The First Resort

 Normally I write about my holidays as they happen, so there's lots of stuff about airports, minor discomforts and the petty grievances that are so very attractive in a man who's basically just off on a jolly. But today I'm writing this on a sun-lounger, next to a swimming pool, listening to the gentle murmur of wealthy people, while well-fed bodies crash into the water. There are candy-striped beach huts - one of which is called "Barry" - "fatboy" hammocks and a bar with a very posh, very blonde staff. It has the ambiance of a painting Hockney might have knocked off on a package holiday to Butlins Bognor Regis.  

We are unmistakably, unarguably at a "resort", which is a first for me. I was at hotel in Torremolinos (The Hotel Principal Sol - it's still there!) when I was 12, but this is the first time I've chosen to visit one. We were going to go to Paris. Then we couldn't be arsed going to Paris because of all the rioting, and the heat, and the fact neither of us really knows Paris. Or French, for that matter. 

So we decided on Cornwall because we're both fluent Cornish speakers. We'd been to St Ives before so this time were going to the North. We could fly directly into Newquay and have access to Padstow, Tintagel, Bodmin. And then we saw the hotel - called the St Moritz - a gypsum-white, Art Deco folly, rising up from the gnarled coastline like the prow of a cruise ship. It was a hotel where a portly Belgian detective might ask the guests to gather in the lounge to reveal the murderer, and the guests would be too English to decline, even though one of them was definitely the murderer. They'd be accused, deliver a slow hand-clap and the assertion they'd do it again if they could, and be taken away to be quietly hanged. The rule of thumb is, if a neat man from Brussels invites you in for a quick chat about homicide, have a prior engagement. 

So, we booked the hotel, and now we're here, lying by a pool, beneath an unnecessarily full-on September sun. I'm drinking a pint of iced Doombar. In one of the hammocks a very posh boy is telling his mum about the novel he's writing on his "vac" from Cambridge. It's about a man who published "a brilliant novel in his early twenties, but hasn't done much since and now he's thirty, teaching in a bad school, and writing "trashy" sci fi novels in his spare time." Thirty? And no brilliant second novel? What a loser. He's wasted his life. 

The boy's mother was very supportive, and he betrayed absolutely no self-consciousness recalling the plot in his public school bark. Must be incredible to be so untouched by failure. It's like a tattoo on my forehead. 

It's hard to get around in North Cornwall. There are roads but no pavements, and the roads are comprised of blind summits, blind corners and dark, Satanic hedges. The people drive camper vans at speed, shunting backwards and forwards when they meet in an ongoing, never resolved game of chicken. So you can't really get anywhere. There are buses but the buses are infrequent, start late and finish early, and often don't turn up at all. So we're stuck with what's in walking distance. Luckily, pretty much everything in walking distance is staggeringly beautiful. 

I listen to the conversations of wealthy people, as they are the only people here, other than ourselves. Wealthy people talk a lot, they assume what they're saying is interesting, and almost the only thing they talk about is money. How they don't have enough of it, how they've been cheated, how builders are swindling them, how they got an amazing deal, how someone they know is making out like a bandit, how someone else is failing spectacularly. I thought the English traditionally thought it frightfully poor form to talk about money. It was non-u and infra-dig. That no longer seems to be the case - it's all they talk about. Except for the staff. They're very interested in the people serving them, appraising them, ordering them in terms of quality and style, chatting to them, correcting them, making them laugh at their shit jokes, complaining to and about them. Standards are slipping everywhere, nothing is as good as it used to be. 

Being around the wealthy is strange. They're incredibly dull but very energetic. They think they're fun because they've never heard anything but polite laughter their whole lives. 

We get a lift to a place called Rock, because the resort has a man, Gez, in a Minivan. All Gez does all day is ferry people around a ten mile radius. A very posh woman has commandeered the vehicle so she can take her dog - Charles - for a walk in Porthilly, but she generously allows Susan and me to join her in the mini-bus. When she finds out we're going to Padstow, she sneers "Urgh. PADSTEIN", and I think "Oh, you terrible snob." But then I visit Padstow and think, ah, maybe she's onto something. Every pub, cafe, or fish and chip shop is rammed. But the bookshop is empty. 

As we alighted the bus, Gez the driver, who has rather taken to us, advises we should go to The Padstow Tasting Room. "If you don't mind me saying, you two look like real ale fans!"

I'm stunned. I have no beard. I'm not wearing a jacket that has no sleeves but a hell of a lot of pockets. There's no pewter tankard resting on my hip. I'm not singing "Green Grow the Rushes O" with a finger in my ear. I think he means we look like hipsters - I have sticky up hair and I'm wearing a t-shirt with a quote from Bartleby the Scrivener on it. And I don't think he gets to meet too many hipsters in his line of work. Even so. Real ale fans!

We actually do end up going to The Padstow Tasting Room, despite my protestations. I hate recommendations. Why would someone who lives in Padstow and talks to people who have been there all day and every day, have a better idea than me about it? But it's absolutely fine, tucked well away from the crowds. We find great seats, I drink a Padstow Helles and Susan a flight of ciders. Elderflower is her favourite. 

Rick Stein is everywhere in Padstow. He has a chippy. He has a cafe. He has a fishmonger and a shop selling his millions of books and his fine china, which is surprisingly tasteful. Rick seems to wear quite a bit of guy-liner on the covers of his books. I don't recall him looking quite so much like Liz Taylor in Cleopatra, when he's bumbling around in the South of France in search of pimenton or cooking alfresco steaks in a field full of bemused cows. If they only knew, Rick. They'd be picking your mince out of their hooves with a neighbour's horn. 

Today, at Baby Bay, a twenty year old girl rose out of the sea wearing nothing but a pair of knickers and a wet Smiths t-shirt. If I believed in signs and wonders, I'd park this firmly on the "wonders" side. To paraphrase Lord Summerisle "The sight of the young people refreshed me."

In our room there is a Dyson fan, which has been on full blast since we got here, because it's roasting. I don't approve of Dyson, the billionaire Brexiteer with such faith in Britain he moved his company to Singapore, but it's hard to fault his fan. I'm a fan of the fans. I'm so conflicted. The fan is currently drying my tears of frustration. 

I've been in the outside pool every day. I love swimming, though I'm terrible at it. I'm terrible at football too, but I hate that. There's no consistency here. I'm only ever in the water for half an hour - a few lengths, a bit of floating. But I love it. I should have my own pool. Why don't I have my own pool? Ah, the life choices. Of course. 

Went to visit John Betjeman's grave. We set off down a deserted road, which turned into a public pathway - a beautiful tree-lined avenue, feeding onto a charmingly primitive golf course - full of swollen Cornish hills erupting with natural sand-traps and, in the middle of this, the most beautiful churchyard I'd ever seen. The church itself, with its witch's hat turret, slightly bent, is sunk into the hillside, with the graves raised up about it. Betjeman's headstone, the first you see when the enter the graveyard, is all curls and calligraphy, every inch etched and scribbled. We walk past several graves for the Mably family - local big-shots, obviously - each of them now frilly with lichen. At the top of the hill is a bench and Susan and I are alone, and we hold hands and breathe and listen to the sounds of the Cornish landscape, which whispers and insinuates. It breathes. It sighs.  

It's not all good. We go to a restaurant. We'd been there for breakfast and the food was okay, so we thought we'd try it for dinner later in the week. Alarm bells rang softly when Susan asked the innocuous question "Do we have to book?" The server, an incredibly humourless woman from London, shot her a dead-eyed stare. "Of course you have to book," as though the question were pure idiocy. Despite that warning shot, we still booked. 

We made a fatal error. We dressed for dinner. We showered. I put in contact lenses. I wore long trousers and shoes. Susan was similarly dressy. Rookie error. Rube move. Fuckin' tourists. Everyone else was in their 60s and 70's, wandering in, red faced and white haired, in shorts, sandals and socks. It became clear we were personas non grata when the server - the same one - made perfunctory chat with everyone but us. I reasoned this was because Susan and I actually talk to one another during meals. Most of the other tables were silent till the server drifted near. Things got weird when she elected to break the silence. 

"You alright, guys?"

"Yes, thank you," said Susan. The food was perfectly fine. 

"Lovely," I said. She moved to go, but then turned back to look at me. 

"Sorry?" she said, in a manner which suggested it should be me apologising for some yet unspecified crime.  

"What?" I said, baffled. 

"I thought you were going to say something." She gave me the dead-eyed stare. Jesus. 

"No." I said. Was "lovely" too small a compliment? Did she perceive it as a slight? She carried with her unblinking stare, before turning on her heel and walking away. 

"What the fuck was that?" I said to Susan. 

"I've no idea."

"Tell me that was weird."

"No, that was weird." 

Things finally came to a head when it was time to pay the bill. She brought over the card reader and I placed my card on it. It timed out. 

"Funny." she said. I tried again, under the scrutiny of her basilisk stare. It timed out again. 

"Weird. It might work again in a minute. You alright to wait?" We had no choice. 

Ten minutes later she appeared again. This time I put the card into the reader and tapped in my pin. It timed out. 

"Don't worry. It hasn't worked. We haven't taken your money." She wandered off again. She returned with the reader again, this time strolling off throughout the Hitchcockian suspense. I was left with the dead reader on the table in front of me. 

"Did it work?"

"No."

"Weird. Did it say "Card Declined" at all?"

"No it didn't," I said. This was nothing to do with me! I was, for once, in funds.

"This is a pain," she said. "What are we going to do?" She'd tried nothing and was already out of ideas. 

"I don't suppose you have any money?" We didn't. We'd used the card machine for breakfast the day before and paid without any problem. So we didn't think to bring any money. 

"Is there a cash machine anywhere?" I said. 

"There's one in Polzheath Spar," she said. That was an hour, there and back, along a dark, clifftop path. I wasn't keen to do that. 

"You could give me your card," she said, "You could get it back in the morning."

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that," I said. 

"No, fair enough," she conceded. 

Susan tried with her card, in case the problem was me having no money. Once again it timed out. This seemed to satisfy her."

"The manager's coming in. He's going to reboot the internet. That should sort it. Are you happy to sit tight for half an hour."

Since it was already half an hour since we'd first attempted to pay the bill, I wasn't that interested in sitting there waiting for another half an hour so the manager could turn it off and on again. It was becoming annoying. At no point had she apologised for the inconvenience. In fact I got the distinct impression she thought that I was the problem here. That dead-eyed stare had been there throughout. 

"I could try a bank transfer," said Susan. "I have an app."

Saved by the app. It worked. 

"Apologies," she said finally, as we moved to leave. 

"I hope it starts to work again soon." said Susan. 

"Yeah, we better not be the only people this happens to," I said, with forced jocularity. 

"No, you won't be," she said sullenly. 

"Bye," said Susan. 

"Take me with you," said the woman. Finally, an attempt at humour, or something humour-adjacent, at least. 

"No thank you." I said. 

We left the restaurant. We went down the hill, past the rabbits, towards the rolling surf and sat on a bench looking out to sea. Me, gently simmering with unspent rage. Susan holding my hand. 

It's like a cruise, I think. I've never been on a cruise, but this is like a land-locked version. Elderly rich people thinking it's incredibly naughty and fantastic that they're having a beer in the bar at four in the afternoon, even though they've been doing it for a fortnight. The thrill is never gone. Some of them live here - there are permanent residents with staff. I feel a compulsion to use the tradesman's entrance throughout my stay. Not a euphemism - there's not a looker in the bunch. All those gleaming dentures and tanned hairless legs. Officer class. Wouldn't think twice about volunteering me for certain death or shooting me for cowardice because of shell-shock. I don't make any friends. 

I make one. Gez, the bus driver. Ex-army, he looks quite spooked when I say I live in Belfast. Turns out he'd been here. "Lifetime ago," he says, "glad that's all over anyway." Er, not sure it's ALL over, Gez. He convinces me not to go to Tintagel - "All that King Arthur bollocks." he says. I mean, I like that bollocks, but Cornwall seems to have swapped it's myths and legends for smugglers and pirates. I suppose it's easier to market pirates - they have cool outfits and taverns, but I mean, c'mon. King Arthur? Merlin? Morgan Le Fay, The Lady of the Lake? Now THEY have cool outfits. 

Gawain and the Green Knight? That's just everything. Pfft. 

That said, I live in Belfast and I'm not that fussed about the Giant's Causeway, so...

Mist descends on the Thursday. The horizon disappears. Cliffs loom, shadowy, emptied of detail. It lasts most of the day. Cornwall becomes a land of mystery and romance again. It's heavy with history. You would write stories about this place. It's always beautiful here, but the sea fret lends it sublimity. This is also the day I see a girl in a bikini back-flip off a rock into the sea, and emerge like one of the sisters of Avalon onto the sighing shingle beach. Legend. 

I holiday in black and white