CONSIDER the collective mindset of the day-tripper, that curious urge that invests several thousand people simultaneously with a fearsome unity of purpose that sends them rushing lemming-like to the sea.
This is a poor analogy, since the ‘rushing’ actually involves travelling very slowly, nose to tail along congested roads like Galapagos turtles heading for the beach to lay their eggs.
Arriving, many of them, (the trippers, not the turtles,) don’t even leave their cars but dispatch the browbeaten youngest for supplies, which they consume in cramped surroundings with windows tightly shut against the elements, the condensation of the takeaway obscuring the view from the inside, while a steady drumming downpour obscures the view on the outside. Then they drive home again under the impression they’ve been somewhere.
Let us examine closely the contents of one such vehicle as it throbs sulkily in an endless tailback. The car in front will do. A two-year-old is waving from the rear window. The people in the car behind have made the mistake of waving back. Now they’ve tired of the game and stopped. Temporarily released from the baby-seat while stationary, the two-year-old begins to grizzle, whimper and tramp about over people’s laps, treading on their tenderest parts with impunity, prior to throwing a full-blown tantrum having been prevented from dropping its shoes out of the window.
The thirteen-year-old slumped moodily in the corner oblivious to the din, is determinedly uninterested in anything. Deprived of his mates, he picks gloomily at a spot and responds to all conversational gambits with grunts of contempt.
“Oh! Look everybody! Primroses!” Mum’s bright tones belie her face full of anxiety and tension. At the back of her mind is the waiting pile of ironing and the sure and certain knowledge that no matter where, when or what they eat, an hour after they return, somebody will ask, “Are you not making any tea?”
She thinks longingly of coffee and a magazine on the back porch sun-lounger, but mother-in-law needs a wee run out. “Are you enjoying yourself Gran?” she enquires with a half turn of the head. Gran’s wedged in the back with the youngsters because her daughter-in-law's bad back necessitates a front seat. “Damn all wrong with her if she’d leave off the high heels,” thinks Gran. “Look at the state of that young fella with his sheepdog hair and knees out of his jeans. And his sister, a madam at sixteen with her black eyes and pelmet of a skirt.
Gran worries what way they’re being reared, where the next toilet is and how she’s going to tackle the coleslaw without her bottom set. She yearns for her little pensioner’s bungalow where she could be watching ‘Gone with the Wind’ with a wee glass of sherry, but she wouldn’t hurt her son by saying so. His grin is more of a grimace. His ankle’s aching upon the accelerator as he trundles forward at 4mph. He could be watching the sports channel with a newspaper over his face. Now he’s watching the engine overheat and coming dangerously close to boiling point himself.
The harsh vibration of heavy metal music beats suddenly against the window. A souped-up model with massive spoiler and go-faster stripes drifts abreast of them in the neighbouring lane. It is crammed with boys with beer-cans and back-to-front baseball caps. They are loudly appreciative of the physical charms of the 16-year-old daughter who folds up like an ironing-board with embarrassment. For her father, this is the last straw. “For two pins I’d knock their heads together…” “Calm down George!” pleads Mum.
With a final jeering catcall the yobbos pull away, leaving Gran tutting with disgust. Up ahead the funereal procession of traffic gathers a temporary momentum. A flurry of windblown sleet stars the windscreen. The metronome beat of the wipers ticks away the long minutes of another fun-packed Spring Bank Holiday.
