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Four-Poster
Beds
I wanted to break up the journey between London and North Wales so we stayed in Shrewsbury on the first night. I don't know if this is a Shropshire thing but every hotel and B+B I looked up on the internet had special deals for rooms with four-poster beds. I didn't want to pay more, I couldn't give a shit about four poster beds. I ended up sleeping in one. Portmeirion The village, hidden away on the hillside, was built by the crazy rich man Clough Williams-Ellis between the twenties and the seventies. It's a real life toytown, where the façade is king. You can stay there overnight, but it's expensive. We were lucky and bagged the last free spot in the village, a chintzed-up cottage. All the cottages and grottoes are 2/3 full-sized buildings and it makes you feel like a giant. We had the place to ourselves when the daytrippers had disappeared, and at twilight we walked through the woods to the faux-Victorian dog's graveyard. It was the night of the blackout in New York. We watched The Prisoner on the special Portmeirion channel, and drank sherry from the carafe that was left in our room. The whole place had a Wicker Man vibe that was very appealing, a statue was in place to commemorate the glorious summer of '59 and there were strange double-tailed mermaids decorating the place. We swam in the pool overlooking the sandy estuary where Number Six gets chased by menacing balloons. www.portmeirion.wales.com No Jam at Pwlhelli We went to the Women's Institute morning to check out the goods. The man behind the desk said that they'd sold out of jam, and he'd never known a morning so busy. We said No to an embroidered Settee-Tidy that sits on the arm of your sofa and holds your remote controls and boiled sweets. We said Yes to the marmalade, two pots of Three Fruit, one made by Queenie Jones, the other by Mrs G Roberts. Which will be the tastiest? Whistling Sands At the beautiful beach of Porthoer the sand is said to whistle under your feet. We heard nothing but Simon did break a lifetime's habit to sunbathe in his swimming trunks. I saw little kid scapegoated by his family, it was like watching a film, he was blamed for everything and then the Mum took him into a corner of the tent in which they were sitting and hit him with the full force of her arm. She did it out of sight, but I saw everything. I sat up and stared at them to let them know that I saw. Dad smiled at me, weakly. Capel Curig We camped amongst the mountains to save money. I have not slept in a tent for 14 years. It was good. Bangor The most fucked-up town going, but just over the bridge from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, the second most fucked-up town going. We are bad to the bone Llandudno is splendid. We took a trip around the bay on a boat called the Gorgeous Gussie. We rode up the Great Orme on a Victorian cablecar and had our pictures taken by a complaining man. We ate vile food at a Wetherspoons, and we stayed in the town's only vegetarian bed and breakfast. I knew something was up when I booked the room because the landlord was a little bit too over-friendly and hyper. Oh well, I thought, maybe that's just his way, maybe he's a xtian. The next clue was the "information box" that stood in the fireplace, next to a tape recorder in our room. Inside were flake-style magazines with a articles about the Hollow Earth, UFOs and the prevalence of alien lizards who live amongst us in disguise. There was also a folder explaining that everyday bathroom products are full of evil chemicals ("When was the last time you cleaned your teeth with rat poison? It was probably this morning!") and that the only solution is to buy Neways products. Helpfully, two large containers of Neways shower gel and shampoo sat on the bathroom shelves. Also in the box was a computer print and clipart testimonial of the power of Neways written by our host. It was somewhat paranoid, and spoke about how celebrities don't want you to know about what's in the products they endorse. Hmm, we thought at this juncture, Neways sounds a bit like evil pyramid-selling rip-off cult Amway, could they be the same kind of thing? We turned on the cassette player, which just so happened to have a Neways promotional tape in it of a woman speaking slowly and clearly about the importance of using Neways products. We could have been freaked out at this point, we could have been convinced that our vegetarian friends were trying to brainwash us into buying their creepy and overpriced toiletries but no...we got even. The next time someone listens to that tape they're going to hear the spooky stuff that we recorded over it instead. Andrew Logan We visited his glitter and mirror-filled museum in the village of Berriew. The curator made us cups of tea and showed us a video of an Alternative Miss World show from the 80s. We howled and laughed and cried at the improbable drags falling over in their outfits, looking stupid and fabulous simultaneously, totally glamorous and sleazy. It reminded us of going to Kinky Gerlinky, how important it was to us to enter that dreamworld, and we wished that we could be back there again for one last party. Three women came into the museum and looked around awkwardly. They saw us laughing at the video, stopped to check it out, and walked on. I overheard one woman saying, disapprovingly, "If I saw that on the telly I'd turn it right off." |
        
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