the chavland diaries

On Friday night, after teaching, I took a budget bus down to Bournemouth to do the main bit of my summer’s teaching work. It was actually an old London red bus that had been repainted but not refitted. I was tired and dreamy, and the whole thing resembled the fantasies I have often had, while sitting on a city bus, of the driver deciding just to shut the doors, disengage the bell and keep on driving out of town.

So, Bournemouth. Some first sights:

Men in polyester trousers, sharply creased, cut to bag out womanishly at the thighs and hemmed too short, exposing a centimetre of sock.

Lairy lads pushing a wheely bin under a restaurant’s sign so that one of them could stand on it and bat the sign with his hand, to the sound of cheering.

Several half-empty jugs of a neon blue cocktail standing on a sticky table by a rank of poker machines. Bouncers with little black earsets screwed into their shiny bald heads.

Numbered changing huts in a row along the sea front, all painted different colours, some with little curtains.

Big signs on the pavement saying KFC -->

English refectory food; pimples resulting from a week thereof.

Krazee golf in the park.

A delirium of high street chains packed with cute ten pound sun dresses—after a year in a city where all clothing was out of my price range, two-bit-whorish or indeed both, I feel like I’ve been blessed by some kind of shopping goddess.

Swings and roundabouts.