What Do I Miss About Pagham

A Memory of Pagham.

What do I miss about Pagham? Everything!!

My love affair with Pagham began around the mid 1960s when my parents Marlene and Ray used to take me to stay at my great aunt's bungalow on the East Front Road - the second one in from the end. Eventually this was sold and my nan and grandad Grace and Stan Yates bought a caravan on the Church Farm Caravan Estate. The field in those days was called The Saltings which backed onto a corn field and many a happy hour was spent making fortresses out of the hay bales.

The site was much more basic in those days with only communal loos (and a bucket for night time!) and stand pipes for collecting water to drink and wash in. But those were the best days.

We used to love walking along the sea wall and ending up at the Crab and Lobster which in 2009 doesn't look anything like it did way back then. It apparently used to have a resident ghost, a soldier I think, but there is nothing mentioned about it anywhere in the pub's write up.

My sister Alyssa and I used to play in the sunken tennis courts which are totally covered now by shrubs and weeds and only a few railway carriages remain.

When my nan and grandad died, my Aunt Yvonne had a caravan on the same pitch but after the 10 year period had passed, in which she had to replace the caravan with a new one, she decided not to, and our regular holiday base disappeared which meant we only ever made occasional visits, generally just for the day (we lived in Twickenham).

My dad died in 1977 and eventually Mum and my step dad Barry moved to Pagham in late 2006 (to The Green) prompting me to do the same and I moved to a modern terrace of four houses directly opposite St Ninian's Church, Pagham Road in February 2007.

I have a photo of my mum and dad Ray when they married in the late 1950s and they went to Pagham on honeymoon. The photo shows mum standing outside the old house boat in Derek Bell's garden of Little Welbourne. I knocked on their door last year and asked if I could bring my mum round to see it again. She remembered it as absolutely perfectly laid out inside with furniture and ornaments and fireplaces. Derek and his wife Misty were very happy for us to visit and it was good for Mum to see the boathouse again though it was a bit sad that time had got the better of it and now vegetation was starting to strangle the woodwork and encroach into the interior.

It had been a long held dream of mine to live in Pagham and be so close to the happiest memories of my childhood. The Sea Wall has barely changed over the years except the barriers put up at the sluices for health and safety. The smell of the seaweed, the sound of the birds, the wind, the insects, the buzzing of the small aeroplanes from Goodwood, all combined to make it, for me, a magical place and I was very proud to say I was a resident.

I would have been happy to stay in Pagham for the rest of my life. However love entered my life unexpectedly and on 10th April 2009 I reluctantly left Pagham for a new life in Perth, Australia and am getting married on Sat 30th May. But I think of Pagham and everything I have left behind every day and am looking forward to making my next trip in Summer 2010. Pagham will always be my most special place.