We are home, reluctantly and regretfully not on holiday any more: and it is raining.
Not to worry, maybe by tomorrow it will clear a bit, and rain is exactly what the garden needs at the moment, all my little plants will be very grateful.
Also we have had a splendid time.
We thought that we were very brave indeed, going skinny dipping last night, and then dashing up the beach, helpless with giggling, and trying to get dressed inconspicuously in the dark.
That was until we were walking along the promenade at lunchtime today and saw a young man skinny dipping quite openly and indifferently. He was with his bikini-clad heavily pregnant girlfriend, but he was strolling nonchalantly out of the water with not a stitch on and nobody seemed to care in the least, or even, especially, notice. I liked Morecambe very much because of this.
The world is changing. Perhaps we are becoming more sensible about which things matter. People should be able to take their clothes off to swim if they want to. I was pleased to see him, hurrah for tolerance.
We cycled all the way along the promenade, which was really very splendid. It is beautifully done, with interesting mosaic bits laid into the path, and the sort of statues that play music when the tide comes in. It was odd and disorientating, because it is very much like Blackpool, which is familiar and known, but it is not Blackpool, it is different.
It is far better kept than Blackpool in many ways, and older. In Blackpool all of the guest houses on the front have long since cleared away their gardens to make room for car parking. In Morecambe they have not, and pretty gardens line stretches of the promenade. Everywhere is neat and well kept, and there is none of the feeling of tawdriness that engulfs Blackpool. People were friendly, and the tourists were elderly and peaceful, and there were boats anchored in the bay, and nowhere at all where one might buy a ridiculous hat, or a stick of rock, or doughnuts.
I thought that this was an omission, actually, because of liking doughnuts. The children like candy floss, and we all like the bright colours and cheery hubbub of Blackpool. Morecambe is very different.We thought that it might be very popular indeed if only it could come up with some sort of attraction. Blackpool has a brilliant funfair, and a tower, and a circus, and countless other cash-absorbing activities. Morecambe does not even seem to have a gift shop.
There is a nice statue of Eric Morecambe, but it is not really much of a rival for Blackpool Tower, I don’t suppose they lose any sleep over it.
We stopped at an hotel that we were investigating on behalf of my parents. My mother had suggested that we went there for afternoon tea, but we had got economical lamb and rice waiting for us in the camper van, and so we just had cocktails instead.
It is Morecambe’s most sophisticated hotel, and it is called the Midland. It is done in a style called Art Deco, which translates as ‘nineteen seventies canteen’, and is all terrible reminiscent of a truly awful film called A Clockwork Orange.
My parents were interested to find out how it had been upgraded into the modern world, so we examined it carefully over remarkably budget-priced cocktails. We sat inside, by huge windows looking out over the beach. A small boy came up to us outside, and pressed his nose against the glass, and Mark pretended to poke him in the eye.
It was perfectly acceptable, I suppose, but the manager’s suit did not fit him properly, and I am unconvinced by the loveliness of scarlet plastic and faux leather. If I am honest I hated the whole Art Deco style. The waitress had to keep looking at the menu to make our cocktails, which suggested that she might be less than expert, and everybody else seemed to be eating chips with tomato sauce.
It was not a patch on its glorious Mancunian namesake.
The pot plants were well-looked after, though, and I expect it was cheap.
We cycled onwards, drunkenly, and ate huge quantities of minty lamb and buttery garlic rice in the camper van. Mark said it was probably easily the nicest thing that anybody had eaten anywhere in Morecambe. We had bread rolls and olives, taxi-driver wine, and finished off with coffee cake drenched in cream and honey yoghurt.
We had to have a sleep afterwards.
The picture at the top is Mark doing some adjustments to the gas burners on the fridge this morning. Below are the hotel pictures.
I am glad we were staying in the camper van.
