You know the one where you visit your parents for a long weekend with your youngest daughter, and then try to fit an entire weekend’s worth of activities into each day? That.
After waking early this morning we headed straight towards Looe - now known perhaps famously as “Shipton Abbot” - a fictitious town in Devon in the TV series “Beyond Paradise”. It’s not in Devon at all of course - it’s in Cornwall - where it’s always been. When I was growing up Looe was somewhat famous for shark fishing - these days, it’s full of people re-tracing the locations of the TV series.
We headed straight for the beach - knowing that the crowds might arrive, and enjoying a few hours of relative peace and quiet before they turned up. After going for a paddle I pulled out a book and settled down to read.
The book is far better than I thought it might be - or perhaps it’s just the right book at the right time. I will admit - because it’s written from the female point of view - I find myself grinning at the thought processes of the protagonist. Where a man might have or or two thoughts about a short conversation, it would appear women have an order of magniture more - before, during, and after the conversation. Who knew? I’m probably being unfair - everybody is different - I know I’m something of a unicorn when it comes to people watching, and being fascinated with people - both real and fictional. It’s a good book though.
After an hour or so grinning conspiratorially at the story unfolding within the book our peace and quiet was kind of ruined. A group of teenage boys arrived on the beach - and guess where they chose to set-up camp. Just guess.
I tried to keep reading my book - I really did - but given the pop concert going on ten feet away courtesy of bluetooth speaker, I kind of gave up. It turns out their conversation was just as good as the book anyway.
I kind of knew that social media has changed the world - and that our daughters are outliers - but MY WORD were the group of guys obsessed with themselves. Their entire topic of conversation was their skin tone, muscles, clothes, haircuts, sunglasses - pretty much everything that might factor into attracting attention. The odd thing? The entire rest of their personality - their opinions, knowledge, or life experience seemed to be missing. I can only imagine what they might have talked to anybody about, had they made it as far as “hello”.
After a change of music on thatever playlist they were listening to, one of their number disagreed with the upcoming track and skipped to the next track - solemnly murmuring “yeet” while the rest nodded agreement. I had to look the other way to avoid laughing out loud.
By lunchtime the wonderfully quiet beach had become a seething mass of idiots playing ball games, running this way and that, or trying to pose for potential suitors wandering past. Two girls in bikinis walked up the beach carring half a tree they had found in the surf. One of them made a mock native american announcement of her arrival and danced around the tree - body parts flying in all directions. I looked at the floor to avoid admitting that it was actually happening - and then my daughter gave the game away - almost spraying coca-cola across me as she exploded in hopelessly supressed laughter.
We left the beach a few minutes later - doing battle with an army of polystyrene surf-board wielding beach-goers as we extracated ourselves. There was something of a cavalry charge for the spot we had vacated.
Wandering back through Looe, the quiet streets of the morning were now packed with every age and nationality you could imagine - buying ice creams, looking in tourist-trap gift shops, and arguing as they made their way this way and that.
We found a quiet cafe in a corner of the town and were greeted by the sweetest, most lovely waitress I think I’ve ever met. She took our remarkably simple order without fuss, and returned moments later with drinks and the promise of food as quickly as it could be cooked. We wondered why the place was so quiet - why nobody else had taken a chance on it. It was lovely.
After eating our own bodyweight in cheesy chips (turns out sitting on the beach all morning is hungry work), we wandered through the town together - joining the river of numpties looking at bejewelled skulls, dragons and charms that gift-shops everywhere seem to pedal these days.
We didn’t buy anything.
I re-discovered an old second-hand bookshop tucked away in a side-street. Perhaps my favourite bookshop in the world. You never quite know what you’re going to find in there. I almost bought a very old book about chess - with brown tinged pages, and the smell of cigar smoke in it’s binding.
Our day ended at the amusement arcade - which has transformed from a place of fun when the children were small to a money grabbing machine. I put a pound into a grabbing machine - affording me ten attempts. The grab picked up toys ten times, and dropped them ten times. I shovelled a bowl of two pence pieces into the various “coin drop” games, and didn’t succeed in moving any of the prizes anywhere closer to the tantalising cliff from which they might fall. I watched the movement of the coins while playing and shook my head at how rigged all the games had become. They didn’t used to be.
As we left we passed a fortune telling machine, with an animatronic lady waiting to receive a coin. I backed the hell away from it - scarred by what happened to Tom Hanks so many years before. I don’t want to be ten years old again.
So.
We’re now back at my parents house, showered, changed, and full of our evening meal. Doctor Who is playing on the TV (I’ll watch it on catch-up), and the Eurovision song contest is waiting in the near future to confirm how few vots Olly Alexander will receive.
Why can’t Molly Sanden officially enter Eurovision for Iceland and wipe the floor with everybody? We all know we want to see Husavik win, don’t we?