Whirligig Beach
It's the most fun you can have at the beach for a quid.

Around April they start putting it all back together again. The green tarpaulin is hauled off and heavy pieces of metal clang together bit by bit, their notes wavering in air which suddenly seems that little bit brighter, less grey. Portent of summer, promising long hot rock-candy days.

In a sweat-stained t-shirt the octopus operator watches his tentacle passengers circumnavigate his too-small booth. He's a stationary driver, enormously fat; who dares imagine what crumbs lie enveloped in his dark folds? The coin collector, in a Jack Sprat way, is a skinny teenage boy, fumbling for change and muttering under his fetid breath. Floats on the air some sweet tinkly music with an edge of sinisteria. On Easter weekend they play hymns; particularly fond of Amazing Grace, or perhaps it's the only one they have, compelled to play it on loop loop loop while the seagulls swoop swoop swoop over discarded chip cartons, muttering about standards and the lack of periwinkles.

It's not for children, people are wrong about that. Friend-people stand to one side, embarrassed, as I run up laughing, my pockets heavy with coins. It's a hefty climb to get seated, the poles are slippery-dangerous from salt air. There is only one footrest; the other leg dangles free, hanging out over the edge, stirring the tummyflies into action, rich with the prospect of possibly falling and soaring off over the skyline. I choose a horse with an unridiculous name, like Dave.

Circling whips your breath away, dizzies your head, whirling much faster than oh-no-I-couldn'ts would ever believe. On each revolution always one glorious moment: at that particular point the shingle is banked and hiding the hordes; for a split second the sunshine dazzles, your line of vision captures only a band of bright blue dappled with gold, and a treasure of multi-coloured stones. Look out to sea - you're the only person alive. Like many things, it ends too soon.

You can pull on the elastic of summer as hard as you like, continuing to sit on the rocks with a cold white when the failing light speaks volumes of a more appropriate warm red, but in the end when the pieces are once more taken apart and the green tarpaulin slides on like a turtle shell, it's time to let go again until next year.