Back in England

To my left there were two crabsticks. The top of their straps had been lowered to show third degree burns. Once removed the offending strap revealed a colour white similar, if not whiter, than the England football shirt worn three sizes to small by the man opposite. He was wearing shots that were ambitiously tight, forcing a large proportion of his hairy gut to overspill under the shirt. “Apparently the weather is going bad again tomorrow, typical, I’ve taken the week off as well” said one of the crabstick ladies. “Yeah, I know, was going down to Southend as well with the kids, they will have watch tele now, maybe go down to the beach next week instead” added crabstick number two. Just why these people with third degree burns wanted forth degree burns I will never know.

I had arrived back in in the middle of the summer and I forgot just how important the sun is to English people. When the sun shows any sign of emerging from the clouds, plague sweeps across the country. Large, hairless, beer ravaged men will walk the streets without their tops on. The old basket pushing ladies give a ‘that would never happen in my day look’ as they walk past. The women wear little crop tops that clearly do not fit, they had borrowed it off their younger sister Denise. The talk on the street is about one thing. The sun. When will come out? When will go in? Is it hotter this year than last year? Will it be hot next month when they go in their caravan to the South coast? What way are the clouds moving? Will there be an Indian summer? Will it be cold here when they fly to Tenerife. Have you caught the sun? Yes you’ve caught the sun! Has the weatherman been right? And so on. The plague makes people act in a strange way. Not only do people look like crabsticks and burn victims, the sun also makes them do things they hate in everyday life. They get in the cars and sit in a car park for five hours to travel fifty miles just to go to a place where thousands of others have gone. And what is this place? A bit of sewage infected water with a stretch of sand. Over here they call it a beach.

The British beach is a strange phenomenon. Just like the sun, contact with sand sends the British person into frenzy. Once you have driven for five hours in a car overloaded with screaming children and useless inflatable beach items, you spend the next two hours on objective number two. Parking. Trying to find a parking space in the summer is like trying to find a Thai market seller after selling you that fake CD player that doesn’t work. People will crawl in first gear playing ‘spot the gap’ game. This is a really good game. Different members of the family can play. You all must look out for a car park space whilst hundreds of other families play against you. Every so often use your dummy card. Shout out “There’s one!” causing the driver to nearly crash only to realise it a handicapped space, a marked bay or filled by a small motorbike which makes the space out to be empty when it isn’t. Once you have found a space three miles from your destination it’s then time to play the ‘Where do we sit game’. Normally you are helped out by the fact that a thousand families have come at 7am that day and your options are limited to the crappy pieces of sand where nobody else wants to sit. The areas deemed not as desirable are marked by the fifteen year old kids smoking joints, swearing and generally terrorising the general public. Once you have found your four foot piece of sand it’s time to get some refreshments. Unfortunately for you the idea has also been shared by half the population of the beach. So you stand in line for thirty minutes and finally get your hands on that dripping ice cream that you try and balance along with the other five ice creams back to your family. When you reach them you are more sticky than the chewing gum on the high street floor and are greeted by Johnny screaming “I didn’t want vanilla, I wanted Strawberry!”. Anyway, best make the most of it. Going to have to leave in two hours to beat the traffic, and you never know, the sun might not be out tomorrow.