become a destination. The urban educated middle-class might appreciate the Georgian buildings, but do not belong on the High Street of either Bluetown or Sheerness. The tall dark brick row of houses, called Naval Terrace, exerts an irresistible magnetism. Marooned in its surroundings it is all the more fascinating in its near isolation, separated from a disused industrial lot inland by the narrow road that becomes the High St, and from the church by a wire fence. A taste of architectural promise, making the invisible garrison, Admiral, Harbourmaster and Captain's dwellings, behind the wall and still completely inaccessible, somehow even more desirable and inviting. We buy fish and chips from the Island fish bar in Sheerness, then eat them walking along the long sea wall towards what remains of the naval fortifications, and attempt to fathom the painful gulf between people of the same nationality, but in all other respects from different planets.
Twice I saw a woman with lank, dark, shoulder-length hair, first outside the Red Lion, the only pub left in Bluetown, as we drove slowly past, up and down the short strip, with its lowly houses and amenities on one side, and dwarfed by the monumental dark mass of The Wall opposite. She was talking to a man with a hard, darkened drinker's face. The second time she had gone inside the empty pub, doors open, and was sitting alone at the bar. I wondered what she could have told us about Adult Fun.