Yours truly spent the princely sum of £1.15 (that’s ONE POUND FIFTEEN) on a train ticket to Blundellsands & Crosby station to see the Another Place statues, seeing as how Sefton Council, in one of the most shortsighted decisions ever, have just given them their marching orders.
Sefton Council’s claim that the statues are scaring off wild birds seems a little bit dubious. Seb was right about the unicorns, though — I didn’t see a single one!
The plan was to spend an hour or so exploring the statues and pondering their deeper meaning. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me to check the high tide times, so I spent much of the time watching the very choppy water rise around the statues.
It is abundantly clear, however, that the statues do pose a serious risk to sea traffic. I mean, look how close that ship is!
Undaunted, I walked up towards Hall Road and the Coastguard station, where I found, in the car park there, snack vans doing brisk business. A lot of people had turned out to see the statues while they still had the chance.
Campaigners were out in force, collecting signatures to keep the statues on the beach (a second planning application is about to be submitted). I was happy to sign, and one of them advised me that the tide would be going out within the next hour.
I decided to wait, which turned out to be a wise decision, as the tide did indeed start to go out. Seeing other people venture onto the sands, I joined them for a closer look.
In short, wow. If you’ve never been to see this, imagine the statue above, replicated over and over again, just standing on the beach looking out to see. It’s an amazing sight.
So, God knows what Sefton are playing at trying to get rid of them. I can only imagine that their Planning Committee is made up of doddery old fools with no concept of what art is, like those people who write into the Daily Mail every year to complain about the entrants for the Turner Prize.
I do appreciate the safety concerns, but if people are foolish enough to ignore the numerous signs like the one below (In a nutshell: “THIS BEACH WILL KILL YOU!”) then that’s their problem.
I spent a couple of hours there in the end, getting back to the station at about 2pm. This turned out to be good timing on my part, as it started pouring with rain not long after.
PS: Check out this gorgeous picture of the statues on Wikipedia.
23rd October 2006 at 8:04 pm
I just emailed my mother telling her to go see them and take photographs for me.
I’m regularly infurated when gorgeous works of art are mocked and removed from the public as though they have no cultural impact. Beauty is precious.