The Claw ...

On Swanage seafront, just opposite the Mowlem Theatre, there's an amusement arcade - glass windows and doors offer views of banks of garish machines - you can see the punters, poised over the greasy controls of, say, the Ducky Splash - or the Crazy Typhoon - inside, the air is warm and oily - near the entrance, a frowning girl climbs onto the dancing machine - she's soon dancing to The Winner takes it all - 

I have always feared to enter such places - perhaps it derives somehow from my boyhood anxieties about fairs - I once went for a ride on a waltzer - I spun in my crimson car like the pilot of a sturmovik -

But this day, I was with Sophie - she had a mind to engage with The Claw - a silver grab dangles over toy donkeys - tiny adorable Eyores -

Sophie led me inside, past the pale boys at the entrance - she got a fistful of coins from the creepy survivalist in the change booth -

The controls governing the movement of The Claw required the precision and dexterity of a key hole surgeon on DMT -

Inevitably, the tips of the grab flickered past, or grazed, the manes of the donkeys - we consoled ourselves with lattes and blueberry muffins -