Extracts from my personal diary (part 4)

Bastard and bitch, aged 31.

God I’m a bitch. Having beefed up, porked out and generally grown into my looks over the past few years, having become the person I always dreamed of becoming, and having now plenty of opportunities to meet, court and make love to women, I seem bent on acting with all the bad grace of a bitch, and I feel so spiritually dead and hollow, the quiet, studious, hard-training me of old being replaced by a tougher, meaner yet all the same spiritually rottener version of myself.

If that wasn’t bad enough I met my cousins the other day and even only in their mid-thirties, they have aged so drastically, look fatter, balder and have lost that spark that once so characterised them. I’m really so sorry for this. Yet I can’t help thinking that I wished this on them, the old me, inferior, casting an envious eye on the great looks bestowed upon them, wanted and hoped, in the belief that it would never happen, those good looks to fade. I feel so hollow and empty, so depressed to see them like this, I now somehow more superior, more the alpha-male. Ripe fruit eventually turns rotten. I am now ripe. In future I will be rotten. It’s so depressing.

The other day in town, seeing a pretty, young girl, I happened to see how she exposed her stomach in the way that fashionable celebrities do. Although by no means fat, she didn’t quite posses the toned, athletic waste of a superstar, that one would see in a magazine or on TV. Anyway I looked at her, in my bitch like way, and shying under my pressurising eye she then pulled her t shirt down as though she were ashamed.

I was really disgusted with myself for this, this sub-conscious bitch behaviour of mine, for I can have no complaints with women these days, absolutely none at all, and especially not with young girls, about whom I can genuinely say, speaking with my hand on my heart, I like; and especially because in that little piece of behaviour exhibited by that girl – the desire to look good, the shyness under my scrutinising eye, the belief she had made a fool of herself – I see myself exactly as I was, when I was just a wannabe.

Yes, having spent so many years as a wannabe, is I think the main reason for my cattiness now, my bitchiness.

I am a narcissistic, temperamental, raging, crazy son of a bitch. Seeing, out in town the other day, two bespectacled men, one about thirty, the other fifty – arm in arm with exquisite, elegant, fashionable women, almost sent me mad. God I was loathe to see it! It really, really drove me mad to see those geeks with girls, I hated it!

One incident today left me feeling utterly hollow and empty.

Standing at the metro station with a woman of mine – a red haired, thirty-seven year old woman, who wears a leather jacket and is looking for a second youth – standing there together, the both of us out of humour to be honest, sick of one another actually, sick of ourselves, we happened to see across the way, a young man in a suit and glasses. He started singing.

At first we were absolutely astounded by how badly he sang – he was utterly terrible. Two charver youths, boy and girl standing next to us, also heard this and expressed their contempt, unmodified by any adult behaviour or civilised good manners, criticising the awful singing, and mocking the man as an X-factor wannabe, X-factor being the wannabe-celebrity show in which members of the public are invited onto TV to (by and large) sing badly and make fools of themselves.

Like I say we were all surprised to here this young man – who outwardly in his suit and glasses looked like a respectable, normal citizen – sing so stupidly and horribly. But within seconds we realised that in fact it was a cry for help. As the song continued it became evident that the young man was having one of those moments, moments I knew often in my youth, when you feel so mad and sick of the world, so irritated by the coldness of all around you, that you finally breakdown, start screaming wildly and hysterically, as if you just can’t cope with life anymore, as if you can’t bottle up your feelings any longer, and you have to let other people know you are unhappy.

The song turning into a mad-man scream, we heard him say something like ‘I want a girlfriend’ followed by ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ By this time, a gang of youths on his side of the platform, cottoning on to what he was saying, approached him: he ran off around the corner, and a minute or so later, the youths cried out ‘he’s cut his wrists!’

I had watched the charver boy and girl on our side of the tracks, as they had contemptuously looked on and watched this poor guy. And, after their initial contemptuous remarks, I had expected them to give the guy some more stick; and I had been poised to give them a good haranguing.

However, I now watched on as he and his charver girl, genuinely moved by what had happened, and in their uninhibited teenage way, went to show their concern for the man. I watched them cross the tracks, illegally as charvers do, the youth followed by his girl, and in their extrospective way, oblivious to all else, I saw how like a pair of primates they were. But as well as being intrigued by the event, they were genuinely sympathetic with the guy, and I was touched by how good they truly were in their hearts, and how they genuinely felt empathy toward the guy, as if they knew exactly how he felt. I was touched by how all the youths, all the charvers, came to help this guy when he needed it.

I was more so impressed by their humanity, as when the next train came, my woman and I boarded, selfishly concerned with our own lives, having expressed no sympathy with the guy, or even caring to see if he lived or died – though I’m sure it was an (intentionally) failed suicide attempt.

Another young woman who had stood on the platform waiting alongside us for twelve minutes or so, did however have conscious enough to forget about the incoming train and go around to see what had become of the young man. She needn’t have done this, she needn’t have cared: but she did.

In the behaviour of these people, in the way they cared for the young man and seemed to truly be aware of his feelings, as if they understood perfectly why someone in our society might suddenly have a wobbler, might scream and cry for help like that as if to say ‘I just can‘t take it anymore’, I find a reassuring humanity in people that is missing in myself.

For my woman and I boarded the train only thinking of ourselves. I wondered whether myself and Gina were in fact the trigger to the poor guy’s cry for help; to see me cockily standing there, somehow a nerd like him, but possessing something else, more mature, more experienced, with my sassy women Gina – who by the way, during the whole incident expressed not an inch of sympathy, but just bore a look of contempt – I wonder whether seeing me, so like him in one way, yet with a woman as I was, so unlike him, I wonder whether that was the final shock, the final turn of the screw for him.

I feel so utterly worthless. I knew of all that guy experienced, I understood him perfectly; I was like that in the past. But only in the past. Now I am something more, that part of my life is over, and I confess to looking down on him somewhat, to holding him in contempt, for being what I once was. I really hate myself today and rightly so. I have become something I don’t like, hanging around and courting favour with women like Gina who I don’t really care for. We spent a miserable evening together, she is such a hard-faced miserable specimen. What have I turned into?

Extracts from my personal diary (part 3)

Eye of the beholder, aged 26.

There’s a girl in our department, a research student like me, who has an extreme skin condition. When I first saw her I was shocked: she looks as though she has been burnt in a fire, the skin on her hands and face looking red, raw and blistered. Her hair as well seems dry and moisture less. To look at her face and skin is almost to experience the pain and agony that she must, on a daily basis, when say washing or drying herself, experience. On top of all this she is shorter than average.

Like I say, I was taken aback when I first saw her. But I was also equally impressed upon by her personality. She is eternally radiant, chirpy and talkative. Her voice is sweet and girlish; she disarms people’s shock by her friendly personality; she is forever genial, never depressed; she is positive, she jokes a lot, she listens well – you can always rely on her to smile, she is never down, doomed or absorbed.

When I first arrived here I saw from a distance how she made friends with all and sundry, all except me. For some reason, I’m not quite sure why, she disdained me, ignored me. I got the impression I was being blamed for man’s universal and time worn insensitivity to women. Not being especially well suited to the role of hero or gentleman, I decided to ignore the silly girl, and treat her with the same hate and indifference I do any girl who dares to insult me. Then one day, some nine months later, she happened to walk into a room, where I sat studying alone.

‘Hello’ she said chirpily ‘how are you?’

I responded kindly, openly. I’m not sure why her attitude suddenly changed like that. To be honest I think she wasn’t expecting to find me in there, and when she did, before she had time to realise who I was, she’d already discharged her typical pleasantries. Anyway from that day on there was no turning back; and slowly over time our friendship has developed. We always stop to chat with each other when we meet. I also grew to see that her relationships with our piers, whom from day one she appeared to be on such good terms with, weren’t, when prodded, so strong. In many ways her relationship with me was, from the start, more intimate. In that perhaps she read me for a more sensitive person and decided to play a silent, psychological game with me.

Anyway as it now stands, I think our relationship perhaps more meaningful than others. With me of course, open, listening person that I am, she is free to be more herself. I have often thought that beneath her genial exterior must lie a more serious, passionate, angry woman, a woman beset by deep depression, consummate loneliness; and I wonder if, under the empty, vacuous silence that is my presence and personality, she won’t be encouraged to diffuse her truer feelings to me.

Of course I worry for myself as well. I am a cruel man at heart, manipulative, a bully. I am better off with woman who can stand up to me. On the other hand I like being a hero, I have a huge ego, I like having my vanity tickled. Will this girl’s life be barren, empty, sterile, unhappy? Is there any need for that? Isn’t there a hero out there ready to step up to the plate? We only live once. I can’t help recall how in my youth I dated a very glamorous woman, several years my senior, for only a few weeks. We slept together once. We didn’t really have anything in common. I think she felt sorry for me to some extent. I think her motivations were somewhat based on guilt: she regretted being such a bitch toward men in her youth. Yet how that experience changed me! After that I felt like a man, no longer inferior, no longer second best to anyone. I buried a part of myself after that little affair, a part of me I did not like. I was liberated. Even though, analysed coldly, it was a brief, cold affair with a woman who was trying to be kind.

Stupid thoughts. This week I found myself in an awkward situation.

At the close of the day on Monday B came to my office, told me she was going to XYZ, and asked if I was walking that way. I was. I could see she was mildly excited by the prospect of walking home with me. Just seeing how her attitude changed, how this was a big deal to her, how she was no longer herself, no longer the calm, dignified person she usually is, so simple, straightforward and likeable – seeing all this I already felt electrically angered, I felt so put upon. Outside the department, I have never been with B. Here on this walk we would be exposed, to the prying eyes of the entire world. The thought of it angered me, I felt so pressurised. But I couldn’t get out of it.

As we walked out of the building, I was curt and short in my conversation with her, and B in response started talking nervously, ten to the dozen, absolutely inanely. I couldn’t stand the farce of the situation, the unnaturalness. I was so ill at ease. I was angered, resentful. And as we headed out along the road we were set upon by a million eyes.

Because of the rush hour traffic, we found ourselves walking past an endless line of sluggishly moving cars; and everyone, everyone seemed to look at us; to watch B and I, she a strange sight for those who have not set eyes on her before. I felt the attention on me and hated every bit of it. I felt I became more tense, more uptight, and I felt all the people in the cars saw this too. Everyone seemed to ogle us. I don’t know what B thought. I should be flattered, I really should be so flattered, if she feels so comforted, so assured in my presence; but God how I wished I was a perfect ten, an out and out handsome stud like my cousins. For then, I could have strolled at ease; then I could have allowed all those stares of passers by to simply bounce off my carefree, indifferent, hunk-like person; then I would have been able to extend the shroud of protection to B.

***********************************

I’m on a dismal and deflating low tonight and all of my own making: in my presentation to the department today, I embarrassed, humiliated and frightened both myself and the entire audience by inserting in my talk a series of jokes so unfunny, misjudged, misplaced, bizarre and poorly executed, that from the halfway point to the end the audience sat cringing, terrified and wanting to escape, whilst I fell into myself and gave off an introverted, suicidal come psychopathic hatred of them.

At the end three or four students and colleagues, commiserating with my embarrassment, stayed behind to ask questions and simply to make sure that I was alright.

One of these was Stefan. He is a perhaps thirty year old student with glasses and a beard, who’s studying for a Master’s degree here, though his chief characteristic is that he has a degenerative disease, (MS I believe); he is wheelchair bound and makes his way about the campus via an electric motor. During the entire talk, as is his wont, his arms flailed uncontrollably – he has fits where he is unable to control his body – and this was accompanied by moaning and groaning and foaming at the mouth, all of which he is also unable to curb. Added to all of this he really cannot speak clearly, a simple conversation with him a trying task, as he demonically tries to express himself.

When he asked me his question at the end, I was in no mood to answer him, my shame and confusion confounded by the fact that a handful of the audience had remained to sensitively enquire after my health, and narcissistic, horrible person that I am, I felt a fraud and a charlatan, I felt I didn’t deserve their sympathy. Normally eternally gracious, especially with one such as Stefan, here, feeling utterly worthless, I didn’t even have the motivation to answer his question, my supervisor kindly stepping in and giving him an explanation.

But later tonight, reflecting on my hollowness, I thought back to Stefan’s question and realised what a clever and intelligent question he had asked, and I was surprised by his depth of understanding of the topic I covered.

But why should I be surprised? After all, I have known for this past year he is a MASTER’S STUDENT – his intelligence and subject knowledge shouldn’t be underestimated. Yet all the same I am left sobered and impressed upon, deeply influenced by the fact that that man, barely able to utter a word without problems, his arms, his head forever flailing, agitated, disturbed and erratic, his continual moans and groans, his paralysed, demon-possessed, wooden body forever requiring to be carried around, towed here and there in his skooting, shooting, spurting electric chair – I am left sobered by the fact that trapped within this body is a very fine and developed intelligence, and left saddened that even though I am now fully aware of this, I somehow still don’t really believe it, and can never regard Stefan as an intelligent, sentient being.

I am struck profoundly by him: for he is as intelligent as anyone, it is an incontrovertible fact and yet he can only really express himself through exuberant cabbage-like gestures, as if he is a madman or infant.

And I wonder whether he was really so interested in knowing the answer to the question he posed at the time; or whether, quietly regarding my downfall and humiliation, a seed of sympathy was sown within his soul, and he wanted, in his generous and kindly way, to commiserate with me and show me, in my hour of humiliation, that I had a friend. I am almost certain of it.

Extracts from my personal diary (part 2)

Looking good, aged 23.

My cousins came to see me the other day. They are incredibly handsome young men, tall, erect and sturdy, with dark, bold, sexy faces. Alex has a refined goatee. In their teenage years they were arrogant, superior, I didn’t much like them. But I see now they have changed. They could not have been more genial, more sensitive. They are true gentlemen.

They invited me to go to the dogs with them. I don’t normally go to such places. I don’t go to nightclubs, bars, parties; I don’t even go to restaurants or the cinema. I am shy retiring, I like to read books. However I couldn’t really say no. Plus, a part of me was excited by the prospect. In their company it could be quite a night.

So I said yes, and in the intervening days I was plagued by a mixture of nervousness, doubt and anticipation. To be honest, my soul felt left of centre, not at rest. I took to looking at myself in the mirror. The delicate, handsome, refined features of my cousins had left an inedible mark on my memory; and I couldn’t help note the family resemblance in my face. I looked like my cousins, they were handsome. So didn’t that mean…..

So tonight I went out with them. I was to meet them in town, and I walked alone through the streets, dressed up in fancy, fashionable clothes. I’d bought them a year ago, in a spur of the moment thing, but then, realising that they just weren’t me, I’d kept them locked up in my wardrobe. Tonight however, I’d finally decided to wear them. As I walked, my belt dangling about my midriff, my glasses removed for once and replaced by contacts, I felt foolish, as if everybody watched me and was saying to themselves ‘look at him, dressed up like that – he looks ridiculous.’ The belt dangling at my midriff seemed especially silly; I kept wanting to tuck it in, to hide it. I walked tensely, nervously across the town. Part of me wished I’d never come.

When I met my cousins I had mixed feelings. They are splendid specimens, and I was overcome with wonder, seeing how they, wearing dangling belts like I, wore them with such command, such manly bravado. Physically I am not much inferior, I don’t think. But they seemed to posses some elusive quality that I lacked, that allowed them to strut around, bold and erect, their belts at their beck and call. In comparison, I looked lost and rudderless, my belt dangled around me embarrassed, as if it resented my lack of leadership, and was sick of me. Their belts were happy to have such masters; they followed their command.

So we walked to the dogs, and though I felt a bit like an idiot, the protection afforded to me, by the presence of my cousins – who didn’t seem to notice I looked like such a dip-stick – made me forget about my appearance. Instead I noted the glances of men and women directed our way, the respect afforded us, the feeling that as a group my defects were hidden, and that the appreciation of my cousin’s attractiveness extended to myself. We were like the three musketeers.

The greyhound course was a dive. I would never have come here alone. The clientele were decidedly rough. However not only did that not phase my rich, privately educated cousins, but in fact they were perfectly at home here, and were treated like royalty. The man on the door doffed his cap as it were and said evening boys in his common accent; they responded with alpha male condescension, courteously, ever so courteously replying, assured however of their supremacy. As they strutted about the place, like proud peacocks, I in tow, I was overcome by immense pride, seeing how they dominated this venue. The bar maid could not have been more ingratiating, calling them darling and honey, showing such true respect. And as they wandered away, pint in hand, amidst the punters – hard men, working class men, genuine rough and tough specimens – their dominance, in the way they strolled at ease through their ranks, in the way the punters, in their self-deprecating body language, and occasional nods and greetings, bowed to them – their dominance could not have been more complete. I also noted the constant attention the women were throwing ‘our way’.

Anyway it was at some point in the evening that I shelved all doubts regarding my appearance, saw that I was a handsome man, and gave myself up to being admired by women. It was such a good feeling to finally feel at home with the opposite sex, to feel sort after. And almost immediately as this pure and novel feeling kicked in, a secondary and impure one, a feeling common to the nouveau riche, set in: I was overcome with bitchiness toward other men, and spotted all of their weaknesses, that my cousins and I, in our undoubted dominance, lacked. Like I say I was overcome with these feelings, though deep down I was beset by major, major doubts. And my soul felt not at rest, as though it were on the waltzer. I was not myself, I acted unnaturally. I talked loudly and made stupid jokes. I acted as though all watched me.

It was a lovely feeling though. At one point a beautiful young lady walked by our group inspecting us with interest. My cousins seemed oblivious, but I looked directly back at her, as if to say ‘hello my dear’. As I did this, I imagined, in my mind's eye, the look of bold, lion-like sexiness that my cousins’ faces display, I imagined this upon my own face. Eventually the young girl, seemingly buckling under the pressure of my gaze, could not help a smile flit across her face, and so raised her hand to her mouth, to cover her embarrassment. I was overcome by my power to impress, my ability to make a girl like that buckle under the power of my presence. On another occasion, as I went to the toilet, a group of young girls eyed me up, and extremely flattered, I stared cockily back at them. They looked at each other and giggled in that teenage way.

So I spent the evening surfing a wave of happiness, as though a new world had opened up to me. But in my heart I think I had major doubts, my soul was all at sea and deep down I was unhappy. Ignoring these feelings however, I surfed on, and at one moment, when I happened to pass, on my way to the toilets, a man dressed foolishly in a white suit, I stared contemptuously at him. I had watched him all evening, like a cat with a mouse. The white suit had evidently been a great idea back at home; but when he’d found himself out here with it on, he’d been overcome with regret, and I had watched his sorry figure wander back and forth around the terrace, clearly wishing the ground would swallow him up. I was glad to see someone else suffering the sort of humiliation usually reserved for myself. As I passed him I shot him a cocky, contemptuous glance; surprisingly he replied with a genuinely outraged look, seeming to question my impudence. I was puzzled by that.

Anyway, I arrived home, said goodbye to my cousins, and joyous over my new found happiness, went to examine my good looks in the mirror. I have never experienced a more excruciating, colder blow.

Instead of a handsome man, I saw an utter fool. Having gone out with wet, gelled hair, I saw how, by the action of the wind, it had become tufted like a mad professor’s. My eyes, nose and cheeks were red, swollen and bleary after the alcohol. But the worst thing of all were the bits of pie leftovers on my face. Why my cousins had not mentioned this to me I could not say. Perhaps they see me as such a contemptible figure anyway, they thought it made no difference. Perhaps they were too polite to mention it. In any case, observing the tufted hair, the red swollen face, the pie remains before me, I now saw with crystal clarity just why that young lady had put her hand to her mouth to avoid smiling; why the school girls had giggled uncontrollably; why white suit, as I had arrogantly dubbed him, had questioned my impudence, as if I should look at my own undignified person before insulting his.

I am so utterly mortified by all of this. I feel so cold and lonely, so suicidal. I am such a fool, so susceptible to being delusional. I feel so ashamed, so embarrassed by my antics. I want to get into bed, switch all the lights off, bury my head deep in my pillow, and never wake up again.

Extracts from my personal diary (part1)

Red nose, buck teeth, aged 19.

In the shop today, a Russian woman, aged about thirty, happened to pass a comment to me that my nose was red.

I was very much taken aback by this, wounded to the core. I didn’t know what to say. I had been in a good mood till then. I really felt the women – who I’d never before met – had such cheek to say that to me. But I was impotent to retaliate. I just withdrew into myself, looked daggers at her. I felt really deflated inside, as if my day had been flushed down the toilet.

She has lived in this country for a few years, is married to an Englishman, and comes to work here on a Saturday for the good of her soul, I understand. Otherwise she is a housewife. She is moderately attractive, but her face is pasty and sluggish, her eyes dull and dead. She is clearly intelligent, clearly unhappy; she is not an out and out waster – like I say she comes here to work for the good of her soul. But, like so many Russians I have met, she is slovenly and insipid, doesn’t work, exercise or study, and this shows itself, in the spiritual torpor and dissatisfaction writ into her eyes and her sluggish, immobile face. Her skin is so pale and pasty; it is blotchy and set with slight fat deposits, so that her face is inclined to hang down; her features are so slothful, so rigid; there is no blush in her pallid face, no readiness to smile. When I see her dissatisfied eyes, looking out at me, she is like an intelligent person trapped, through bad karma, in the body of a rigid, ponderous slug.

She could not hold her tongue on my red nose. And I think my evidently sensitive face and deportment had encouraged her to make the remark. Although I think she hated herself for saying it, she made a pretence that I was to blame for taking her words too seriously, for being huffy. And to rub salt in my wounds, and deject me further, she played a game of favouring Michael, my friend and colleague. Talking to him with greater respect and touching him with womanly charm, she ignored me and made him out to be a real man. He is I guess, and more handsome, more masculine than I. He is incredibly genial too, also more pleasant and sociable than myself. He is my friend. He felt sorry for me, for Sonya’s insult. But he also felt flattered by her favour, and played her game, happy to be her lapdog. I don’t blame him. He was at pains to ensure me he meant no ill will. He called me mate and so on.

I know I have a red nose, but to be reminded of the fact so bluntly like that, in public hearing, hit me in the heart. It is funny how we can live our lives in a bubble, deluding ourselves about who and what we are. Our true selves know everything about us, our weaknesses, faults, limitations. But in order to get through the everyday slog of life, we blot this knowledge out, and see ourselves as unblemished, invincible. Then one cold winter’s morning we are given a rude wake up call, a snow ball in the face. We stare in the mirror of truth, and see ourselves once more as we truly are. See our unchangeable weaknesses.

But although Sonya’s insult scored me to the marrow, it is also in a sad, dreary way salutary, as if I see the truth, the cold light of day. I feel so depressed tonight, so dejected. There is no God, there is no future save death. I am stuck with my big red nose for life. But I also feel tired, ready for my grave. Death will be a relief, an escape. I am gratified that one day I will no longer be.

I spent the afternoon with a complex, as though a big, shiny red nose abutted from and dominated, the landscape off my face. I was curt with the customers, I didn’t look them in the eye. I was ashamed, I kept wanting to hide my face. I was really downcast and low. I just wanted to go home. And it was in this state that I endured an even worse blow to my moral.

In the afternoon another girl, Pauline, came on to work at the till with me. She is middle-aged and divorced. She has spent her life working in a department store, but was recently laid off, and is now on the dole. Though uneducated, she is wise, intelligent, extremely sensitive. In appearance she is blond and fairly comely; she is tall and if a little too well-built and corpulent she is also buxom, plump, motherly. She has in fact got children. When she arrived she started talking to me. She was keen, sensitive, she started to tell me a joke. I was down, dispirited, low. I tried to rouse myself, but my eyes, as I looked at her and listened, were sad and humourless, cold. I wanted to be at home. Anyway as she came to the punch line, she smiled sensitively, and at that point, ‘ping’ her front teeth, like a pair of fangs, popped out, so sharply, so grotesquely.

I couldn’t hide the look of disgust that swept across my sad, miserable face; could not hide the contempt written in my stony, cold, mirthless eyes, as she laughed sensitively, exposing her awful teeth. She saw my look and immediately coiled into herself, a mixture of shame and anger clouding her person. She was fuelled by an impotent anger, a bitterness. She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day. She couldn’t argue with me or take me to task, my insult had been indirect. I had given her a cold, mean, contemptuous look.

I had, after this subconscious reaction of mine, brightened up, smiled, tried to be kind, and for a while, as I sat and brooded in my dejected mood, hit for six now by the awful but undeniable reality of Pauline’s buck teeth and my disgust with them, I tried to kid myself that I was not as bad as Sonya, not having so openly insulted Pauline as Sonya had me. But in the end I saw that there was no real difference, that my cold, contemptuous look and the feelings of disgust engendered in my heart were just as cruel as Sonya’s thoughts and words. And so I spent the rest of the day utterly gloomy, wondering if there was any point in being alive.

I tried for a while to accept Pauline for what she is, but the teeth are just too bad; otherwise I think she would be very pleasing, in her blond, buxom, motherly way. But the teeth are dreadful and I can’t get beyond them.

There seem to be so many unsightly appendages in this world. In the shop today I served an old lady with huge grey whiskers sprouting from her face; a young girl with a thin but prominent black moustache; a man with a deformed hand and lots of people with bad breath. In all cases I was unable, in my mirthless state, to think beyond the grey whiskers or the moustache, to mentally escape the deformed hand or the bad breath, I was overcome with an obsessive disgust of them; unable to look and think beyond them. Imprisoned in a gloomy cell and left to chew over all the ugliness of man. Others have it worse. The other day I saw a young girl with an elephant man like condition; her face was flabby, tumourous, as well as porridgey and pale; I could invoke no sympathy for her, no love; I was simply overcome by disgust.

Demoralised I stood in front of the mirror tonight, spending hours looking at my disgusting, big red nose, and sticking my teeth out savagely, making such an ugly, hideous sight.

Foreign holiday (part 2)

‘I went abroad again on several other occasions, over the next ten years or so’ continued Paul once more after an interlude in which he was kind enough to service me with some coffee from his flask and some cheese savoury sandwiches, ‘and although I certainly enjoyed myself and had a lot of fun, it was as ever a mixed bag of emotions for me. Especially as I hit my teenage years. Suddenly awkward, embarrassed, ill at ease, the nudity of the beach now had greater significance for me, and for myself and my brother holidaying with ideas of women, sex and lustful pleasures and meeting with the reality of soured hopes, misspent days, and the experience of being out of place in the cooking cauldron of sexual competition, we vented our teenage angst in quarrels with our parents, whom of course we wanted to be rid of. Thinking of going to nightclubs, but not daring, and not in truth really wanting to. I remember getting extremely sunburnt on one holiday, and subsequently being laughed at and pelted with pebbles by a gang of Spanish youths, a football team, who were out on the beach, in preseason training. And when I got home from that holiday I decided that it would be a good many years before I returned abroad again.’

I tucked into the delicious cheese savouries and washed them down with coffee. Being addicted to caffeine, I do like to drink the stuff. But from someone else’s flask, someone else’s cheap, plastic flask, on a day like today, when you’re out of doors, by the lake, and the air is wet, as if it wants to rain, then that coffee is extra magical. Oh so good! And the sandwiches as well. Yes, it’s a universally acknowledged truth that, when prepared by the hand of some stranger, morsels and victuals always taste infinitely better than if you’d made them yourself. Peculiar human trait. Yet too true.

‘And so there was a time when I never ventured abroad and when I held a strict belief that I shouldn’t. Not that it didn’t attract me, it did. As I matured, went to university and so on, desires burnt away inside me to visit the cultural cities of Europe, Paris, Prague, Rome, Vienna or Berlin, to travel out east to drown myself in the culture of India or Japan, to roam the African continent, cradle of humanity, to visit the halls of Moctezuma or see kangaroos and koala bears. But I held those desires in place with a constant reminder of the cold realities of travel, the sunburn, the language barrier, the inability to truly immerse yourself in another culture. My friends, young, excited and ready to explore would often try to entice me to go on world tours, gap years or eighteen to thirty holidays, but I always resisted.

‘You know someone once said that, until you’re forty, you shouldn’t ever go abroad, and I think that by and large I agree. I don’t know which annoys me more the thought of young people on an eighteen to thirty holiday, drinking, nightclubbing and copulating to excess, or the thought of more educated, richer students, taking a gap year and going off to India say, to imbibe the culture as they would have it, when in fact, too young to appreciate anything really, not knowing themselves, inexperienced, not particularly saffey of their own culture, they jet off to the far reaches of the planet, never having read a single book on India or wherever it is; and there, unable to speak a word of the language, ‘immerse’ themselves in the local culture.

‘I knew of one girl, the daughter of a friend, who dropped out of university and went off to Brazil for a year, where I understand she took a lot of drugs and enjoyed herself. Well perfectly fine you might say, I shouldn’t be so hokey-pokey. Only the thing is, she came back a year later and began working in an office in Leeds: where she’s been working non-stop for the last ten years, with no thought of ever travelling again. I can’t understand that mindset.

‘No, youth is wasted on the young, and it does bug me to see fakers and hippies swarming to India or Brazil as much as it incenses me to see drunken British louts head off to Prague for a weekend, polluting the atmosphere as they do so, lured by the thought of cheap beer and cheap sex; mindless, brutal, unhappy holidays in which I presume, the lost and misled tourists drink pointlessly and don’t have the balls to do anything more than chat with the expensive prostitutes. Mindless, thoughtless holidays, just as much so as the gap year students trekking across the Andes, struggling through the terrain, sunburnt, bored, hot and bothered, walking through the Andes, even though they’ve never explored their own backyard, never walked through the Cotswalds or Snowdonia, never even tasted the delights of their nearby woods or lakes, never even went for a walk around the block. And even though they hated the holiday, they always come back with tales of how it was an experience, how they’d do it all again if they had the chance; and you know I wonder how many people in their heart of hearts have ever really enjoyed a holiday. Really, it’s a form of mental illness, a malaise. To see a swarm of humans fly half way around the world to descend on a tourist hot spot, Niagara Falls, Lake Garda, the gardens of Versailles, get their cameras out and take a photo, then head off somewhere else – what on earth is it all about?

‘Anyway such were my thoughts. I made it a rule then never to go abroad at least until I could work out and formulate some ground rules, some codes of conduct, and until I truly believed that I could go abroad and really make something of my time there, be happy and truly absorb the foreign culture. And so one day, now aged thirty, twelve years having elapsed since I last went abroad, I found myself up North visiting relatives. It was a drizzly day in Dunston, a small habitation just south of the Tyne. I stood before a black door with a bronzed knocker on it. Raising my hand I knocked.

‘‘Hi son, come in’ said my auntie, opening up the door. I stepped inside the hallway and wiped my feet on the door mat. ‘He’s missed you’ she said, referring to my uncle ‘he’s been full of himself mind, talking too much, really pleased with himself. He’s had the maps out everyday’ she added as we passed down the hall ‘every night I’m saying to myself, ee you bugger, what the hell's he doing through there, and then I find him bent over the table, holding a magnifying glass, scouring the maps and working out a route. He’s at it now again’ she said as we entered the dining room and saw my uncle examining a map on the table in front of him.

‘Having attended private school when young I do and always shall consider myself a bona fide gentleman and toff, a nobleman, scholar and old boy. And that’s as it should be. But my aunty and uncle were quite the opposite; they were true working class folk, peasants I might say if I can use that word with a good connotation, in that they seemed to typify a lot of what is worthy in the working people. I think they liked me especially, and more so than my in-between parents who had managed to jump the class barriers, because I was an out and out toff, knew that I was, was proud of it, didn’t try to pretend I was something else, and took them for exactly what they were.

‘My uncle was a peculiar man. Tall, strong and sturdy with the rough hands of a labourer, he talked with a thick accent, could curse like a navvy and had tattoos running all over his body. He was a bully in lots of ways, yet that went hand in hand with a sensitive nature, a cynical nature, a nature which saw the world for what it was and was horrified by it, by the injustices of it, by its falsity. Looking like a brigand and speaking like one, he could however hold his own on just about any issue or debate in politics or the state of the world, loved to moan, to bang the world to rights, and as well as this he was cultured, he read books, watched the history channel, enjoyed visiting old buildings and churches, and drank fine wine and travelled. Now retired, he had worked for times as a labourer, for times as an engineer and his work had taken him to London for example where he helped build the Dockland express; or up to Skye in Scotland for the construction of a bridge.

‘My aunt, more meek and submissive, seemed an eternally pleasant woman, always caring, always pleasant, she gossiped it was true and could be a bit common, but her flaws were few. Whenever you visited their house you were always made to feel welcome, at home, at ease, and offered cup of tea after cup of tea, cake, sandwiches, ice cream and more. My aunt could not have been more generous or accommodating. Everyone in the family liked them, and more so because, for whatever reason, they had no children of their own. From that perspective nieces and nephews meant a lot to them.

‘My uncle being a man of such capabilities, he had decorated and furnished the house himself. The dining room in which I now stood was a grand example of this. On the right stood an oaken bookcase full of books and leatherbound volumes; on the left an oaken dresser full of plates, cups and crockery; then in the centre of the room a polished mahogany dining table. And the kitchen, in the manner of a bar, was placed behind a counter looking into the dining room. But the centrepiece of the room were the stairs, which, like those in a lighthouse, spiralled upwards from ground to second floor. There was a feeling of peace and happiness here, and I always felt calm and at ease. My uncle started showing me the maps.

‘You see, this here is a place called Lourdes. I don’t know if I’m saying that right, you’ll know better than me, but aye, this was where they used to bring cripples and invalids you see, to try and cure them with holy water from the local springs. Now, we’ll take the train to Lourdes and start the walk there.

‘Now you see this little place here’ he continued, pointing to a small depression on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, this is called XXX. What we’ll do is, we’ll hop over the border at this point and take a look at the waterfall. It’s meant to be the most spectacular in Europe. It’ll take us off the beaten track mind you, but then we don’t wanna be restricting ourselves to the tourist trail. You know, I’m not one of these for following the umbrella like a tourist, we wanna get out there, see the wilds. There’s little points along the way, resting huts that the Spaniards and French have put up, and you can stop overnight in these for free; and there’ll be shepherds, I’ve been reading, they make this cheese stuff, and we can buy it from them, as well as some fresh bread, and you know kid that’ll do for your dinner’ he said satisfied, delighted by the thought of roughing it. ‘And’ he added ‘if we time it right, we’ll even be able to get a glimpse of the tour de France as it passes by.’

I shared my uncle’s reverence for this pure, esoteric way of life that we hoped to experience on our camping-walking trip through the Pyrenees. For myself the whole venture seemed ideal, the ideal antidote to the package holidays I’d known as a child. Not only would we be heading to the heart of mainland Europe, to a place so rugged, ancient and untouched as the Pyrenees – wild, untamed, off the beaten track; but doing it as we would, camping, roughing it and parleying with native shepherds, and the tour de France along the way – it all seemed perfect.

‘And I also shared my uncle’s reverence of maps. I don’t know what it is about them, but just to see all the myriad towns and villages of civilisation dotted about, to see lakes, rivers and mountains, and to plan a route through these, just gives me such a thrill. A map is such a refined thing, a symbol of man’s knowledge, an artefact combining his love of exploration, geography and geometry in one. That sense of adventure and discovery that must have inspired all explorers, must have always been accompanied by a scholaric thirst, a desire to steep oneself in the ancient traditions of cartography. Yes maps, whether of the land or of the Heavens, are one of humankind’s most treasured, most exquisite delights. In my travels through the Cotswalds, Snowdonia, and the Yorkshire Dales, I had in my twenties fallen in love with the map, and would spend endless hours studying them, planning routes, my imagination lost in dreams, as I wandered through the forests, bridleways and byways and alighted upon a small village, hamlet or church.

‘My uncle put the map away and we sat down at the table; in between times my aunt brought us Earl Grey tea with lemon and some beef and mustard sandwiches. He started telling me about the holiday they’d taken to Portugal, in which they’d walked the length of the Iberian peninsula, along a route known as the Camino. It was tales of this holiday of theirs that had inspired me to join with them on our upcoming walk; that had finally decided me to break my duck once more on foreign travel.

‘‘There was one day’ said my uncle ‘we were absolutely choking for a drink. Anyway we comes to this village. Apparently it was deserted. I has a little look around and finally I found this guy in a run down little house. It turns out he was German and he’d been living here for nearly two years, trying to make a living somehow. He went to this little shed and picked out a bottle of coke and I tell you that was the sweetest thing I ever tasted. God I was absolutely perched. Your auntie Linda as well. Ugh! How sweet it was that coke! God, so refreshing. And the guy didn’t want anything for it. You know kid that’s the generosity of this sort of people. You know, didn’t want anything for it’ said he wistfully, reflecting.

‘‘But I says’ said my auntie Linda, who sat now at the table with us ‘I says give the poor soul something for it. He was clearly struggling to make any sort of a living out here.’

‘‘Aye, aye’ said my uncle ‘so I gives him ten Euro’s and says it’s no problem, you’ve saved our lives kid, there you go. Aye, but that’s the sort of people you bump into out there in the wilds. People who are looking for something a bit different in life. Aye, you’ve got to admire him, for trying to break free of civilisation like that.’

‘‘All the Portuguese mind were generous as well, weren’t they Ted’ chipped in my aunt.

‘Oh aye, they would give you huge great jugs of wine, at meal times, filling it up time after time, we ate huge big bowls of soup and other Portuguese dishes – the food was delicious. You know, after walking twenty miles or so everyday, you could just eat non-stop as well. Aye, every night after a long days trek, it was nice to book into a hotel along the route, have a bath and a siesta, and then come down for dinner, a glass of Portuguese red, you couldn’t beat it. Aye, it was a route you see that the pilgrims used to walk in order to cleanse their sins. And along the way they would give generously to the Portuguese peasants. So there was lots of religious types along the way, and anyway I got chatting to this one woman, a nun from America, on the final day, and she starts telling me about how I’ve purged my sins and all, and I says to her ‘me? Purged all of my sins? I doubt it. What’s God gonna say to me at the end? ‘Hey you, you daft old sod, you think that cleanses your soul? Go on, get yourself round again!’

‘And with this he broke into his usual laughter, pleased with himself as my aunty always said. It didn’t take him long to get into one of his favourite rants.

‘Aye, you know your cousin's husband Craig? I well, the daft sod, he was telling me about his trip to the Himalayas. ‘Now you know Ted’ he says ‘I only get two weeks holiday in the summer, so I had one chance to see the Himalayas. So I signed up with this party, they take you up along a route you see, they take care of everything, you don’t have to worry about planning and all that lark. Aye, well on the first day my heart sinks when I see the guide take a red umbrella out and says ‘follow the umbrella.’’

‘And my uncle broke out with contemptuous laughter, mimicking a snob’s voice, saying ‘follow the umbrella’ despising the sort of tourists who couldn’t venture out alone, or who had no self will, but who had to follow the pack, the trail, the herd. Although in general I agreed with a lot of what my uncle had to say, he did sometimes appear over cynical, and ready to do down everyone and everything, to act as though nothing in this world ever worked out as it should. And this filled me with slight foreboding; for in slating this Himalayan adventure, I wondered how acquainted my uncle truly was with the realities of venturing out alone, and getting off the beaten track.

‘The next day we took a trip out to the Derwent valley. It’s very picturesque out there. Grassy hillsides bordered by grey stone walls and dotted with sheep; quaint little farmhouses and grey stoned, ancient-looking buildings; deserted expanses of moor land and purple heather, with roads and telegraph lines making a solitary trek across these, and up and down the hills. We walked awhile through some hilly parts, poked our noses inside a disused mine, and finally came to rest at a rushing little brook, that concoursed down the hillside; where we sat down and tucked into a picnic, prepared by my aunt, who as ever provided some delicious morsels.

‘This, this outing into the rurality of the English landscape, this tranquility and peace, as we sat by the brook in solitude, eating sandwiches and cakes, this was what I loved more than anything, and what I had satisfied myself with over the last twelve years. And I was lucky enough to have in my aunt and uncle, people who shared my love of the good things in life. It was because of this that I felt confident of going abroad with them; I felt that with them at least I stood a good chance of experiencing the joys of foreign travel, of squeezing out the orange of experience to the full, in the same way that I had learnt to maximize and fully appreciate all that we have here in England. It would be a great holiday, done in the right spirit, we would rough it, go native and be braced to experience the pleasures of France and Spain. And I would learn the languages as well. It would be, as my aunt said, the holiday of a lifetime.

‘So there it was’ said Paul turning to me momentarily, then returning his gaze to the waters, ‘I finally had my formula for going abroad. And more so than this I had hope that this would be the way in which I would see the world. For my uncle spoke of similar walks across Spain, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic, similar walks across China, Russia and Chile. My appetite was wetted, and I settled down to improving my French and Spanish. I would spend a couple of hours reading a French children’s book on the culture and history, wines, foods and sports of that great land. Then I would switch and spend a couple of hours reading something similar in Spanish. How wonderful! What a joy it is to read about French society and culture, in the language of the French, to find, you know, one of those books suited perfectly to your level, without any complicated grammar or colloquialisms. Yes what a joy. Yet how that joy multiplies tenfold, a hundredfold even when on finishing you are then able to do the same in Spanish! And not only did I improve my languages, I read widely on the history of the region, read travel accounts from travellers who’d made similar voyages, as well as dipping into French and Spanish literature. I intended to do everything properly, perfectly.’

‘Yes’ said Paul lapsing into one of his moods of reflection, in which I picked out a chocolate donut and tucked in. ‘But of course’ he added after a few moments, ‘it was all destined to blow up in my face.’

‘I don’t know if you’ve ever been camping, but one of the first things you learn is that no matter how light you intend to travel, no matter how many items you might deem unnecessary luxuries, you always end up having to cram things in the night before, and when you finally put your rucksack on it weighs an utter tonne. I had the lightest tent on the market; I had only one change of underwear; in every department I had only the essentials; but when you have to lug around everything, I mean food, clothing, shelter, cooking equipment and utensils, soaps, detergents and sun creams, mirrors, books, guides and maps, water and so on forever, God it adds up!

‘So one early morning in June I made my way to London Waterloo to meet with my aunt and uncle. Even on my way there I began to feel vulnerable. The cumbersome, heavy rucksack on my back, annoying me already; the mental stress of knowing that I’d be lugging it around for the next two weeks; the irritation of bumping people with it as I walked; and feeling ill at ease amongst ordinary, relaxed people, commuters on their way to work. I, in contrast, dressed in shabby camping gear, a tombstone on my back, a cap on my head, two sticks in my hand, all my possessions on me, of no fixed abode, and heading of to the continent in an anxious frame of mind.

‘When I arrived at Waterloo I found my aunt and uncle there. It was no reassuring sight to see them, dressed like myself in camping gear, huge, weighty rucksacks on their backs, they too now appreciating the horror of what was up ahead. We’d all had really poor night's sleep, my aunt and uncle especially, since they’d had to travel down from up north. As we waited in the train station we all felt vulnerable and isolated, as though we stuck out like sore thumbs. There was such a feeling of well being and joy emanating from the other holiday makers as they prepared to set off for the continent. They were decked out in fashionable, expensive clothes and lounged casually in cafés and bars, drinking coffees and wines, eating pastries and croissants. Little children ran around excited. We however felt only vulnerable and foolish. It wasn’t just the fact that we wore caps, boots, anoraks and bumbags, it wasn’t just the fact that we were half-human, half-rucksack creatures; it wasn’t just the fact that sticks, shopping bags and water bottles cluttered up our hands and persons. More than all these things it was the simple knowledge that all of our possessions were with us, and that we were not headed for any cushy hotel room or apartment, but essentially for nowhere. The vague sense that we were homeless.

‘But I guess it was still just a vague sense at that point. Well anyway, after arriving in Paris we took the train down to our destination of Lourdes. We’d already begun to have a few arguments, all of us tired and irritated, and my attempts to speak French in a burger bar in Paris had utterly failed, as unable to comprehend a word of what the young cashier had said to me, I froze, got tongue tied and was eventually relieved of my misery when the young French man demonstrated his excellent command of English. It was all very depressing. Of course those feelings of vulnerability and isolation that we’d experienced even in London, intensified dramatically as we stepped onto foreign soil. I don’t know what it was, I really don’t, but just being on foreign soil seemed to scare me, to enervate me. I felt I just couldn’t relax. As I sat at the train window and watched the French landscape fly past, even though it so resembled the English landscape we’d just journeyed through, I felt intimidated by it, it felt foreign. Yes, foreign soil, foreign climate, foreign moon: that feeling of being an outsider, an alien.

‘We finally reached our destination, Lourdes, and it was here that our feelings of loneliness, vulnerability and intimidation were finally consecrated.

‘I still have never found any explanation for it, but even though it was the month of June, the town was shut up and in slumber. Worse than this, it was no bastion of French culture, but rather, from the glimpses afforded to us of tacky tourist shops selling beach balls and lilos; of run down nightclubs playing dance music; and of petit bourgeoisie natives, looking sleepy, wearied, miserable and worn out – from all of this you had the distinct impression that it was an uncouth, uncultured little backwater.

‘By the time we got here it was already six o’clock, so we decided to find our intended campsite and set up camp. The guide book we were using was in every way excellent. Written by a young man who had pretty much made a profession of touring this region, it described in the minutest detail, all the various campsites, places to eat and watering holes along the route, told you where to have a cold beer, where to see wildlife and waterfalls, and how to respect the local customs and soak up the ambience, the history of the region. It was this guidebook that had recommended the campsite we were now heading to. Lonely, vulnerable and feeling despised and ogled by the natives as we did, the campsite at least offered some refuge, in that finally we would be amongst our own kind.

‘I cannot describe the desolation that overpowered our hearts, when, the sun slowly sinking and extinguishing the day, we finally found the campsite and traipsed into its environs. In the foreign twilight, in the balmy, calm summer night, we saw before us a line of six or seven campervans. They were all seemingly deserted, and no one, no proprieter, no owner, and no campers were visible. As we stood in the grassy courtyard of the site, we felt we were being watched, looked on with contempt and scorn. The thought of setting up our lowly, weak, humble little tents adjacent to the monstrous, luxurious campervans daunted us, and, unsure if we were even allowed to, and wishing to have the blessing of the proprieter, our hearts were filled with foreboding. Nevertheless, I was one for sticking to my guns and following our plan, no matter what indignity. However my uncle, unable to face the degradation of it, talked me around, and we all ended up that night in a hotel.

'And after booking in, instead of now preparing a camp meal, we headed off to a restaurant. It would’ve been impractical to do otherwise.

‘The three of us, aliens, foreigners and outcasts, relieved at least for the night of our rucksacks, wandered the deserted town, trying to find a place to eat. Time and again we came across a restaurant, and would stand nervously outside, sniffing at the menu, before one of us plucked up the courage to enter; only to be told, by some sleepy, wearied owner that no, they weren’t in fact open. Finally we found somewhere, begging the sullen, contemptuous, petit bourgeoisie owners to allow us in, which they did, under the condition that one, we could only choose viel and chips, and two, we paid extra, which the old woman informed us of by pointing to the viel dish on the menu, then moving her finger along to the price, which she’d managed to increase for the night by adding an extra scribbled zero to the end.

‘Totally alone we sat there intimidated, as a rabid and unfriendly dog came up and growled at us, and as from time to time the sullen owners threw contemptuous glances our way. We were served complimentary stale bread, after which came the viel and chips.

‘Determined to stick to my guns vis-à-vis good manners, I managed after the meal to embarrass both myself and the old woman, by not only passing some trite phrasebook compliment about the meal, but also, after paying the extortionate price, by generously leaving a tip; not a little one, no. But for some bizarre reason a large one.

‘When I returned to my hotel room and was alone that night, I felt really sick at heart. I felt depressed by this dreadful town, depressed also by my contemptuous behaviour with the locals and by the fact that I’d so foolishly given a large tip. This was the last place on earth I wanted to be and so far the holiday had been one big disaster. I felt however, that I had one consolation. Tomorrow we would begin the walk. We could leave this town to rot, and head out to the solace of the Pyrenean loneliness. I went to sleep comforted.

‘And so the next day I woke up fresh and rejuvenated, and with hope in my heart we set off on our trek. We had to troop through the town first, then take a bus to our starting position. But finally we were there: the countryside, its freedom, its expanse, its solitude lay ahead, and we were finally free to escape the lowly French towns, to escape the contemptuous eyes of the natives, to feel the liberty and aloneness of the Pyrenees. We began our walk.

‘Well, and so we spent a couple of hours plodding along a forested trail. The progress was slow, as we constantly went uphill, but at least we were getting going now. Or so we thought. In fact the realities of the walk were about to set in.

‘Although my aunt and uncle were regular walking people, they usually did so without the burden of a rucksack; even on their walk across Portugal, stopping off at hotels along the way, they had travelled light, free of camping equipment and cooking gear. Here they were weighed down. For my rough and tough uncle I did not fear; nor either for my demure, small of stature aunt: she was resilient, persistent, in her slow way, a true working class woman. Still, I perceived they were somewhat fazed by the experience. For myself, having made several camping expeditions in England, I at least had some experience of carrying a rucksack, experience that had taught me in the end to stick to one day expeditions and travel light. However here, under the influence of my uncle’s naïve encouragement, and lured once more by the deceitful charms of camping, I had decided to take it up again.

‘We plodded slowly on, resting at times, consuming water, even though at present, shielded as we were by trees, the gross heat of the day did not really thwart us. Eventually however the forest gave way. And in its place, our old foe returned to haunt us.

‘For now, and in fact for what turned out to be the remainder of the morning, the route followed a course along a road, and through built up areas. It was with horror that I saw the forested area dwindle, and perceived that once more we were back into the realms of civilisation. In fact I realised that for the last two hours we hadn’t really been walking through a forest, but simply through a forested margin by the side of a road.

‘And so now trouping along a road, a road shared with cars and lorries, we persisted in our route, feeling stupid, dogged and despised. In our caps, boots and anoraks, and loaded with our sticks and our rucksacks, we met with the contemptuous glances of locals, occasionally shouted at and mocked at by passengers in passing cars. The progress was as slow as ever, the conurbation seemed to sprawl on forever, and hot, sticky and having to stop to consume water every so often, we now felt the full force of the sun, unprotected as we now were by the forest. Eventually, all of us having had enough, we hit upon a roadside café and refuelled.

‘Of course one of the intended highlights we anticipated with this walk, was to stop off at cafés, as a well-earned reward, and partake of French coffee and croissants, of pain-au-chocolats and sorbets. But God how the reality was different. How many times did we come across a deserted, empty, ghost of a café. How many times did we have to tread nervously in and discover if anyone was alive to serve us. Then the awkward, painstaking process of trying to speak French. I should say that already by day two I had come to realise how limited and pathetic my French conversation was; and not encouraged by the few encounters I’d so far had, or by the unwillingness of the natives to humour me; and more so discouraged by the fact that, even when people were willing to speak to me, I wasn’t forceful enough and was cringe-worthy – with all of this my confidence had rocketed to an all time low, and I desperately tried to avoid speaking at all costs. Anyway this time, we were eventually served coffee. But, of course contrary to how the guidebook painted it all, there were no croissants or pastries.

‘We sat by the roadside eating, watching cars go by and on one occasion given hand gestures by some passing French youths. We spent our time bickering and quarrelling, before, desperately wanting to get on, we took up our trail once more.

‘At least the afternoon was better. Now we did finally enter the countryside, and though packed with French tourists – it was a national park, a hot-spot for one day outings – we could at last breathe more easily, feel more at home, more in our comfort zone. The scenery was at times breathtaking and magnificent, and just to see how huge and dominating the Pyrenean mastiffs could be; simply to walk through a glacial valley, grassy with verdure, French citizens playing ball or picnicking on the greenery; and on every side, rising stark and dominant, the huge rocky mountains. Later we sat down to drink a much needed lemonade in the baking sun. We sat adjacent to a gorge, and watched the splendour of waterfall pour into a basin below. Though our progress was slow, we could now say we were moving; and by that evening we had gone so far as to escape the tourist section of the park. We had reached a more remote spot.

‘And it truly was lonely and this, this I now felt was where we had intended to come to, this was what the holiday was meant to be about. We hit upon a campsite near the Spanish border, and for the first time saw genuine walkers and campers, hikers and explorers like ourselves. There were perhaps twenty or so in total, and some had arranged their tents on the ground, others were staying in the adjacent youth hostel. We loitered in the vicinity for a while, resting.

‘Yet for all that we were now amongst our own kind, we felt just as lonely and outcast as ever. I don’t know whether it was the language barrier, I don’t know whether it was the feeling of self-loathing engendered in all of us campers, by the contemptuous eyes of those we’d met during the day. In any event we found no camaraderie or friendship here. It was as though we were all competing against each other. As the sun started to wane and seven o’clock approached, we felt, in the lonely backdrop of the Pyrenean expanses, lonely, outcast and vulnerable. We were unsure of ourselves, like lost sheep, and as we watched on as French campers set up for the night and engrossed themselves in cooking and so on, seemingly disdaining us, we all felt sick at heart and dejected, wishing only to be on home soil. And when my uncle said that we should head on and get away from here, and camp on our own further up, I didn’t object much. Even though I thought it a foolish move and even though I thought my uncle amateurish and excessive for wanting to camp right out in the wilds, disdaining even the slight comfort afforded by this campsite, I was not sad to say goodbye to this place and its people.

‘And so an hour or so later, climbing up a grassy, rocky path, the sun started to disappear, the dusk descended, and the three of us, isolated in the lonely wilderness of a foreign land, knew that we had to set up camp for the night. It was a tricky business to find a spot. The land hereabout was perpetually sloping and rocky. We spent some angst filled time, as the sun departed, trying to find a decent location. In the end, conscious of the approaching dusk, we had to make do with setting up on the hill.

‘And so disheartened and depressed we got along with the laborious task of putting up our tents and cooking. The cooking was especially faffy, not to mention dangerous. Resting a small cauldron of boiling water above our burning gas canister, my aunt and I were in constant trepidation that the stove, placed as it was on the sloping hillside, would topple, and, hitting the tinder dry grassland, set off a forest fire. As we looked down the hillside in the twilight, we realised just how far we were from anywhere, just how desolate this spot was. It dawned on us how perilous our plight was, here in the outback of a foreign land. What the hell would we do if we started a fire? It was like being in our worst nightmare. My aunt and I crouched on our honkers over the bubbling cauldron, like two witches on the hillside, praying the pasta would cook. After an eternity it did so, and we tucked in. It was foul, mushy, tasteless and watery, no solace at all on this dreary, depressing night. At least I still had my health however. That much could not be said for my uncle, who lay a few yards away, trying to rest off an illness. He was prone to stomach problems, and after having spent all day in the heat, was now, at the worst possible time, at the mercy of one.

‘We went to bed with sinking hearts as the night strangled out the day. It was a sleepless night, it was an anxious night, it was a night spent in conscious torment on the stony, slanting ground. I spent virtually all the night simply lying there, terrified, unable to relax or sleep. When dawn finally came, we were all mightily relieved, my uncle now recovered, and we joyously swapped stories of how, hearing the slightest noise in the vicinity, we’d all assumed it was an axe murderer come here to slay us.

‘And the dawn, the Pyrenean dawn, was indeed a sight to behold, an experience to savour. That beautiful moment when the stranglehold of night was broken and succeeded by the promise of the virginal dawn. The red sun appearing. The birds singing joyously. The sound of a rushing brook, the fresh country air – all of this was so welcome and calming as it came and displaced the night; and wearied though we were by lack of sleep, it was a solace, an invigorating, rejuvenating solace. I stood awhile and contemplated. The grassy hill we were on ran down before me to a gravel path some one hundred metres away. Two peaks rose immensely from the ground, to dominate the sky in front of me. And as I watched on as the red, sombre sun of dawn, rose and broke through those two peaks, I realised that I didn’t watch alone.

‘Although I wouldn’t say it made up for the holiday as a whole, and somehow justified the persistent misery of it, still I was lucky enough to experience a very rare and profound moment. Watching the dawn of day, I saw on the rocky slopes next to me, a creature – some sort of dog, bear or badger: to this day I really don’t know what – sitting on a rock and just looking out, like myself, on the crimson dawn. Never have I seen an animal so at peace, so content, never have I seen such a look of calm wisdom on the face of an animal, as it studied the sun rise. Such a profound, sensitive expression possessed its glorious, golden, sun-soaked face. He was like a wizened old man, who had come to the end of his days and only wanted to calmly appreciate all that is magnificent in this world. A serene, wistful, self-deprecating look on its face. Wise and yet overcome by an innocent wonder at such a simple, exquisite joy. And then finally, having had enough of it, it turned its sensitive little face away, and calmly and without hurrying, retreated inside its stony habitat.

‘That morning we set out to cross into Spain.’

‘‘Look’ I shouted to my uncle, ‘you’re having a joke aren’t you’ as the path, heading up ever more steeper terrain, petered out and broke down, and as the boulders got ever bigger and the walk promised to turn into an Everest-style rock climbing expedition. ‘This is crazy’ I shouted.

‘We were all on all fours now, my uncle in the lead desperately wanting to go on. Eventually he realised the futility of it. It was beginning to look like very dangerous ground.

‘Why couldn’t you just have stuck to the established route’ I asked my uncle reproachfully, angrily. I had left all the decisions concerning our route to my uncle, he being senior and headstrong. I had hoped he would stick to one of the established routes, for this I felt would be more than sufficiently tasking. But he, determined to go off limits, determined to incorporate into our route all the wonders of the Pyrenees such as the rarely seen Spanish waterfall we had been headed to today, had planned his own little route, employing little paths and tracks on the map, that in reality turned out to be precarious, dangerous, unsigned and unmarked, non-existent I might say. Anyway the upshot of all this was to alter our route, which meant, in the first instance, entirely retracing our steps from day one. Depressed, angry and annoyed we did so.

‘And that night we arrived back at the town of XXX, and checked into the local campsite. Under no illusions as to what we were getting into now, I spoke with a decent, but as usual wearied French woman who showed us to a humble little plot, opposite to the rows of caravans, where we were left to set up our feeble little tents, and there, believing ourselves watched by all, went about preparing our meal. Not only were we intimidated by the sheer size and presence of the caravans, but the clientele of the site seemed, for want of a better word, like such riff-raff, typified by a group of five or six young women who spent the evening drinking and laughing raucously. We were scared and paranoid and as we went about our business, searching out the toilets and showers, or heading off to town, we felt like marked people. We wandered around the deserted streets of XXX, a desolate, uncultured, sleepy little domicile, desperately unhappy in our hearts and wishing only for the morning to come so that we could be, once more, on our merry little way.

‘And so the next day we left and this time, under my instigation, headed onto the standard route, hoping now finally to make some progress along what would hopefully prove to be a relatively well-worn and well-trodden trail. But it only took three hours of uphill walking for the frustrating reality of it all to be revealed to us: the path was closed until September, as huge signs pointed out. There was no access along our intended route.

‘After fruitlessly trying to find a detour route, we shamefully accepted the inevitable, and retraced our steps. And with hanging heads, we must have cut sorry figures as the three of us, sunburnt and sweaty, dirty and demoralised, returned to the campsite and presented ourselves once more to the run down populace, who presumably had breathed a big sigh of relief when we had left their holiday camp that morning.

‘Oh. And so it went’ said Paul, sighing, seeming to relive the misery of it all as he spoke. He was a downcast sort of fellow. He looked distractedly at the lake for several minutes. After which, turning to me and looking quite cross, he asked why I had only eaten one donut. Apparently upset about it, I thought it a good idea to get on and eat some more.

‘Yes it was a complete farce and disaster’ he pursued after a pause. ‘The whole trip went on exactly in the same vein. Every time we felt we were starting, making some progress, something cropped up to hold us back. The trail would turn out to be too steep or dangerous, and more often than not we took wrong turnings and got completely lost. The paths were never well signed and map reading, well, it’s such a fine art. We were forever in a state of altering our plans, as travelling at such a slow rate we failed to reach our targets. Moreover just about all of the designated cafés and campsites along the way turned out to be shut up and fast asleep when we got there, some were even boarded up and long since abandoned. We would have to try and persuade the owners to feed us, whilst they usually didn’t want to know. Not one of the many campsites we visited boasted any tents. Everywhere it was only campervans and caravans. And so many times along the trail, we found ourselves not in the idyll of the countryside, but marching along the roads.

‘Camping is an onerous, stressful experience, the most miserable form of holiday. You wake up after a few hours of awful sleep on hard ground and with some t-shirt or bag as a pillow, and struggle out of your tent. If you’re on a campsite you can take your toiletries to the shower room and go through the faff of shaving, tooth brushing and showering, in facilities that are usually wet, dark, cold and dirty. You scrounge around in your bag for all your different lotions, and everything, your clothes, your shoes, your toiletries, your towel get soaked in the badly designed, claustrophobic shower. Then afterwards you attempt to dry yourself with your one and only towel, which being such, is wet, dirty and thoroughly useless. And of course if you’re not on a campsite, you have to make do with the ordeal of washing near a freezing cold stream, and accepting the fact that for the rest of the day you’re going to be greasy, dirty, sweaty and run down. Humans need to shower in the morning to rejuvenate. Otherwise we’re mentally snappy, irritated, jaded.

‘Then you skip breakfast, spend hours dismantling your tent and creosoting your body in sun cream and so finally you are ready for the day’s march. You walk through the sunny day, a load on your back, you sweat, you go up and down hills, your knees ache and crumble, so too your back, your feet get blisters and insects persistently bite you. You constantly need water, and because it’s so heavy and you haven’t brought much with you, you’re constantly stressed about where the next drop is going to come from. You’re constantly on the lookout for food as well, limited in how much you can carry, and because the meals you do make are usually tasteless, bland and thoroughly disappointing. And if it wasn’t enough stress setting up your tent at the end of the day, you can add to that the thrill of squatting down on your honkers and preparing your meal, after which you spend an equal amount of time, also on your honkers, doing the washing up; which chore, hindered by the lack of clean water, detergent or anything clean on which to dry the crockery, is an almost futile procedure. Just as is washing your clothes and underwear, which you must or else you’ll run out; the washing part not being so tortuous, but the process of drying seemingly impossible, as you come up with ingenious ways of hanging your underpants to your tent or more often your bag; which when in place, since you’re already touring across the French countryside like a dog and a fool in your cap, boots and anorak, since you’re already a sunburnt, half-man half-rucksack creature, and since you’re dirty, sweaty and smelly, cannot in any way further embarrass you in front of contemptuous onlookers. No, whether you’re washing your clothes, your crockery or your body, it is always when camping a precarious operation, as with limited space and equipment, and with a shortage of things that are actually clean, you’re always playing the game of standing on one foot, of crouching on your honkers, of putting a cleaned cup, a cleaned sock, a clean limb in the one minute area of the communal basin that looks remotely clean. And getting dressed is a pain as well, carried out as it is when you’re prone in your tent.

‘And yet for all that it was a pain in the neck, back and rectum, I might have found it tolerable had we been out in the wilds. But the problem was that we were forever within touching distance of civilisation, forever forced, in our degraded state, to French kiss it’s people and population. And of course it was nice – and necessary – to refuel at little cafés and shops along the way; or at least it would’ve been nice, had we not been sweaty, dirty, sunburnt and oderous; had we not have cut such horrific, outcast, lowly figures. In reality we were nothing but homeless people and vagabonds, and it was torture for me to sit in cafés and wonder if the owners and other customers were annoyed by our presence, by our odours, by our unhygienic state of grace. No, never clean, never wholesome, how can anyone relax and enjoy themselves in such circumstances? Sitting at cafés, not having showered, smelling like rotten vegetables and donning our caps to reveal tufted, matted, ridiculous hair styles. Is that any condition in which to sit with locals and tourists joyously lounging about in their holiday season? Dirty, despised and downtrodden, looked upon as vagabonds by all, constantly stressed over your appearance, paranoid as well – in such a state you just cannot relax.

‘Had we been strictly out of bounds, had we been truly banished beyond the sphere of civilisation, it might have been a different story. Living purely off limits, out in the wilds, out in the wastelands who would’ve cared if we smelled or were dirty, that we didn’t wash, bathe or shower, that we crapped without toilet paper or didn’t wash our clothes. Perhaps in that way the holiday might’ve been easier, had we gone native, and lived like our primitive forebears, not caring for any of the ways of civilised man. But in this day and age, when civilizations’ grasp is so far, wide, and strangulating so that you’re expected to present clean cut, polished, neat and tidy figures with every man, dog and horse you meet on your travels, it really is so difficult to truly escape.

‘And you really are like a homeless person. Persistently you worry about where the next meal will come from, constantly you stress yourself about water supplies. You bank on reaching cafés, shops, and water sources and just as often when you reach them it turns out that they are closed, defunct or simply no more. You have to consistently plan and then carry out the annoying and futile process of washing your clothes. You have to skip breakfast, making do with a biscuit or a banana, some stale bread or a cake instead, in short whatever you can get your hands on. And so constantly stressed out from all angles, harassed by worries of food, water, clothing and shelter, physically sick and tired, mentally depressed and dispirited over the state of your person, your animal, vagabond status; feeling stared at and mocked; dirty, grimy, down and despised; in a state of constant fear and apprehension, that not only are you on foreign soil, but that you have no home, no bed to go to, no place where you can get five minutes – five fucking minutes! – of downtime, solace, time to yourself, five minutes in which to relax, find comfort, prey to God, five minutes to just feel yourself at peace – all your possessions on your back, harassed twenty-four-seven by a mental unrest, a state of peacelessness – how on earth I ask, how on God’s green earth, are you then meant to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the continent, to soak up the ambiance of the locale?

‘Sometimes during the evening after we’d made camp and eaten, we would go for a stroll through the town. And even though many of these French towns were sleepy and apparently devoid of culture, still you might have thought it would’ve been a pleasure to peruse its environs. But that was never so. Because deprived of that sense of well-being and ease which comes of having your own home, your own place, your own room, deprived of that sense of security, you cannot relax or take it easy. On other occasions I would set off by myself and sit down in the town and read a book. Feeling vulnerable and isolated as I sat alone amidst French citizens, the gulf let me tell you, between the French novel I was reading and the impression I had of the town, the feeling of boredom and dullness that it gave off, couldn’t have been greater. Here I was in some backwater, rural French town, feeling an alien and having no desire to mix with its citizens, reading exactly the same books I had done when in England; delightful books, treasures so to speak, books depicting French life, history and culture. It was a massive irony, the contrast between my love of the book and my dislike of the reality, the chasm separating my appetite for French culture and the bad taste it’s towns left in my mouth. And it made me feel as if the whole notion of culture is a fraud. The book lost something in light of my experiences, the cold reality, the sleepy, slumbering, comme si, comme sa, indifferent attitude of the town.

‘Not that I did much reading, I couldn’t. I didn’t have the concentration, for I could never relax. Whatever we did, whether touring a small town, viewing a church, sitting at a café drinking wine, whatever it was we were never once able to take it easy, and the ideas that I had of making similar camping trips abroad and visiting art galleries and eating in restaurants along the way now seemed ludicrous. No, we need that solace of a place of our own, a room to shut oneself up in, even if it’s just for an hour or so, in order to feel tranquil, at peace, to find serenity. And when you give that up, you might as well not be alive. Even the natural wonders of the wilds, a gorge, a waterfall, a grassy verge, none of these can you fully appreciate under the stress of camping. Magnificent as they were, we were never at liberty to fully enjoy them, never felt the freedom of the young honeymoon couple, hand in hand, relaxing before the spectacular sight of the foaming waterfall; running in and out of the spume, screaming, laughing. Or the happy family playing tennis and picnicking on the grassy verge, soaking up the sunshine and the joy of life. No, for we, unlike they, would not be going to comfortable beds that night, to a home, to security, to a place of our own.’

A pause ensued. Paul’s story seemed to be nearing its end. We were both silent awhile. I looked out onto the lake, not giving him any encouragement to continue. Eventually he started up again.

‘I shouldn’t talk as if it was all so bad’ he resumed with evident self reproach for being so negative. ‘No, ha!’ and he laughed to himself in a wise manner, ‘no, there was one occasion, where my aunt, uncle and I landed up at this ‘designated’ campsite, a farm in fact in the middle of nowhere. As usual, no-one was in sight and so daunted, we walked together to this farm building. God it was sleepy, it puzzles me how all the industries of these French provinces don’t go under. Well, as we approached, out came the farm owners: a fifty-something, corpulent, buxom, French Madame, flanked by two forty-something men, two specimens indeed, a little wild and rugged, brawny, contemptuous, either the sons of Madame or her lovers, or both; these three appeared, so picturesque – the Madame straight out of Dickens or Zola, her two rugged, half-tamed mountain men, dressed incongruently in sleeveless tops and shorts with crazy furry caps on their heads; crazy dudes, also picturesque and colourful, also contemptuous and rude, looking down on us with scorn, the Madame, more able to hide her feelings, generously showing us to the campsite area; yes what a threesome indeed! And though I really hated it at the time, being treated with such contempt, I can’t help smile now that I recall this motley crew, on this beautiful, secluded, mountain farm, in the evening sunshine, watching the two sons lazily lark about, chasing the golden, sun-imbued cockerels; the cockerels strutting around, clucking and making a fuss and being chased in a silly game by one of the sons, as the other watched on and laughed; the man chasing and imitating the cockerels, mimicking its voice and run; larking about and having fun, though there was an anger in his temperament, a dissatisfaction and he disliked it that I laughed at his antics and tried to share the joke with him. Yes funny specimens.

‘And plenty of the French people were helpful and friendly too. Just it was difficult to carry on a conversation. Painful. For example the Frenchman at one of the caravan sites I met – even with someone who was patient and intelligent how cringe worthy and awkward it was. Or the picturesque French peasant I met out in the hills; decked in beret and yellow peasant garb, pushing seventy, digging and ploughing with his spade on a little plot; toiling in the heat – who after trying to give me directions, and trying to make conversation with me, and trying to impress upon me his French culture, his French status, his French life – I think he felt flattered I should take an interest in him – after trying and failing to make me understand he simply concluded with ‘Moi, je suis paysane. Bonjour’ and he resumed his digging in his old mannish way.

‘The little girls who waved to us from a castle window shouting Bonjour, the café proprietors, a genial man and woman who served us steak and chips at a mountain café; genuinely pleasant people, who served us with such grace; whilst the sullen French family at the other table eyed us with undisguised contempt, despising our sun-burnt, awkward, nervous foreign presence; and I remember feeling then, there was something flawed in my attitude, in that, instead of just being satisfied with the good will of the proprietors, I felt only anger and rage toward our contemptuous onlookers.

‘But contempt was exactly what I felt toward the other English tourists we saw here who looked equally as lost, befuddled and nervous as we. No it was no pleasant image to look in the mirror; to see waiting at the bus stop two people, a middle aged man and woman, who by their aurora of nervousness, isolation and vulnerability, signposted themselves as Brits abroad; the mere act of hailing and boarding a bus a big problem for them – the stress of asking for a ticket, of enquiring after destinations all too overwhelming for this poor couple. Yes, I was sorry for them. But my sympathy was mixed with a good dose of contempt, and I shrunk into myself as they boarded, not wishing for the ordeal of a parley.

‘On the two occasions when we did parley with our English brothers and sisters it was either with mutual disrespect and dislike, as with the listless, bored, equally sun-burnt sixth-formers we happened upon, trekking wearily through the Pyrenees; or, as with the retired couple we met near Lourdes, it was an over false, over-exuberant parley, as, realizing we were both English people amongst the Frogs, we swapped stories in loud, pretentious English voices, telling each other of where we came from in England and just how we were finding it out here; false, disgenuine and nauseous meetings with people who in England, we would never have spoken to. It was testimony to the fact that we were all deeply unhappy.

‘The holiday eventually came to an end. I decided to leave after only eight of the planned fourteen days, opting to cut my losses and sick of my aunt and uncle with whom I had quarreled to knock out proportions. All the stress of camping, all the rigours of the march had laid bare our relations, so that the class and education tensions that existed inchoate between us, took root and sprouted, blooming into fields of nettles and thorns. We really did argue, that was one of the chief pastimes of the excursion. It took five whole years for our relationship to be restored.

‘So I went home early and was glad to. One night in France seems to capture all the joy and misery, the dream and the reality, all the contradictions of the holiday.

‘It was a beautiful, still, summer evening. Calm, tranquil. We had set up our tents and eaten and now went for a relaxed stroll around the sleepy, little town where we were quartered. We strolled around for a while before sitting down at a street café.

‘We sat on the terrace outside drinking red wine. The sky was that dark, dark blue of late evening, and as we sat at the lulling, calm café, in the quietude of a beautiful, summer evening, I couldn’t help recall that painting of Van Gogh’s, of the illuminated night café, and the blue star-encrusted Heavens above. The solemnity of that work, its peace and serenity seemed also to imbibe our locale, our setting. We were figures in a colourful, beautiful, living piece of art.

‘But that didn’t stop my uncle from petit-bickering and later as we strolled around the town I was deeply angered when, finding a secluded, little park and sitting down on a bench, my uncle proceeded to tell me a tale of how his brother in law – a decent, sensitive man – had, a long, long time ago, refused to give him soap from the shop in which he worked for free, instead selling it on to him for a knocked down price. It wasn’t just the fact that my uncle so savagely took to pieces this kindly uncle of mine, or so whined about such trifling matters. But I’d heard this story so many times before. And now again, in this the most charmed and magical of French settings, this splendid little park, facing onto a row of quaint old French houses, and on such a balmy, pleasant evening, I was forced to hear it again.

‘And I was all the more frustrated as, in coming to sit down here we had seen at the entrance to one of the houses an old French Monsieur come to his door. I think he had seen or heard us approaching, and the sight of that old and evidently lonely, sensitive chap coming out of doors in the hopes of conversation had really touched me. But my uncle – who also was aware of all of this – simply paid him off with a kindly, well-intentioned ‘hello’ and then, knowing fine well communication with him was impossible, withdrew to the park. I had smiled to the old gent as if to apologise for the fact that we couldn’t talk, and he had looked so sensitive and genial and appeared to accept our apologies.

‘Yet as I listened to my uncle whinge, wondering why the hell we had had to come to France to hear this stupid story, I was overcome with sadness that I couldn’t speak to the old gentleman. He looked so old, so French, and I wondered if he had fought in the war, and what stories he might tell me, how he could, as a bona fide specimen of French culture, bring me into living connection with France. I was full of regret for not having talked with him, but the more I considered, the more I realized I couldn’t have really done so, my conversational French being so exceptionally weak; and so I was frustrated, for essentially, I was no better than my uncle.

‘I let my regret and sadness turn to anger against my uncle and swore at him. I decided to go for a stroll.

‘It was a beautiful summer’s night, but what a lonely, isolated feeling fertilised my heart. I was a little way out of town and whilst grasshoppers chirped thereabouts, I heard the distant sounds of a teenage party in the distance; and as I let my heart and spirit be overcome with feelings of loneliness and disconnection, I realized that those teenagers, who laughed, talked and screamed in a foreign tongue, were in no way different to those in England; and the whole town seemed so cultureless and bland.

‘When I arrived back in England a few days later, it felt oh so good to be back on solid ground, oh so good. As the taxi drove me from the train station to my home, I looked out the window and felt calm; just to see the English landscape, to feel myself once more with my own people, made me so tranquil, so relaxed, so at ease. I was glad to be home.

‘And over the next few weeks I saw many a depressed looking backpacker in my hometown or in London, sometimes sitting down reading a book, sometimes walking around, all looking sad, lonely and upset in their bedraggled camping gear and with their rucksacks, and harassed by that restless frame of mind that I had known so well; and whenever I saw them I always felt pity for them and thanked God for having allowed me to escape the horrors of being a camper.’

The sun was setting. Some way into the lake I watched on as a group of ducks came into land; descending and then skid-breaking onto the lake as the mellowing orange sun fell deeper toward the earth.

‘Well’ Paul said a little while later, after he’d packed up his things and was ready to go. ‘I’m going to that take-away shop now for some dinner – do you fancy joining me?’

I considered. I had passed the shop two days earlier, and the smell that it had exuded had been delicious.

‘Sure’ I said, being genial ‘let’s go and have some good old fish and chips.’

The waning, peachy sun went down over the trout meadow.

Foreign holiday (part 1)

In the county of Wiltshire, and southwards of the river Severn, which takes its course westwards from Bath to Bristol, lies the Trout Meadow. It is an expansive and relatively remote region of grassland, a stream down the middle of it, bordered by copses here and there. This stream, having its beginnings on the river Severn, where, disdaining to carry onwards to the urban sprawl of Bristol, it strikes off southwards; escaping the rush, din and activity of the Severn, and instead migrating to the country beneath it, flows down its centre; and as it does so, it leaves behind it all the worries of the world and happily pursues its own tranquil course. At times broadening out into lake like expanses, at others slimming right down to a brook, it is in all places serene, calm and tranquil. Yes, whether one is walking in the open, expansive moor; or around the lake looking across to the distant shore and its bosquey margins, or the reedy habitat of the swans that make their home here; or again, strolling through the dark, cool woods, and daring to cross the little rushing brook using the slippery, green with algae, stepping stones; in all these instances one has a sense of calm, of peace, of well-being; a freedom to be so far removed from the rush and chaos of the world. It is nerve relieving, it mollifies all stress. One wants to scream for joy.

In proximity to the expansive lake region lies a caravan park and an ale and eating establishment also designated the Trout Meadow. Unsurprisingly, the waters here abound in trout, so that one sees anglers dotted fore and hinter on the verges of the lake.

Well, I don’t know what it is, but I guess I’ve got one of those faces that so melts people’s inhibitions, that they open up to me and tell me their entire life stories. It is a fault of mine to listen too much, to indulge people, and it’s not a great trait either, because on occasion, when utterly stressed out and wanting only peace and quiet, I have told people, in the full run of conversation, to ‘shut the hell up!’ I am a counsellor, so people say. Yet I came here to relax and soothe my soul; not to listen to people and certainly not to write or generate story ideas. However it never rains but it pours. At least three tales were thrown into my lap as finished articles, and I’ll write up two of them now. Really, sometimes I get the distinct impression that people subconsciously know I’m a writer, and tell me their problems and so forth, in order to put on record their lives, to chronicle their worries, woes and unresolved feelings – as if they accept when they meet me that they can’t solve their problems, so just state them – in order to give an outline of life as we know it here and now, so that, just like the Bayeux tapestry, future generations can look back upon us and perhaps have sympathy with the mess we’re all in. We’re all, at the end of the day, humans in a lonely world, the most advanced form of creature ever to have evolved, slowly and with unsure footing feeling our way into a future which no one has ever explored, an advanced guard, vulnerable and exposed, heading naked into the uncertain, mysterious deeps. Anyway.

Out for a walk one day, I got chatting to an angler Paul, and sat down next to him, on a foldable stool like he, by the waterside.

‘Have you met that family from Bolton?’ he said looking me directly in the eyes, his face lit up with a hint of mischief. He returned his gaze to the water in front of him, holding his rod out as he did.

‘Yes’ I said with a kind humour in my tone. I presumed he meant a northern man I’d met several days previously, a simple, working class, pleasant and sensitive man, here with his wife and little children, who had extolled the virtues of the Trout meadow and the English countryside in general, and who had asked me what sort of philistine need venture abroad, with all that fancy foreign nonsense, when you could stay here and have all you wanted, live like a prince in our Island kingdom.

‘Well’ continued Paul slowly, a calm smile fleeting over his face, as he persisted, while he spoke, in looking out to the lake and not me, ‘well, you’ve got to like him, he’s so genuine. But you know, it would be easy to label him as an uneducated lout and claim that his dismissal of foreign holidays is uncultured and uncouth. You might argue that he lacks the refinement of soul, of say you and I, and is unable to find fascination in the spectrum of customs and manners, tongues and scripts, fashions and philosophies afforded by foreign cultures. But actually I think the reverse is true. I think he’s quite refined to say what he does, and I like him better for it. I mean it’s easy to imagine a man like him, and a family like his, uneducated and unsophisticated, common northerners as you might label them, flying off to the Costa del sol every year, sunning themselves on the beach, drinking to excess, insulting the natives, unable to speak Spanish, rowdy, drunk and abusive, sullying the reputation of Brits everywhere. So when you come across one such as he, outwardly a lout, but at heart sensitive and thoughtful; not one to bunk off abroad on a binge drinking crusade, but preferring to stay here; and appreciative of these lakes and woods you see before us, well I find it quite cheering to my soul.

‘Don’t get me wrong. I can’t stand the small island mentality we have here, the notion that British is best, the three lions, God save the Queen, the union Jack, for king and country, good old fish and chips, bacon and eggs, bangers and mash and I do love foreign culture, foreign cuisine, foreign tongues and foreign ideas, but some part of my soul responds to that man’s words and thoughts. For I too, like him, am intimidated by going abroad.

‘I first had a foreign holiday aged ten with my family. We went to a place called Alcudia, on the Spanish island of Majorca. I can still recall the excitement as my younger brother and sister and I awoke at four o’clock one summer morning and in the quiet calm of dawn, headed in a taxi with our parents to the airport. Then the wait there, my parents looking whacked and stressed, sitting on chairs, as we three children played and ran around, excited and full of beans. Then finally the much anticipated aeroplane journey, we boarded for the first time ever, and experienced the excitement, fear and uncertainty of flying, the miracle of it, our little eager faces peeping incredulously out over the clouds. The land beneath us eventually giving way to sea, just as on a map, though somehow to see it happen, to see the solid earth jaggedly and abruptly coming to a halt and the sea taking over is somehow surreal; as if you never truly believed it happened in practice. Then the thrill of the aeroplane meal, dinky little cups of tea and coffee, the tray with hot beef and vegetables, a bun, a sachet of butter, so like an astronauts meal, so compact, everything in a compartment, a side section with fruit in it, another with cheese and crackers. All so appetising and novel to little children. Then finally the landing, that running thud onto terra firma as the aeroplane hit’s the ground running; and then the first steps onto foreign soil.

‘It was, as my mother said, as though, when they opened the aeroplane doors ‘someone had opened an oven door’. The excessive heat engulfed us, my mother now regretting having brought along so many woolly jumpers and thermals ‘just in case it was cold.’ As we stepped out onto the boiling concrete, the scorching sun now beating down relentlessly, we perceived clearly that this was somewhere very different from home. This was Spain, the Mediterranean. The cool, clement, tranquility of England was a distant memory. We had exchanged it for the alluring, the scintillating, the heat, light and humidity of Majorca. No more the serenity and temperate calm of England, that surrounds us here now; but instead the tempting, sensual seduction of the Tropicana; the blaze and glory of it, the temptation of it, offering something more than we have here; at the same time there was a nasty edge to it, it was savage, the sun beat down continuously, it was as though we had stepped into a pressure cooker.

You know, it sort of induces and parallels sexual feeling. I think here in temperate England, we’re fairly staid and undersexed, looking on sexual proclivity with a cold, distant, almost contemptuous and sardonic eye. We’re not on heat. And with that goes a certain calm, a peace, a tranquility; a modest coolness as though we are eternally in the quiet of life, experiencing that serenity that sweeps through your soul, when you’re sated, mature and content, when your life is over the hill. Whereas in Spain, in the Latin climes, you trade this in to live in a blaze of glory, living to burn, to engage dramatically in life, to sample all that glitters and glows, the scintillating, the brazen, to give in to lust and temptation; and in gaining this you also loose something. For the heat, the sun, is savage, it takes something from you, just like promiscuity, it robs your soul, leaves you slaughtered, hurts you profoundly. The clime, the heat makes you sullen, just like sex does. And I think subconsciously I could somehow see all this, recognise it as we travelled by coach to our hotel. I sat rapturously at the window, watching this novel world unfold before me; seeing the gorgeous deep blue of the sky, the pure emerald green of those seductive waters, the novelty of palm trees, their strange green leaves shooting out of a beige, cane-like trunk; the natives, sun-kissed, dark and brown, strangely foreign yet exactly the same as us. That peculiar sense that here was a totally, totally foreign culture, that at the same time was really just identical to ours. Exactly the same.

‘We arrived at the hotel, went to our room and explored it like a little army of ants, looking at our beds, opening up the wardrobes and drawers, going to the bathroom, running the shower, the taps, flushing the toilet, opening up the peddle bin, delighted by the towels and complimentary soap, ditto the kitchen, then out onto the balcony to survey our dominions, the delight of opening up the mini bar and seeing all the drinks there, our mother yelling at us never to take a drink, for it cost the earth, and picking up the telephone and pretending to dial. It took us perhaps five minutes. Then we had to be out, eager to explore the hotel. We were warned, be on our best behaviour, and then released, I first, my siblings in tow, our parents I imagine, dropping down dead on the bed as the door shut behind us.

‘And so the real orgy of exploration began, as we ran a mock around the hotel, our young, energetic, eager souls desperate to know, see and devour everything. We ran riot, never satisfied, gorging ourselves on the novelty and luxury of this hotel complex, that was to be, for the next two weeks, our home and backyard.

‘Boarding the lift, our excitement overtook us and we went crazy, pressing all the buttons, stopping on every floor, at one of which an Italian man and boy got on, and we were amazed, I mean amazed, to hear them speak Italian and not English. They were both in shorts and flip-flops, the boy topless and with wet, glistening, black hair and a bronzed torso, a towel around his shoulders, having just come out of the pool. The sight of everyone in shorts, of naked bodies and wet hair, the smell of sun cream, the shuffle of flip-flops, all of this gave one a feeling of release and abandon, a desire to bask in the languor of the resort.

When we reached the bottom floor, we spilled out of the lift, sprinting and darting around. The hotel was a beautiful place with a palatial white marble décor. Modern and undistinguished you might argue, but for me, splendid, luxurious und easy. You could stand on the ground floor and look high, high up to the other floors and eventually the ceiling. Anyway we ran around the ground floor, finding an indoor fish pond with a fountain gushing into it ceaselessly; we peeped our heads inside the expansive and plush dining room where they were preparing dinner; then the bar and TV room; and finally we found the shop.

It’s so funny that having a little shop on sight and within access should be such a source of bliss to little children, but we were so taken with it. We browsed the shelves, saw the ice cream, the confectionary, the desserts, the drinks, thrilled to bits to see our old favourites, English chocolate bars and sweets, relabelled in Spanish, and thereby lent an air of foreign mystery to; as well as some indigenous, continental treats. And what with a big wad of foreign currency in our pockets – this was in the good old days before the centralised currency, when all the nations of Europe had their own coins – for Spain the Peseta – we went crazy, indulging ourselves.

We left the shop, I with a Spanish ice cream in hand and mouth, my sister behind with a big bag of jellies, my little brother to the rear, a chocolate bar melting in his hands, half in his mouth, half on his face. We couldn’t have been happier, freer, we were a troupe of little devils let off the leash. And like this we went outside.

We were greeted by the happy, joyous screams of children playing, the splash of people jumping into the pool. The rear of the complex consisted of a hierarchy of swimming pools, in which people dived, played and lounged on lilos; and surrounding which were sun-beds, deckchairs and tables with umbrella shades; where people, mainly adults, sat and smoked, drank, ate, relaxed and chilled, this seated area bordering onto a café and bar. Away from the pools there was a grassy area, where children ran around chasing each other, screaming and playing, then a little further off tennis courts, five a side-pitches, a handball court. Just outside the bar there were table tennis and pool tables.

The complex was vast, and the front of the hotel, where stood a volleyball court, bordered onto a tranquil lake with pedaloes on it. The front was so relaxed and deserted and offered such a get away, such an escape, from the din and excitement of the rear. Solitary anglers would come here and fish. Yes, it was really quite pleasant.

But of course as children, it was the joyous melee of the rear with all its fun and games that attracted us, and ice cream, sweets and melted chocolate in hand, we ran around like little animals on the grass, intermingling so easily with the other children, of all nationalities, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Greeks, Turks, Egyptians and so on. Some dressed so prettily, so neatly in their little costumes, especially I recall two little French girls wearing pink. And how easy it was to mingle at that age, we were so uninhibited. We felt a thrill that here was a melting pot, where all the nations, at least of western Europe, met and parleyed. This was the place to be, this was where it was at. Who could not feel, that wondrous sensation of simultaneously being awed by the might of Europe and yet glowing with pride at representing England. Here to parade, play and show off, hand in hand with the other kings of Europe, a dualism of rivalry and respect, of kinship and common purpose festered in our hearts. So it was.

And this was never more evident than at the table tennis table.

We had hungrily watched on as a Spanish kid sporting a bandana played out a wonder match with a French boy. The enduring rallies and exquisite skill, had kept the crowd of children around the table poised with excitement. We were desperate to play ourselves, and it seemed that it was winner stays on, all-comers welcome. Eventually my turn came, and afterwards that of my sister, each of us playing the dominating Spanish boy wonder; playing with panache, skill and agility, pumped up in the tournament atmosphere, knowing we were playing for England, desperate to impress the crowd. We both played our hearts out, and did our nation proud, yet in the end were defeated by the bandana wearing Miguel, a true professional and sportsman. Defeated yes, but all the same not disgraced. And even though the language barrier hindered communication between ourselves and Miguel, there was a mutual respect between us, a common bond somehow, achieved by challenging each other at sport. We shook hands at the end, we made eye contact and displayed expressions of friendship, unable to comprehend his words, but taking it in good faith all the same, and in our behaviour, breaking down barriers of language and culture, in our uninhibited way, that I think, it’s fair to say, are impossible to overcome when an adult. No, we lose something as adults, it’s harder.

Later on, when my parents had had a siesta, we went to the beach.

That vista, of pure white sand, green emerald seas and cloudless blue skies; of a relentless molten sun, ceaselessly blazing and brazen; of palm trees and sun beds and sun-kissed, bronzed men and women joyously lapping up the sun and enjoying themselves; the visible heat and sun-baked, languid arena; that vista has scorched itself onto my memory, and I can see it now before me. See the never ending heat and glory, its enduring, uninterrupted dominance; the magnificent, pregnant blue sky, forming a tent over the earth, so, so pure and cloudless. The shocking magnificence of a dominant, cloudless sky, the ideas of rain or wind utterly alien; the stillness, the purity of the unblemished Heavens. The humidity, as though the air were saturated and clogged up with an immovable morass of hot particles; and in light of all this, a feeling amidst all the people on the beach of enduring well-being, a carefree joy and satisfaction, as if life and all its worries should just be forgotten about and you could simply lie face down on the sand, soaking up the sun and giving into oblivion. What more was there to live for?

So we had sun cream applied to our backs and bodies and scampered bare foot over the tortuously hot sand and into the water, swimming and lolling about, amazed to see little lance-like fish swimming in the water so near the beach. We walked along a jetty that ran out into the sea and jumped into the water. We would sunbathe inbetween times, and also play the beloved bat and ball game, that young and old alike enjoyed, either on the beach or in the water; and purchasing the bat and balls from one of those tacky, yet somehow endearing Spanish shops, those ones you step into from off the baking hot streets, and you find them so shady and protected inside. On one day we hired a pedalo and went out a gallivanting along the coast, seeing the white sands stretch on forever to the town of Alcudia on one side; and to Alcudia pines on the other side, with its more rugged, natural appearance, of fir trees struggling to grow amidst the rocks and sands.

So we got into a routine. We would wake in the morning and go downstairs for breakfast, and it all being paid for, and it being all you could eat, we gorged ourselves on this feast, in the luxury and opulence of the dining room; in that atmosphere of well-being that pervaded the place, as all the guests came down to congregate and eat, the French especially noteworthy with their kisses, their hugs and their bon appetites. There was so much food on offer, huge trays of all sorts, ready for you to help yourself to, and I made a point of trying everything once. My favourite item though was the crusty bread, and just to see piles and piles and piles of these fresh, crusty loaves made me so, so happy. Really, just the sight of luxury, opulence and bounty, oh this gives one such a good feeling, a feeling of security, of satisfaction. And so with these rolls. I would have two or three, sometimes with apple jam, sometimes with strawberry, sometimes with butter, the charm of confitures in an individual carton never fading for us children; then a coffee and orange juice from the magic machine; followed by a tea and grapefruit juice afterwards, unable as I was to decide between these four choices, even though at home I never had tea or coffee.

Afterwards we would take a courtesy bus to the beach, and there give ourselves up to bathing, swimming, and bat and ball, soaking up the sun and basking in that sauna of well being, in the splendour of the beach, the beautiful women, the health, the youth and the happiness of it all. Yes the beach, the bronzed men and women sunning around, little children playing, a young couple on honeymoon and in love, playing bat and ball in the water. The cries of ‘coco, melona’ as a vendor made his way along the beach. Yes it was in Spain that I first tasted the wonders of the succulent water melon, first saw this exotically coloured fruit, for you couldn’t get it in this country back then. The same was true of the ice cream and ice lollies. Sorbets, I should say, for that was what they were; probably my favourite being a boomy; a wondrous creation comprised of three different parts on a stick: a yellow sorbet lemon, an orange sorbet orange and a red sorbet strawberry. Utterly incredible. And there were sloshes, pizzases, oh what else? I can’t remember…I’m getting sidetracked. Anyway there were lots. Utterly incredible. Don’t let anyone ever say to you ‘well what about the good old British ice lolly?’ Let me tell you it pales in comparison to these sorbet delights. Yes, in terms of ice cream and desserts, the continentals were, and still are, way ahead of us.

‘At dinner time, a hunger starting to develop in us after all our swimming and running around, we would head into a beach café, and have say a pizza with anchovies and olives, or a crepe a la fraise or au chocolat, or even simply a burger and chips. Then after replenishing ourselves it was back out into the sea, onto the beach.

‘Then by four or five, the mood subtly changed. Just the sun began to be on the wane. Don’t get me wrong, by English standards, you could’ve stayed there all night, but there was a slight decline in its heat, in its radiance, it was less brazen, more melancholic and in decline. People started to go home. Many remained, the fun and games continued here and there, but that centrality of feeling, as though everyone was here and this was the place to be now subsided. The people dispersed. Some stayed on, and sometimes we did, determined to squeeze every last drop of pleasure out of the day; but mainly we succumbed to tiredness and exhaustion, and following the general consensus, headed home.

‘It was quite a distance to our hotel, and by the time we had walked back we were foot weary and moody, sun-stricken after this march through the heat. My whole family were tired and irritable as for the next two or three hours we set about showering one by one, washing away the heat, dust and sand from the day; then lying down on our beds in the shade of the apartment, recuperating, getting our strength back, having a siesta. Then at around six or seven things changed once more, we emerged revived and fresh from our chrysalis, ready for our next stage of life.

‘Dressed smartly in clean, crisp, summer clothes; refreshed after our showers and with wet hair; and reeking of deodorant and other pleasant scents, we trouped down for dinner. God it was good. To eat once more in that vast opulent restaurant, a hive of activity, humming, buzzing, as people, refreshed after the days activity in the blaze, now looked forward to an evening of entertainment, rest and fun. All those happy, healthy people, young, alive, vigorous, come here from all over Europe, talking, feasting, orgying on the joys of life.

‘I don’t think I ever ate so well and so joyously as in those two weeks in Alcudia. The food was spread on two long tables, in the centre of the dining hall, and you simply queued up and helped yourself to the buffet. There were tray after tray after tray of different dishes, and each dish seemed in unending supply, as waiters ceaselessly went back and forth replenishing each one, tipping in piles and piles of reserves, constantly replacing old trays with new, so that there was a never ending bounty. Chicken, sausages, beef, pork, and veal; corn, gherkins, tomatoes, mushrooms and lettuce; salmon, tuna, potatoes, bread and butter; and chips, crisps, cheese and crackers – and so, so, so much besides – so that we returned many times with brimming plates, gorging ourselves on all that cuisine, replenishing the energy lost during the day.

‘Then at around eight say, the restaurant would begin to empty, people had had their fill of food and after dinner conversation, and something new beckoned them, they were called out into the cool of evening.

‘Really, it was almost as if a new mood, a new part of the day kicked in, at around eight. You came alive again at this time of the night, now that it was cooler, more habitable; and the dark, serene nights seemed so charming, so full of promise.

‘So we would head outside, to the rear of the hotel, the swimming pool now shut up and sleeping. Sometimes we would have a walk out to the tennis courts and spellbound watch the match. They had those red, continental clay courts, and we would watch the Spaniards play; brought back to life at this cool hour of the day, scampering around the court, the red dust being displaced underfoot and kicking up onto their white trainers; the rally enduring as the last red beams of day came down, that sunset, that epiphany, those last lees of crimson sun, dying in glory as the oblivious tennis players played on. Sometimes we would even play ourselves, but this time on the all-weather courts and under the flood lights in the perfect, dark, cool of nine o’clock; revitalised, reenergised in the cool, running around the court in the thrills and spills of it all.

‘Usually though we congregated at night around the hotel bar area, sitting outside under the starlit night, at a café table, and, in the company of seemingly the entire hotel, listen to some live music or watch the hotel’s entertainment.

‘It was, just like the beach during the day, the place to be at night. This was where it was at. We would find a table and my mother would have an Irish coffee, we children chocolate milkshakes, my father a beer, and then we would let the evening unfold. At times we would run off and play with the posse of other children on the grass; sometimes we watched the table tennis or pool; but mostly we sat down and watched the cabaret act.

‘There was a young blonde woman and a black man who were in charge of this entertainment. Sometimes they sang and danced, on other days they got members of the audience up to compete in singing and dancing competitions. At other times they acted out comedy sketches or held talent contests. For example, in the two weeks that we were there, there was a competition to find the best male and best female in the resort, and a junior version of this too; and here the more uninhibited of the hotel residents put themselves forward to represent their country and to compete against other for the honour of their tribe. They would have to sing, dance, act or perform and the audience would have to vote, by volume of applause, to judge the winner. Yes, we three children were enchanted by these games, to see the beautiful women of the resort, Margherita from Spain, Heidi from Germany, or our personal favourite Debbie from England, thrilled to see them sing and dance, and play to the crowd, enraptured to see how sexy they were, oh, we were impressed. Especially when the seemingly shy and demure Debbie came out of her shell and started break dancing. Then again the men would have to take their shirts off and tense their muscles, or vie with one another in arm wrestling matches; or little boys would have to keep a football up, whilst little girls skipped or danced. Then on other evenings there was simply a disco; and here we sat enthralled, as the songs, those cheap and nasty Spanish holiday songs, which are, all the same, so, so good, so melodic and cheerful, came on, and the women and girls would get up to dance, doing the hand actions, making the moves in synchronisation. What a spectacle.

‘So the nights went by, languid, cool and peaceful, and we would sit there soaking up the atmosphere, our hearts warmed, under the magic Spanish night, the stars like diamonds, the sound of a splashing fountain never far distant. Eventually the night would come to a close, the entertainment end, and incredibly sad at heart and desiring to live on, we children would reluctantly return to our hotel room.

‘And there, sad and depressed, we would, as a final solace, so unwilling were we to go to bed, gently break ourselves in, by sitting out on the balcony, and gently come to terms with the fact that the day was over. It was one last hurrah, one final goodbye. We would sit there in the quiet of night, looking out over the tranquil lake; the quiet calm of night, the ceaseless chirruping of the grass hoppers; the strains of melancholic Spanish music, of the guitar, of the piano, drifting in from a distant hotel. So we slowly accepted our fate.

‘And so, well’ continued Paul after a few minutes silence, in which he seemed to reflect, ‘it was a great holiday.’ He seemed quite a neutral man: never smiling really, never really looking at me, persistently staring ahead at his rod, occasionally recasting his line anew, focusing on his fishing; but I liked him all the same, there was an honesty to him.

‘But, although there were many high points’ he continued again after another silence ‘I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that it was a perfectly untarnished holiday or that myself or that my family were at home in this new environment. That was not true at all.’

‘I think the most profound, upsetting and obvious difference you’re exposed to when abroad, is the sight of women’s naked breasts on the beach. Don’t get me wrong, my family and I new all about this, prior to our trip, but to actually witness it in reality is something different. As a ten year old boy, I was, when we first arrived, somewhat in Heaven, making a protracted scrutiny of all the naked breasts on show, of the young and of the old, looking at them all, comparing size and shape, though to be honest at that age, you love all of those breasts; and deludedly believing that my mother didn’t realise that I was ogling all those naked women. Everywhere you saw naked breasts, you watched enthralled as a woman came to the beach, sat down in her bikini, and then, just when you believed she was perhaps more modest than the other women here, happy just to be in her bikini, she would unclip the back of her top, and hey Presto!, out popped her naked breasts. They were everywhere, and as a child you might say, if you were floating aimlessly on a lilo, obliviously career, as you lay prostrate, eyes shut or to the Heavens, into a pair of naked breasts; or again in the sea, focused on the game of bat and ball, diving here and there, you might accidentally bump into a naked woman, tumble against, collide with, or if lucky, run head on into her breasts; or simply running over the beach, you were forever in danger of corralling yourself into a dead end of naked flesh; the tantalising sight of young, naked women, your steps faltering in trepidation, yet in ecstasy, as you found yourself in such close proximity, running into them head on.

‘Yes, naked breasts everywhere. But I ask you, is that any environment for a young boy to be in? Or a young girl either? What did my sister look at? But more so than this, was this a suitable place for a family? I mean come on. My mother, thank God did not go topless, otherwise I would’ve been mortified, but where was she now left to look? At the naked breasts of young women? Not buxom herself, over the hill, I knew my mother was in a tortuous state of envy and bitterness. And what about my father? Perhaps for him, reserved and prudish, it was worst. Sensitive and intelligent, he would never have been at home here even on his own or in his youth; but in the presence of his wife and little children, God it must have been awful for him, his soul could never have been at ease, at peace here. We all, incidentally, suffered sun burn, our pale bodies unable to cope with the excessive sunlight, and my father was probably the most affected by this. We were all fish out of water to some extent, not quite in the centre of that hive of well-being, where the bronzed, fit, sexy and satisfied people sunned themselves, perfectly at home.

‘But as children it was easier for us to get involved, to take part and not feel left out. I recall one day, my siblings and I, standing on the jetty and jumping in and enjoying ourselves whilst our parents sat on the beach. Then we caught sight of our father walking down the pier in his hat, and all of us children felt annoyed to see him, clearly not at home here, out of sorts, looking unsure of himself in his sombrero, and with his pale, sun burnt skin. ‘Oh? hi dad’ we greeted him reluctantly, our hearts sinking. We just wanted to be left alone to revel in the fun of jumping into the sea. We didn’t want our father here, since he wouldn’t take part, and was irksome and irritating. We felt sorry that he couldn’t enjoy himself, but annoyed since he was such a fish out of water, and couldn’t relax. We stopped playing momentarily and asked him some questions. But we felt stifled and wanted him to go. He, poor man, didn’t know what he wanted. I think he wanted to escape, and came to us to see if we could help him. But he knew we couldn’t, and so he held himself back, unengagingly, and this we found so annoying. In the end our awkward little parley on the jetty came to an end, he told us he was going off for a walk and we, our hearts split with mixed emotions, glad he was going and the merriment could continue, yet sorry for him and sad, that our dear father was so unhappy, watched his lonely, hatted figure walk off back up the pier. It was a sad sight indeed.

‘It wasn’t as if my father was some kill-joy, not at all. In our English holidays for example he was always so active, keen and positive, so engaging, especially in activities like swimming or playing. But here he was just not at home. Later our mother came down the pier to see us. Though we knew in our hearts, we asked her what was wrong with father, and where had he gone to. ‘Oh just for a walk’ she replied. Her tone betrayed that she was upset for him, sorry for him, yet annoyed by him all the same. She couldn’t do anything for him, she was irked and unhappy herself and felt intimidated by all the naked women. He only annoyed her the more.

‘So yes there was a tension in the air, acknowledged, but never spoken off, my dear father at times seemingly down, craving something more. He wanted to go off and look at historic buildings perhaps, to do something of worth, but there were no such things here in this tacky little resort.

‘And my mother like I say, unhappy, jealous, angry and raging to see all these pretty, arrogant, young women. But I would be lying to say that I was simply joyed by the breasts. Not at all. Intermingled with my boyish love of them, I was also intimidated and scared. Many of the young women frightened me, they seemed so nasty, and I felt upset by them, not at peace. I associated those women who kept their tops on with morality and modesty, and I would always watch when ladies arrived on the beach to see just which category they fell into; whether they were good, moral and bikini-clad; or whether they were brazen hussies, who bared all. However even then I realised you couldn’t make such generalisations. For all that though I did, and when I saw a nice, decent woman enter the beach, and saw her take her shorts and t-shirt off, if she happened to go that extra mile and remove her bikini bra, I always felt hurt and upset. I don’t know which was worse: to see an apparently nice girl do it, or to see a hard faced, fag-in-mouth, nasty-looking bitch, expose herself.

‘You know’ continued Paul after a pause ‘the majority of people in this world are unhappy at heart. If they weren’t, what they’d do is go out and enjoy themselves when young and single, enjoying the pleasure of naked women and bare breasts; then when they’ve matured and have a family, say no thanks, that’s not the place for us, for a loving family. But in reality most people are unhappy, lost and disorganised, and are always ready to punish themselves.

‘I think to the good majority of people, like my parents, naked women on a beach induces feelings of jealousy, bitterness and moral outrage. Yet people are so scared of appearing prudish and prim, so terrified of revealing that they are jealous, envious and unhappy in this world, that, instead of staying well clear of such places, they go along as if to try and prove to themselves that they’re cool and comfortable in the presence of naked women. It annoys me it does, that instead of just calmly raising their hand and saying sorry I’m just not happy with this, they bottle up all that rage and indignity and descend on such places, pretending all is fine.

‘But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Take for example my parents. Married when young and innocent, brought up in a world of convention, they’d never really thought too hard about their lives or had the chance to arrive at a philosophy of life; and moreover they hadn’t ever really lived in their youth. They weren’t accustomed to the ways of the world, and probably, never having bronzed themselves naked when young, a good part of their under experienced, unfulfilled selves was attracted to this sexually relaxed environment. Anyway, like I say, the majority of people go through their life without a master plan, following the herd, and so aren’t ever in that powerful position of knowing themselves, of being able to stand up against the pressures of the pack, to say I won’t do this because it doesn’t make me happy. So many people are unhappy in heart and soul, and go around punishing themselves, confused and unsure, trying to conform.

‘And I think it’s fair to say that a good majority of the young naked women, also felt these feelings of moral outrage and envy. Few were the women who, satisfied with themselves in heart and soul, could relax, exposing their naked breasts, simply joyed by the luxury of their body, reveling in the joy of life. No, I believe a lot of those women were also scared and intimidated, and deliberately exposed themselves to try and prove that they didn’t have a problem with it, that they were totally at home in this world. And under such feelings of insecurity, there came to reign on the beach, a bitchiness, a cattiness, as all the vixens of the pack competed with one another, putting down and tormenting with shows of arrogance and hauteur those women beneath them, the older, the less endowed, the morally clad women, the obvious prudes, whilst at the same time enviously eyeing other women, feeling humiliated to have smaller breasts, less well-shaped breasts, feeling angry and intimidated by the lionesses above them, spitefully and arrogantly displaying their superior breasts. No I ask you, in such a tense, cat-like atmosphere, full of sexual tension and brooding, so carnal and primitive, so like the environment of a pack of lionesses on heat in the scorching desert scrub, I ask you, was this any place for young children and families?

‘Perhaps I’m being prudish myself. Actually’ continued Paul after a moments brooding, looking at the lake, ‘I once saw a women with her breasts exposed in England. In a park in Bath it was. I was shocked and terrified to see her, a young girl with big beautiful breasts, sitting in the park with friends. And yet what a look of dissatisfaction was on her face; almost as if she was annoyed, annoyed to have to have such exquisite breasts, needing to expose them and feeling that whilst she had such a perfect bosom, her life was flying by fruitless, unsatisfied and unfulfilled, her breasts going to waste. Yes she was so angered, dissatisfied, perhaps just embarrassed to have to expose them, though expose them she did. I thought it was vulgar, and was upset and sad to find that even here in my beloved, temperate England such obscenities could haunt you.

‘And perhaps I don’t even mean to say they are obscene: it’s simply nice to be able to avoid the issue. I mean to keep the lid on the Pandora’s box of conflicting emotions, that comes by having to see naked breasts. No, all I want to be sure of, is that in England, I won’t be forced to see any. That way I can happily bury my head in the sand vis-à-vis the morality of it. Anyway enough about breasts.

‘Other things upset me besides. The native workers for one thing. Even at that tender age I recall feeling a guilt, as we holiday makers enjoyed ourselves, relaxed, took it easy, wined and dined, splurging, gorging ourselves, revelling in luxury, whilst the native Spanish waiters and hotel staff had to work, hard pushed serving drinks and running around taking care of the guests. I recall that my siblings and I, when playing pool one time, knocked a plant pot off the wall by accident; it fell to the concrete beneath and smashed to pieces. And I remember we all felt embarrassed and ashamed, as the elderly Spanish waiter, unable to speak a word of English, came out, and despite looking old, ill and ready for his grave, got on with sweeping it up, never bothering to shout at us, but just accepting his fate as a beast of burden. I felt sad on his behalf, sad that he was so kind, as if it would’ve been easier for us if he had have lost his temper.

‘On other occasions it was simple wastefulness that must have annoyed the Spanish. Forever buying ice lollies and chocolate we would often only half eat them, for instance if I was called up to the table tennis table, I would simply toss my half eaten lolly in the bin. At mealtimes too, inspired by the appetising array of dishes, we filled our plates high only to find ourselves stuffed and sated with less than half our food eaten. It was so, so wasteful, and the Spanish hotel staff must have witnessed such improvidence on a daily basis.

‘Then again another incident which sticks in my heart was insulting a Spanish woman cashier. Polite and pleasant, one of those calm yet strong Latin women, she spoke perfect English and politely served me at the shop. Then I, mimicking my father, who knew no different, began counting my change, to make sure it was all there – always assuming the cashier had made a mistake. Then aggrieved, realising that I’d been short changed, I went back to the counter to demand of the woman my due; only for her to point out, angrily, and much to my embarrassment, that it was of course I, unfamiliar with the foreign currency, who had made the mistake. I felt such mixed feelings; of shame and embarrassment; upset to see that woman turn angry and berate me; yet annoyed with myself, for I knew that I had made her so, by my stupid behaviour.

‘When we first arrived, we had a meeting with our holiday rep, a common young English woman to be honest, who told us to ‘haggle and make sure’ when we went to Inca market to buy goods ‘that we didn’t let the natives cheat us, because believe her, they would try and con you if they could.’ She again, just like my father, presumably knew no better, but I mean come on, even if the Spanish had been out to cheat us, and I’m not saying they weren’t, such words, such advice was repulsive, common and tacky, I mean what sort of mindset was that to have? Not to let the natives con you. To stand up for your good old British rights. The good old Brit abroad. Not one to be easily conned. The them versus us mentality.

‘Later on we went to Inca market. I was desperate to buy one of these fancy illuminated watches everyone was wearing, and eventually we found a stall selling them. My father, who made the purchase for me, hated to have to barter, yet knew all the same that, to avoid being ripped off, he would have to do it. Poor man. I’m sure he saw the horror of it, but also saw we would be cheated otherwise. He bravely rolled up his sleeves and reluctantly got on with it.

‘We bartered with an old, grey haired, little Spanish woman, and she began proceedings by asking for 3000 pesetas, clearly extortionate. My father immediately acted up and said he’d pay no more than a 1000 and so on. So it continued. At times I, hearing the plaintive words of the Spanish lady, that such and such was a very reasonable price, would butt in, begging my father to just accept the price, and why would the good lady lie to us. But he, knowing better, persisted, driving the price down till it was reasonable. Eventually they agreed, at something not much more than a 1000, and I distinctly recall the old peasant lady then, now that the proceedings were over, sadly put her arm around the shoulder of my taller, younger father and say ‘oh sir, you rob me, you do.’ It was so, so sad, I felt so sorry as though we had robbed her, taken all, when she needed it more and we had plenty. I asked my father, please, couldn’t we pay her a bit more? But he, seeing fine well that this was all a put on and a part of the game, wouldn’t budge. Not because he drove a mean bargain, not at all. He too was clearly hurt by the whole process. He simply knew he had to stand his quarter or be made a fool of.

‘Well it was like that. I went away feeling sorry for that poor old Spanish woman, though in truth, she would never have sold the thing at a loss. Still it was the whole ordeal of the thing, the slag on slag, rat on rat, each man for himself mentality, the mutual suspicion and hostility, the feeling you were being ripped off by dark, dirty, cunning natives; hating yourself for being so mean and suspicious, but terrified of being fooled, and feeling all the same, that whatever price they asked was alright, since we were the rich ones, they the poor. No it was a bad business.

‘Of course relationships with the natives weren’t helped by the fact that none of us could speak a word of Spanish, and I mean not a word, not even amigo or horla, although I guess we learnt gracias and mucho gracias as the holiday elapsed and would make an effort of condescendingly saying it to the waiters and waitresses. Likewise the language barrier interfered with our friendship for a young Spanish boy. My siblings and I had met him one day outside our hotel, and taken a liking to him, that brown skinned, black haired, cute little boy; and he had, when we were playing bat and ball, made up the numbers, so that we could play rallies two on two. Like I say it was so easy to make these sorts of spontaneous friendships when young, but even here, we had problems extending that friendship, and I remember how after the game was over, and in the days ensuing, we tried to talk to the boy and he to us, and it was of course completely impossible. In the end we all gave up; we opting to play by ourselves, he with other Spanish children. Yes, such friendships were soon extinguished, neither party quite knowing who had got sick of whom first. My siblings and I left wondering whether the boy had grown tired of us and left us; or whether, what he had told us when he went off was that ‘he was coming back to play in half an hour or so and would we please wait for him?’ So our hearts were on the line, and later when we saw him playing separately, we wondered if we had upset him or whether he simply had gotten sick of us.

‘And just as we couldn’t speak the language, we were also the archetypical, uncultured tourists. I don’t say that lightly either, for my parents were decent people, we children too, sensitive, just uneducated so to speak. My parents were nearly people. Bright and intelligent yes, just not educated enough, not empowered enough, so that they had a real will of their own, the sort of will that would’ve steered them well clear of such package holidays and sent them to a place more cultured. We were accustomed to, on holiday, going to places of historic interest, visiting castles, museums, animal sanctuaries, historic parts, disused mines and so on, but here there was utterly none of that. There was no Spanish culture here. Had it not have been for the weather, it might as well have been some anonymous, backwater, Northern industrial town.

‘And in lieu of anything cultural or historic, the island was one sprawling mass of cheap, newly put up hotels, bars, cafés and swimming pools, and in order to remind you of this, there were in the neigbourhood of the resort, newly constructed hotels being erected on the spot, surrounded by mechanical diggers and those wonderful tarmac machines, and the horrific noise of road digging, drilling, and construction as yet another anonymous hotel block was built, ready to receive a new influx of uncultured tourists. On top of all that natural beauty bequeathed to the island, the gorgeous white sands and emerald bays, the rugged rocks and pines, the mountains the harbours, the exotic lagoons, there was added to it a morass of roads, airports, hotels and restaurants, a concrete jungle, a sprawling network of cheap and nasty eyesores and noise polluters, blemishing the natural landscape, and rendering heart-sad any native who knew and loved the island in its infancy, in its innocence, purity and deserted virginity. Really the whole tourist titan, that mammoth, terrifying, rip-roaring industry, its tentacles grappling far and wide, its huge wheels set permanently in motion, as an endless conveyer belt of ignorant tourists are flown from A to B, on loud, angry, earth polluting journeys; chucked in a hotel where they splurge themselves for a couple of weeks, eating to excess and throwing just as much on the rubbish tip; then flown off back home, as a new wave of tourists arrive and are regurgitated into the resort; the chaos of the never-ending planes, fighting for air space, vying with one another to land and take off; the never ending supply of tourists being boarded, flown and brought to terra firma, bussed, hoteled, wined, dined and entertained, shuttled here and there for cultural excursions – look at it from a distance and it seems so improvident, wasteful and unnecessary.

‘Anyway what typified that sense of cultural vacuity, were the tawdry entertainments put on by the hotel. We would sit there along with other families and watch as the egotists of the resort got up on stage and sung and danced or performed other types of entertainment, like in a talent show, such as impressions or juggling or break-dancing. In the macho-man contest, the men would strip down and flex their muscles, whilst in the ladies competition, the women would do an erotic dance or striptease. On other nights the cabaret would act out feeble comedy sketches.

‘We would sit there spell bound and intrigued, at least us children anyway. With my parents, I sensed they were wearied and annoyed by it, and I think that was in fact true for us children, really. Certainly I wouldn’t be found dead at such an event now. There was just a tension once more, especially manifest in my parents. When we watched the cabaret sketches we always laughed loud, but in reality they weren’t at all funny, it was simply that the entertainers were cool and sexy and so we were ‘forced’ to laugh. We were scared, intimidated. Yes, that memory remains with me, of my father, my mother and us children all laughing, trying to pretend we were like the other guests roundabout, enjoying the spectacle of this monkey bizarre. Whereas in truth there was a weariness in our eyes, and my parents I think wished to be elsewhere.

‘And again when the ladies stripped and danced we would have to pretend to be enthralled and we had to clap and cheer, but in truth we hated it all. The talent shows, the egotism, the petit rivalry of the nations one against another, the commonness of it, as the audience cheered, delighted by an entertainer, or jeered and booed when they hated them, the erotic dancing and strip-teasing – no, I don’t think in our hearts it truly pleased us. And when afterwards, when the entertainment was over, and we would head off by ourselves, then, in the quiet, stillness of the night, as we skirted the lake and went back to our room, finally by ourselves, then there was an apparent sadness in our hearts and souls, as if really we would have preferred to be elsewhere. As if this were a cultural backwater. And when I compare these balmy nights to the balmy nights we experienced in a summer holiday to Paris, when in the evening we would stroll at our leisure around the Parisian environs, free to soak up the ambiance of the artists quarter, the Seine, the Champs-Elise and so forth, I see then my parents much more at home, much more at peace, especially my father, in that mood of cultured serenity that pervades the French capital.

‘Well and that’s just about it I guess. Add in squabbles with Germans, either over sun beds or which TV channel we would watch, plus the fact that when new English families would arrive at the resort, and we saw that they were first timers, and more prudish than ourselves, we would scoff at them, pretend to be old hands, and laugh and mock when they got sunburnt and felt out of place. Anyway.

‘And so that’s that’ said Paul, persisting to look out onto the lake, ‘a dual edged sword of an experience, simultaneously attracting and repelling one. I think if there is one enduring memory of the holiday, one that etched itself on my soul and which encapsulates the entire holiday, it was of seeing a young Italian girl, perhaps twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, topless and naked, playing in the swimming pool.

‘She was incredibly beautiful and tanned and with lustrous black hair; and her bust, even at such a tender age, was humongous and incredible. And topless and perfectly at ease, she would play, totally intoxicated in the joy of life, bouncy, curvaceous and oblivious of all else, not needing to look at those around her; lolling around in the swimming pool, jumping in, playing water volleyball with her younger brother, noisy, screaming, yelling, completely in the groove of life, so comfortable with her body, the water, the swimming pool.

‘She was so at home, so fulfilled, her brain and soul so abandoned, recessive, and obsolete. She was purely of the body, her spirit of the age-old Latin stamp. She would shout away in Italian, so raucously and thoughtlessly to her brother and parents. And we sat, my mother, my brother and I, a few tables away, unable to stop ourselves from watching this girl with a mixture of envy, incredulity and fascination. We watched on like cold, stiff, Northern people who could never in this life experience the sort of pleasure bestowed upon this girl. Their family was alien to us. The mother and father sat at their table a few yards away, smoking like chimneys, perfectly at home in the presence of their topless daughter; the girl meanwhile raucous, loud, yelling away in Italian, the language of the Latin; whilst her brother played, swam and jumped with her, casual and sated. My brother and I wishing so much that we were him and that we could play with the girl. Then my mother, irritable, with headache, and incensed by the whole scene, angrily telling us it was time to go in; and so we went, I with Boomy in mouth, chomping on that lovely sorbet, giving one last regretful look on that alien, Italian girl, that busty bronzed Bella, splashing around and shouting, totally heedless of all else.

‘Yes, that is the image that stays with me, that of that naked girl, jumping around in the pool; her bosom huge and perfect; her lustrous, black hair falling behind her head; her brow and breasts Christened with the water splashing over her neck and shoulders; her cries raucous and joyous, as the last red rays of the sun came down at the close of day; her face and bosom lit up crimson, in flame. And as others retired indoors, tired and dispirited, she played on enraptured, and abandoned, joyously attaining the high note of life.’