Alison Ruda, Pennant 805

The Venetian Waterways and me! I sometimes wonder how many times I have walked around the waterways. I have lived most of my life no more than 5 minutes on foot from this extraordinary, well what should I call it - park, amenity, tourist attraction. Photos reveal that I was taken there as an infant. I have memories of roaming free as an older child and I watched its fortunes ebb and flow as an adult on walks, generally accompanied by a dog. So, I have always been a regular visitor. I am not sure how old I was when I became aware of its history. I believed whoever told me that the Waterways grew out of a job creation scheme during a time of high unemployment. I am not sure when I realized its proper name, the ‘Venetian Waterways’ aimed to suggest some similarity with the splendour that is Venice, but I think by then I had developed a sense of irony. But before adolescence drew a veil over childhood exuberance, with my brother and a gang of friends, exiled from our homes by day, the waterways offered safe danger; on bikes we could hurl ourselves around sharp bends, scale its precipitous slopes and flirt with the risk of taking a dip in the ‘canal’. In winter, when it froze over there was the adventure of trying to walk on the ice, never thick enough to take our weight. Occasionally, the canal was drained revealing glorious mud for our entertainment (and mothers’ despair!). Summer brought a different feeling to our playground, and we shared the territory with visitors. Illuminations and boat rides created a different allure. The boats were anything but gondolas - seating 20 or so people on each side with cartoonish animal figure heads - the boats made leisurely progress. The swan, the cow, the elephant, I don’t recollect the others, but I do recall I always wanted to have a ride. I remember the last time I rode on a boat. A late teenager, a little drunk after a family barbecue, we all went over to the Waterways and piled into the ‘elephant’. Old fashioned, coloured light bulbs hung in chains under the bridges and outdated paste board cuts outs of nursery rhymes harked back to simpler times. It was clear that its heyday was past. Dilapidated, overlooked, forgotten, embodying the borough’s declining prosperity and struggling tourist industry, the Waterways languished for many years as the town sought to redefine itself. Still the backdrop to walks as we cut through to the beach, vaguely aware that another bridge had been removed preventing access to one of the islands, occasionally saddened by the sight of another thatched shelter burned down in an act of teenage vandalism; melancholy rather than nostalgia was the predominant feeling. And then a new chapter opened. Lottery funding. Planting. Restoring. I heard the cynics who said nothing could be done, it wouldn’t be sustainable. I hoped they would be wrong. I observed with interest as the borders took shape, I noted what grew well. I drew inspiration as I tried to create a new seaside garden in my own home. And the Waterways once again flourished literally and metaphorically. What’s the opposite of pathetic fallacy? It’s those walks during the first lockdown; my heart is somehow breaking; my thoughts are shredded by anxiety and the sun shines on the waterways day after day. Did you ever think you would be scared to walk past somebody in the waterways? Who was the person that thought it would be funny to dye the water in the fishpond fluorescent green and seat a life-size plastic skeleton on the side. An unusual vandal, who quickly repented and paid for the repairs. So, life went back to some kind of normal. My final outing with my dad was in January 23 and yes we went to the waterways. I was on foot, he rode a mobility scooter, physically diminished, his spirit was largely intact and he could not resist his lifelong impulse to tease me; scooter in top gear

• hurtling around and taking the bridges at break neck speed, just like we had done on our bikes so many years ago - and yes I had to run to keep up. Four weeks later he died.

I think I can remember the moment I first realized how much I loved my hometown; I was 19 - just back from my ‘gap year’ in Australia. I have always loved Waterways!