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Ten 'Another Place' Men, Their Stories, and How They Ended Up On Crosby Beach.

1. Shawn: One morning, very early, Shawn’s neighbours started pouring concrete. The trucks beeped as they backed up, the workman chatted and laughed over their Styrofoam lattes, a car radio played the Bangle’s ‘Manic Monday’. There was no reason to stay in bed—sleep was long gone—and so Shawn walked down to the Esplanade and stood in the sand looking out to the windmills and the freighters sliding into the river mouth, Liverpool-bound. His tiredness seeped from his body into the sand and sleep came forever.
2. John: John is eighty-three. He used to live around here somewhere—it is just really difficult to put his finger on where exactly. He remembers his mother walking with him across the sands to reach the water so it must be one of the houses he can see through the dunes: candy-coloured, gingerbread houses that all seem to miss just one memory that would otherwise make it his own. Today, when Nurse got distracted by Yvonne’s complaints about haemorrhoids or bed-sores or gout or whatever her ailment-de-jour was, John walked quietly through the door and made his way to the beach. Now he turns his back on the not-quite-right houses and stares out to see instead. Eventually they will find him and take him back, but for the minute he has the breeze in his face and his mother’s laugh in the lapping waves.