Desire Line Read Free Page A

between ruined shops and SuperWaterLazer, the esplanade was taking a pounding and cheers went up at every Splat! Until round eleven, forty minutes off high tide, when the sea broke in. It swept across the open expanse of the Events Arena and at one edge of this half-acre flat, pavers were loosened. As they lifted, the water became a tumbling trommel of brick and hard-core until the entire surface peeled back like orange skin. Round One to Water. Next came what Rhyl had wanted for decades. The hated ghost-hole of litter and tat, The Children’s Village, derelict food concessions and rides, a perfect symbol of the That’ll Do For Rhyl vernacular, was reduced to flinders. The Little People’s Café raced Pirates’ Den and a bright yellow roundabout to be mashed into a reef of wreckage three metres high and stretching right along the face of the old arcades.
    A Wave hates everything, even its own. The Seaquarium’s rear doors were stove in. At first the tubular viewing enclosures channelled a cataract straight through to spurt out the front entrance and, engineered against static pressure, the tunnels kept their integrity until flotsam arrived heavy and sharp enough to crack the toughened plastic. Then an entire marine collection, from sentient cuttlefish to blank-eyed dogfish, found itself heading inland.
    Only SkyTower, our late-twentieth century ‘attraction’ bought from the city of Glasgow second-hand, stood. A 75-metre steel needle had a viewing cabin designed to go up and down like a doughnut on a stick, its sole claim to fame in Scotland being to make Diana, Princess of Wales, nauseous. Now looking a prime target. A corset of reinforcing rods gave rigidity but this was the Irish Sea at its base. Yet the needle stuck to its plinth on pilings sunk into the Triassic sandstone. Would they be enough? Eight bolts screwed into eight threaded sockets. Eight bolts each the height of a man. If you carried SkyTower’s statistics in your head, suddenly it became too little, too human-scale. ‘SkyTower’s holding!’ I remember shouting and punching the air. ‘Lucky number 8!’ While further east, evacuation of Waterhouse’s magnificent Royal Alex Hospital continued. (But patients might as well have stayed put to watch the scrubby grass covered by a tide that failed to make it across the road. I guess few things can cheer up the sick more than the well-world sinking into turmoil.)
    West was a different story. The gradient gave any break-in the extra oomph needed to sweep into Marine Lake and swell it to join the Clwyd where pure brine already lipped the embankment. Once the flood had found a level, one continuous sheet of water would comprise lake, river, estuary and sea. You could’ve got in your canoe at the Miniature Railway Museum ( UK’s Oldest! ) and paddled to the Isle of Man. Or Iceland. A news crew captured the town again as the rest of the country salivated for lunch. It showed East Parade was still standing though gappy with a channel of floating timber and fibre-glass panels flowing down it. West Parade was virtually unrecognisable, subsumed in the new shore line. The helicopter hovered over what had once been a Lifeboat Station. Ha, ha! This image would become crass as it was reused during the day though presumably someone at a safe distance thought neat!
    My account of the flood’s suspiciously neat itself because most of the information’s the post-happening kind. Yes, I was there, my updates coming from every media. ‘This battered, once-popular north Welsh resort now braces itself for midday’ – another editor smartattacked, reminding the audience where we were, what we were. But someone who worked for me – technically – a local man, Glenn Hughes, was out in it. He voice-overed the flight of Old Woolworths roof towards the Forward Rhyl office that employed us. (It missed, just.) That’s Glenn for you. His house sat in