“You got any pinkies?” Asked a man with a belly so round it looked like he’d stolen one of the harbour’s many buoys. The young lady in the oyster shack confirmed she did. “I’ll take six then please, darlin’.”
She spooned out the red curled sticks. They looked like boiled fingers. The man grinned, tapped his card and shuffled on with his daughter in tow. I took my place in front of the counter and eyed the tubs of seafood. There were king prawns, peeled prawns, pinks, cockles, whelks, crayfish and rollmops. I ordered a mix and the lady spooned them into little round tubs, dripping fishy water.
“Are these all from round here?” I inquired.
“The oysters are,” she replied so I ordered one of those, Mersea is famous for its oysters after all, “The cockles are from fairly nearby and the roll mops are pickled in the Netherlands.” The wording suggested they were probably fished somewhere better not mentioned. It reminded me of a friend who’d gone on a conscientious whim to a local fishmonger in Camberwell. They told him the fish he’d chosen was from China. “Have you got anything more local?” He asked - “Well this one’s from Pakistan…”
I took my banquet to the picnic benches. The wind made an eery wailing noise through the nearby masts. The whelks were rubbery and the cockles uninteresting. They were cold and I couldn’t help thinking I’d have been better off taking them home to cook. A bit of garlic would have gone well. The oyster was enjoyable, though I don’t really know what makes a good oyster. The two or three I’ve ever had have all tasted like the pickled onion and lemon that go on top. The Dutch rollmops, with a tangy flavour, were probably the highlight.
My meal, however, was ruined by an invasive worry that perhaps eating seafood before hitchhiking was an antisocial thing to do. With no one to talk to, this snowballed into a bigger fear that maybe some of it was off. Detailed scenarios played out in my mind, fired by a colleague’s recent story of eating a dodgy oyster and having to get across London. I didn’t fancy getting food poisoning in a lay-by. Or worse, in a stranger’s car. I abandoned my half-eaten pots of cockles and whelks and made my way.
People milled cheerfully along the waterfront. The pubs were full and the pub gardens too. The houses alongside were crooked, their garden walls made of streaked red brick. Opposite, the low tide revealed a long slippery harbour covered in a lawn of fine seaweed. An ice cream van called Dinglebell served a queue of customers.
Time was getting on. The rain was coming in and so was the tide. I wondered what I’d do if I got stuck on the island. I wondered what I’d do if I got stuck with food poisoning too… I walked quickly to the road out.
The place I found wasn’t especially satisfactory. Cars swerved around the potholes and rushed past the entrance to the playing fields of Oyster FC. Some pulled in but not for me. To the lamppost was tied a cardboard cutout of a figure in a cream outfit. Someone had attached a cap to its head and it had a red cable tie wrapped around its mouth like a gag. An old anchor was concealed by dying daffodils. There was a bad vibe to the place.
After half an hour a taxi stopped. He waved me in with few words, motioning to the hands-free. I mouthed to double-check he was ok that I was hitchhiking. He was. I got in and he continued talking in a foreign language as we drove back across the Strood.
After a conversationless journey, he dropped me near the castle in Colchester. I went there as a child although I only remember the dungeons. The walk to the A120, straight along a Roman road, took 45 minutes. I passed an abandoned Victorian hospital which was creepier than everything else I’d seen that day. The heavy stone windows were cracked and dark, the entrance loomed tall on the hill like something from a cartoon horror. I half expected a crack of thunder to break behind it. I wondered how much I’d have to be paid to spend a night in there, landing on £50,000. Then I noticed an abandoned angle grinder in the bus stop opposite. I upped my price to £100,000.
The roundabout by the A120 was hopeless. I waited for 45 minutes in the rain to no avail. I decided I was better off at the next junction so tired and out of options I began another 45-minute walk. Colchester’s suburbs were even more dreary now. A Chinese takeaway glowed red in the brief break of sun. A group of teenagers rode past on BMXs. They rode them like choppers followed by a waft of washing powder from their freshly laundered tracksuits.
I had to make my own lay-by at the next junction, moving the traffic cones that blocked off half the slip road. It was pointless in the end. A van stopped right in the middle of the road. The motorcyclist behind swore at him and me.
The driver was called Albredo. He said he had a nasty headache and didn’t say much. I gathered he’d picked up a hitchhiker in the north once and that if he could do someone a good turn he always would, it cost him nothing. I couldn’t hear anything else he said. He mumbled too quietly.
He dropped me in Chelmsford at another roundabout. The rain had cleared, replaced by a fragmented purple sky. This roundabout had a strange vibe too. Below the road there was a yellow hot dog kiosk called Boss Hog. Two old men in tracksuits sat on the top of the picnic tables next to a white Range Rover. Souped-up cars would roar down the track and disappear among the barns behind. I imagined they were drug dealers and this was their depot.
I waited for an hour with no luck. By now the light was going and I lost hope for catching a lift. It was an hour’s walk to Chelmsford station and I’d have to get a rail replacement bus to Billericay, as if to mock my failure.
Tired and disappointed, I gave up on the corner, abandoned my cardboard sign and headed for the station.