re are always
those derelict kind of amusements such as putting a penny in a slot and
being sprayed with some vile scent; or putting a ha'penny in another
slot and seeing a lead ball being shot into any hole except the one in
which, had it disappeared therein, you would have got your money back.
For the rest, I am sure that half the people remain on them for the
simple reason that tuppence is tuppence in these days or any other
days. Of course, there is generally a band which plays twice,
sometimes three times, a day; but it is not a band which ever does much
more than blast its way through a selection from "Carmen," or a
fantasia on "Faust." Of course, if you like crowds--well, a pier is
for you another name for Paradise. Nobody uses the tail-part except to
walk to the end, or _from_ it, on the side which is protected from the
wind. But the end of a pier--where it swells and the band plays--is a
kind of receptacle which receives the human debouch. There you have
the spectacle of what human beings would look like if they were put
into a bowl, like goldfish, and had nothing to do but swim round and
round.

I suppose there _is_ an amusement in such a picture--because, look at
the women who come there every morning and bring their knitting! And
the "flappers" and the "knuts"--they seem never to tire of seeing each
other pass and re-pass for a solid hour on end! Why do they go there?
It cannot be to see clothes, because the most you see, as a rule, is a
white skirt and blouse and a brown neck all peeling with the heat!
They must go there, then, because to go on the pier is all part and
parcel of the seaside habit--and an English seaside, anyway, is one big
bunch of habits, from the three-mile promenade of unsympathetic
asphalt, with its backing of houses in the Graeco-Surbiton style, to
the railway station at the back of the town, where antiquated "flies"
won't take anybody anywhere under half-a-crown. It belongs, I suppose,
to that strain of fidelity which runs through the British "soul"--a
fidelity which finds expression in facing death sooner than forego
roast beef on Sunday, and will applaud an old operatic favourite until
her front teeth drop out. It is all very laudable, but it has its
"trying" side. One becomes rather tired of the average seaside resort,
which is built and designed rather as if the "authorities" believed
that God made Blackpool on the Seventh Day, and it was their religious
duty to erect r