The Rough(er) Guide to England
Por asperos caminos he llegado
a parte que miedo no me muevo;
y si a mudarme o dar un paso pruebo,
alli por los cabellos soy tornado.
Garcilaso de La Vega (1503-1536)
(I) The Seaside Resort
Too many summers have gone, and the
cream white hotels have lost their dignity
and virginity, and now they serve part-time
as homes for a fucked up social security
system, and in this clapped out mudflat
promise of candyfloss paradise, deckchairs
are put out still, donkeys are still ridden,
and the fruitmachines still take in old pennies,
and old age pensioners, and the pier still goes
out to a sea in which untreated sewerage
makes its way to Europe, and flatties are still caught
and end up on the dining table and the fish,
that looks as if it has been regurgitated
by seagulls, then covered with a batter of unknown
substance, complemented by balsawood chips,
is still eaten, and the bed and breakfast ladies
in loose chiffons with blue-rinse, still go to bingo
and Florida, while first hubby, a salesman,
is buried, rest his soul, hubby two helps out
by a bit of carpentry here and a bit on the side
there, the guests still die in their horsehair
stuffed beds from heart attacks, and sometimes,
an overdose of boredom, an elementary lesson
in being ripped off is taught at every stall, every shop,
prices needlessly inflated,and still the ballroom
dancing where egos are deflated by Carol's number,
or by the slip of a cheap toupee, and still one can walk on
Sunday around a park with its 1930's bandstand, painted
many times on account of graffitti, and inside the smell of stale urine,
the dog turd lined walk through gardens of unsurpassed
lack of imagination, pansies and roses, and more of the same,
and still one can see caravans perched on the cliffs,
scattered like discarded roll-your own up cigarette tins,
and still there are kiss-me-quick hats, toffee apples, and
amusements like get your money stuck in the machine
and ask for it back. . .and survive to tell the tale, or
the dodgem car that kills, the resort is a haven for those
who study the law of tort, every step you take, every breath
you take, and still the rolexes for sale, and still the perfume
for your partner, and shells specially imported and sold
as locals, they are glued on crappy bottles and passed off as craft,
and of course there is always still someone so daft to spend money
on such a kitsch souvenir , and even as next year we approach
the new Millennium, the seaside resort still has those same qualities
that have endeared it to English men and women, the sleasy, greasy
squalid dump by the sea still brings tears to their eyes, and still they
swim
in outsized trunks, and spend summers naked on the flat cold surface
euphemistically
called a beach, and there like other marine mammals they mate, battle for
space,
the territorial imperative deeply ingrained like toenails in the English
psyche, as are mixed metaphors, and marmalade on sausages, or tasteless
combinations in clothes, and still they punch each other, slug it out like
Walruses
after five or six pints, a primeval ritual that should be narrated by
Attenborough.
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