Rollercoaster Rides

Thursday 4th June

I have only been on a very few roller-coaster rides in my life.  The truth is I am scared of them, they literally terrify me.  There was a very old one at the Kursal at Southend.  I am not even sure if the Kursal is still there, I haven’t visited Southend in years.  I went there with Carol, my first wife for a long weekend, before she was ever pregnant.  Southend was the Londoner’s playground in those days and one evening we went to the Kursal.  The rollercoaster there was wooden and my enduring memory is being slowly hauled to the top and waiting there for what seemed an eternity before the plunge.  At one point you disappeared into the structure itself and huge wooden cross-beams seemed to hurtle towards you and everyone in the cars ducked and the girls all screamed.  I must admit here that I got the fearful reaction of wanting desperately to pee as we were being hauled higher and higher up that first slope.  I still get that when I am up a very tall ladder or when we were in gym at school and had to climb the ropes; the nearer I got to the top the more I wanted to pee, and once or twice as a boy I actually did.

I have studiously avoided them since that time on the Kursal.  I don’t mind the Thriller or the Whip or riding the roundabout horses at all, even the chair rides don’t bother me.  It is just the up and down rides I can’t stand.  As for going upside down – no, please never let me be spun upside down, no matter how I am strapped in.  The ride on the Kursal was scary enough but more and more and bigger and bigger and twistier and gravity defying rides are being built.  There seems a never-ending desire for them among the young.  And even the tragic accident at Alton Towers a couple of days ago appear to do little to diminish the public’s enthusiasm for these rides.  And why do they do it, is it like a rite of passage, a dare they cannot refuse, or is it that they simply like being scared witless?  I suppose it is related to that desire to watch horror films of haunted houses and things that make you jump; again I dislike these intensely and avoid them.  I am not actually that much of a coward though at school being small I learnt to run away from fights.  I find life itself frightening enough without added complications.  And of course it gives me no satisfaction to hear about the people injured on that ride, even though I won’t go on the rides my grandchildren may well do.  Hopefully the accident will make the ride safer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if rather than put people off it will actually increase the popularity of that particular rollercoaster.