I’m on the town every night. If you see me, wave. I’ll be at the back, looking forward to my beloved Saints being whipped barearsed and bloody in the Cup Final, James “Beattie” Beattie in particular playing like he couldn’t score in a Somerville bop. I’m taking Lucy on holiday. She comes from somewhere remote and limp in the North (I don’t mean St Hugh’s), and she’s always going on about wanting to go somewhere “exotic”. Normally I’d ignore her, but I’m quite fond of Lucy. Last week I even managed to stand going to the Zodiac and watching a sub-menstrual goth band with her. All girls wearing dark red lipstick and looking like they’ve been dead in the water for three days, singing songs about self-mutilation, bulimia and dull boys who wear eyeliner. Lucy says she “likes” them. So we’re going on holiday. Apparently, it was either that or go to a pub in Shoreditch that doesn’t serve Wifebeater and see a lesbian fringe theatre group perform radical reinterpretations of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. I don’t think I can stand watching Josephine and Her Amazing Technicolour Menses (“You’ll Never Eat Again!” – The Guardian), so I’m bowing to Lucy’s little puppy voice and taking her somewhere “exotic”. I thought about Venice or Madrid, but I’ve blown all my money on Marlboro Lights, toothpaste and lubricant. So we’re going to Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. Yarmouth Pleasure Beach is kind of like EuroDisney, but shit and in Norfolk, with porky pissed inbreds wandering around instead of the cute cartoon characters we all know and love. We go on the roller-coaster made out of bits of wood washed up from the sea, and eat some sweets made out of sugar-covered cardboard. We are having fun. Lucy wants to find what she calls the “scene” in Yarmouth. I’m dubious, but she drags me into a hangout called Sally’s Seaside Café. A groovy place. The clientele are old, the woman behind the counter looks like Steve Ogrizovic, and the tunes are definitely old-skool. Robson and Jerome. I try and rake some lines out on the red and white tablecloth, but it’s a dead end. Later, we walk to the beach. It would be nice (or at least diverting) to have sex in the dunes, but all the dunes have been removed from Yarmouth by the Government in an attempt to encourage flooding. I contemplate a quickie crouched behind the effluent pipe by the pier, but it’s the wrong vibe. We find an unlocked beach hut. I lie on my front, flicking through the Ultravox Annual 1983. Lucy is sitting naked on my back, massaging my shoulders lightly with vanilla icecream and occasionally offering me Moët. I realise there is something missing from my life.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003
On the Town
