| Clacton 7.98 | ||
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Graffiti
in station:
Clacton girls are crap. Frinton girls kick more arse. Fuck off you slags. No hassle when I ask about gay bars at the tourist office. There are none anyway. Try and catch the wrong bus. Get hassled. Eat donuts. Get the right bus. Driver is flirty and wearing women's sunglasses. The bus is a summer service connecting Clacton to the holiday camps around the town. People on the bus include: fat guy with shaved head wearing a peaked hat and a t-shirt that says: 'I'm not prejudiced, I hate everyone.' Also a Dad wearing a ring saying 'Dad,' and clothes that look too flimsy for the weather. It's hard to imagine him being tender with his kids. The whole family had spots. Everyone on the bus made a fuss of The Bean, they liked her. We got off at nowheresville. The only indication that we were where we were supposed to be were the brightly coloured flags saying 'Haven.' The same flags you see outside show homes on new housing estates, theme parks, car dealers. We walked the half a mile or so to the camp, trailing our stuff behind us. I felt really excited by the blandness and uniformity of the place. There's a ball court, a playground and 'Neptune's Pool.' There's an area with a convenience shop, slot machine arcade, social clubs, launderette and mobile home sales showroom. Everything is taken care of. Our caravan is fab. It's like living in a playhouse. Everything is tucked away in cupboards. All neat, all tiny. The smell of sausages and beans wafts in from the caravan next door. There are money spiders all over the grass outside. In the shop I buy white bread, marge, sugar, ketchup, cup-a-soup, lemonade. They have lard in a special display. The only place where you can get hot food is a chippie. They can't find the veggie burgers. Walk The Bean along the beach and it's beautiful and empty. Sky big, can see weather formations all around, rain a-coming in, sunbeams, then the rainbows, two of them all shining and bright until one fades. You can see the whole semicircle and I imagine it ends on H15, our caravan's coordinates. We get back and I spy on two teen girls hanging out by the phone with their bags, which look hastily-packed. I overhear a conversation about someone smacking one of them in the eye and then being asked to leave. No refund. Neither me nor Kay knows how they're going to get back to the (mainland, I was going to say) real world. Kay saw them later on, traipsing down the road. We go to the social club and it's dismal. One chubby Tigercoat, a handful of kids dancing along, a chief Tigercoat smart-arsing the sparse crowd. Terrible pop duo doing Lighthouse Family covers and not waiting for the applause before they say "Thank you thank you" and start up their next number. They do an astonishing version of 'I will Survive' that blends into 'Love on the Rocks.' Then a comedian doing joke covers of songs and some slightly risqué material: "I'd like to be in the Spice Girls - all of them!" Small kids laugh hysterically whenever he says "Bugger". |
     
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