Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra

by Hatch, Ben

  ‘He bloody well has, John.’

  ‘He’s like a machine your father, Benj.’

  Dad and I shared a room in the Blackpool Hilton and amongst other acts we saw that week were Ben Elton, Lenny Bruce and Jasper Carrott. I’d never seen live comedy before or my dad laugh so hard. After we returned from Blackpool he showed me some of the old sketches he’d written during his own comedy days. There was one about a sheepdog partial to a nice bit of lamb and mint sauce that made me laugh out loud. After this I began to watch TV sitcoms and listen to radio comedies with Dad like they were the Picture Box documentaries in school. Not The Nine O’clock News, Blackadder, Butterflies, Yes Minister, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Good Life, Dad’s Army, Monty Python, Pete and Dud. It’s still vivid the day we watched The Young Ones, the one programme I tried to turn him on to, but which left him cold. ‘Vulgar – why did they have to do that with the bogies?’ When my dad talked about comedians he always referred to them like friends because many of them had been or still were. Kenneth Williams: ‘Oh Ken – a genius.’ David Jason. ‘David is the best comic actor… in… the country.’ Aged seventeen the praise I most valued was, ‘Great line!’ His greatest show of love became a belly laugh. Soon I was writing my own hopelessly derivative sketches and Dad would give me advice. ‘It’s boom, boom, joke. Not boom, joke, boom, joke. There’s a rhythm to it, my son. Like great art, it’s about light and shade. I hope you’ll be a funny boy.’ It’s what I wanted from then on – to make Dad laugh. To hear him roar like he had in Blackpool.

  We arrive in Blackpool with our hire car and most of its occupants caked in sick thanks to Phoebe being violently ill on the Preston New Road after eating a whole punnet of strawberries. Normally you’d worry about checking into a hotel with your clothes covered in spew, but thankfully there’s nowhere in the country that at midday you can be seen swabbing vomit off your shirt and feel more at home than Blackpool. Instead of repugnant stares from passers-by we’re actually proffered knowing smiles as if to say, ‘That could so easily have been me in Yates’s yesterday.’

  Staying at the Big Blue, we’re in our room that overlooks a rollercoaster ride at the Pleasure Beach, changing and preparing to go out when Buster calls.

  ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dad’s been back in hospital.’

  There was some problem with the bag, a build-up of fluid on his stomach so he went in to have it drained, but when they sewed Dad back up the wound leaked, soaking his bed. The catheter then hadn’t worked properly either. Dad had been through three nightgowns and spent most of the night soaked in his own body fluids and was now exhausted. He was home but the wound was still seeping. Steve, Mary’s brother-in-law, a surgeon, had been to the house. He’d tried clotting the opening without success.

  ‘Just thought I’d let you know.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s talking about the pilot light going out. He sounds very tired.’

  ‘When are you back in Cyprus?’

  ‘Depends on this.’

  ‘Do you want me to come back?’

  ‘No point until we know the score.’

  ‘How’s Mary?’

  ‘Worried.’

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’

  ‘He’s going back in later.’

  ‘The one morning I don’t phone.’

  ‘I know. Oh,’ says Buster. ‘I know what I meant to say. The other day I was with Dad when Aunty Edna called. He pulled a face. He’s been getting lots of calls. He’s really, really tired. It’s why he doesn’t say much. I was just wondering…’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. I ring twice a day Buster, but we don’t speak for long.’

  ‘I know you don’t. I know. He’s so fucking tired, though. It’s why he’s watching telly the whole time. It takes less out of him.’

  ‘No way, I’m carrying on ringing morning and evening. It’s all the contact I get.’

  ‘OK, OK. I just wanted to say that.’

  ‘He doesn’t pull a face when I call, does he?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’

  ‘I promise he hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘I’m not there like you and Pen.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s like yesterday. I should have known about the leak.’

  ‘You’re right. You’re right.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I heard about Wales.’

  I go through what happened.

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Blackpool, cleaning up sick.’

  ‘Livin’ the dream. I’d better go. I said I’d call Mary.’

  ‘Yeah, and keep me in the loop from now on, OK?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You little shit, trying to freeze me out.’

  ‘He’s my dad. Not yours. He loves me more.’

  ‘He hates you.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘And fuck you too.’

  ‘Love ya.’

  ‘Love ya too.’

  He hangs up.

  Blackpool’s new concrete flood defences block out the sea views, and, as we rattle into the centre of town on the tram, Dinah points out interesting Coronation Street snippets (‘This is where Alan tried to push Rita under a tram’), as we also compete to find the tackiest advert on the seafront – ‘Slots of Fun’… ‘Time Out Striptease’. There’s even an invitation to take part in/watch/ sponsor an organised Pot Noodle food fight. Meanwhile, Charlie and Phoebe enjoy the colourful processions of people walking up and down the promenade.

  ‘Look at that one, Dad!’

  Men are dressed as women, women are dressed as cowboys. There are groups of men all in the same coloured T-shirts, their nicknames printed on their backs, almost always, it seems, including at least one ‘mad dog’. Hens in wedding veils and L-plates struggle to light cigarettes as the wind rips off the sea and, for some reason, there are lots of people carrying 5-foot-long cuddly sharks under their arms.

  ‘Another shark, Dad! Look!’

  Horse and carts clip along beside us, and as we get off the tram, we see the beach donkeys for the first time, walking from pier to pier in their pink coats, almost as brashly dressed as the hens and stags. The garish lights hanging above the street transfix Phoebe as we cross the road to the Blackpool Tower.

  ‘Look, I can see a pig. Look, Daddy, a cow!’

  She wants to go on everything, even things that aren’t things to go on.

  ‘Phoebe, that’s an iron railing. Calm down. Circus first. On the way back we’ll go on the rides.’

  At the top of the 318-foot-high Blackpool Tower there’s the Walk of Faith, a glass floor through which there are views clear to street level that only our children and a group of stags from Huddersfield seem keen to demonstrate their immortality by traversing. Downstairs, after this, we have seats in the west stalls for Mooky and Mr Boo’s International Circus Carnival. Upstairs in the tower it was tacky. The carpets were dirty, the air was filled with the plink and beep of arcade games. Nestling between the four ornate iron feet of the tower, however, the circus has a huge big top and a sawdust-filled circular ring. We watch a woman spinning inside a metal cube, the Vavilov tumbling troupe. Mooky the clown appears with Mr Boo. The kids shout their heads off (‘Behind you, Mooky!’). A sparkly outfitted Miss Elizabeth dangles 40 feet on a silken rope. Charlie claps. Phoebe’s spellbound. But our favourite moment comes towards the end when we attempt to feed Charlie in situ because neither of us wants to leave the circus and miss anything. Phoebe’s on my lap. Charlie’s on Dinah’s.

  ‘Are you sure we can do this?’

  ‘Pass me the thermos,’ says Dinah.

  ‘OK.’

  I reach into the day bag and take out Charlie’s baby bottle and the thermo
s. I pass the thermos to Dinah and remove the baby bottle lid. Dinah unscrews the thermos cap and I hold the baby bottle away from me, as Dinah decants hot milk into it and pauses whenever Charlie or Phoebe shifts position. When this is done, I retrieve the bottle lid from my chin where I’ve stored it, screw it on one-handed, then pass the bottle back to Dinah, who tilts Charlie into the feeding position just as the final tumbling act in the ring reaches a crescendo and one of the troupe jumps onto the head of another with a great bouncy fanfare of music from the show band.

  The audience clap and wave their light sabres.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ says Dinah, dipping her head.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ I say, waving one arm to the crowd.

  ‘And for our next act…’ says Dinah, laughing.

  ‘We will extract a miniature PACKET OF RAISINS.’

  ‘From the INSIDE pouch of the DAY BAG,’ I say.

  ‘Are they real pirates, Daddy?’ asks Charlie, warily.

  ‘No, Charlie, they’re dressed up,’ says Phoebe. ‘If they were real pirates they’d be killing people, wouldn’t they Dad?’

  ‘Yes, and they’re not, are they? They’re just taking people’s coats and showing customers where to sit. Guys, you see that?’

  In the middle of the room there’s a massive treasure chest full of sweets.

  ‘Come on, Charlie. Charlie, there are sweets in there. SWEETS!’

  Tonight we’re at a pirate-themed restaurant back out near the

  M55. It’s based at a Premier Inn on the Whitehills Business Park. Unprepossessing on the outside, inside it’s like something out of Vegas. At the cost of £3 million, the interior has been transformed into a huge medieval town complete with Tudor houses, a ruined castle, a running waterfall and life-sized fibre glass trees underneath a starry night sky. The staff are dressed as buccaneers.

  As the kids run to and from the Ben Gunn soft play area, Dinah talks about the day. She speculates on the sheer amount of guys we’ve seen with significant bits of their ears missing. Were they bitten or torn off in fights? But I can’t concentrate. I keep thinking about Dad. Near Keswick in a couple of days’ time we’re staying at Armathwaite Hall. We’re there two nights. It’s the first time we’ll have spent longer than one night anywhere. And there’s a reasonably fast connection from Keswick to London.

  Mary answers when I call. Dad’s asleep. I tell her my plan to surprise Dad.

  ‘But he will sleep a lot of the time, my darling.’

  ‘I know, but I’m also coming for you, Mary.’

  ‘I know my darling.’

  Mary seems at times to be together and others not to be coping at all. Towards the end her voice falters. ‘He tells me these things,’ she says. ‘He’s losing his eyesight,’ she whispers and starts to cry. ‘I tell you, the last two days…’ She breathes heavily, carries on. ‘And you know what a fastidious man you father is. The bag filling up. He was on his hands and knees, so brave…’

  When Mary breaks down the temptation is to try to comfort her, but it happens so often in the end I just stare at the dummy pirate hanging in a gibbet above our table and wait for her to recover.

  ‘I don’t ask questions any more,’ Mary says. ‘Nor does your father. I don’t want to know anything else. It will happen, let it happen. Some people use activity to keep the devil away. Your sister and her meals. Buster and his DIY.’

  ‘Me and this trip.’

  ‘You, my darling, and your trip. We do what we have to do. He understands that. But I don’t want to know any more. But I do know your father didn’t deserve this.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘He did not deserve this. A few weeks ago…’

  ‘I know, Mary. I know.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Draft Copy for Guidebook: The Lake District, England’s largest national park, is widely considered the most romantic spot in England. Containing the country’s highest summit, Scafell Pike, and its deepest lake, Wastwater, the area’s rugged beauty and crystal clear lakes have made it the most common English location for couples to pop the question. Bill Clinton proposed here to Hilary in 1973, as did Sir Paul McCartney to Heather Mills in 2001. Your children will, of course, know it better as the setting for John Cunliffe’s classic, if extremely dull, children’s series, Postman ‘My black and white cat is more interesting than me’ Pat. The main family attractions are a zoo, an aquarium and Keswick’s Cars of the Stars, highlights of which include Del Boy’s three-wheeler from Only Fools and Horses, Mr Bean’s pea-green mini and Michael Keaton’s Batmobile that our son ducked under a security rope to touch, prompting a harsh Dalek-like voice to bark out over the tannoy, ‘Stay away from the cars.’ In the gift shop you can buy an autograph of Mr T from The A-Team and be told by the curator that the tannoy announcement ‘was for his own safety’, as if the Batmobile’s front-mounted machine guns were maybe actually loaded and

  capable of being triggered by a chocolatey hand. There are also two former homes of poet William Wordsworth. Dove Cottage is where he spent his time of ‘plain living and high thinking’. He returned here after long lakeside walks to write some of his best-known works including his famous ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ line. There’s an education room where, during school holidays between 9.30 a.m. and 5.30 p.m., kids’ activities include making up poems using fridge magnets. There was also a poet in residence, Adam O’ Riordan, when we visited, who does readings at 2.30 p.m. on Wednesdays, and can be talked about by your smitten wife at 8 a.m. the next morning and also again at 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. and then half-hourly following lunch after she has googled him and discovered, according to reviews, that he ‘engages the reader with meandering narratives which zoom in from cosmos to coffee cup whilst still having the subtle facility to turn his attention to woozy landscapes that capture the broken dreams of cities and love affairs’. The other Wordsworth property, Rydal Mount, has rooms full of period furniture including a cutlass chair (designed so you could take the weight off your feet without removing your sword) that we suggest you sit on to finally have your say about Adam O’Riordan. ‘He’s a loose-buttoned fop and, no, we will not be visiting the Ledbury Poetry Festival as part of this book’s research so you can steal up to him and ask for his autograph and show him your own work about that cornfield we saw in Worcester, where you rhymed evanescent fields of barley with Salvador Dalí’.

  ‘It’s all about pensioners,’ Dinah’s saying.

  ‘I know, I’m sick of it.’

  ‘Leaning on their bloody anti-shock trekking poles staring at Helvellyn, communing with nature.’

  ‘I’m starting to hate them.’

  ‘Buying those stupid pieces of slate with their house name on it. The Brambles, Honeysuckle Smug Cottage.’

  ‘And all the horrible upper-middle-class families.’

  Dinah shakes her head contemptuously. ‘Oh, I’ve got a Toyota Prius. Haven’t you?’

  ‘We bought it for the all-round visibility, darling,’ I chip in, ‘On the way to the farmers’ market we can see literally four cars ahead of us. And we do so like looking down on people. It’s what we do all the time. Fancy a wedge of salted Swedish liquorice?’

  ‘It’s so, so yummy.’

  ‘Wankers!’

  Bowness, on the banks of Lake Windermere, seemed, at first, a welcome relief after the litter-strewn streets of Blackpool, although its own streets were slightly too narrow and clogged up with well-heeled pensioners scoffing Coniston Fudge to push our huge Maclaren double buggy comfortably along.

  But we should have realised we weren’t going to be welcome in the Lake District when the swans on the banks of Lake Windermere, probably raised on focaccia or Roquefort and almond sourdough, turned their snooty beaks up at our Kingsmill bread.

  ‘Daddy, why aren’t they eating it?’

  ‘Because they’re very, very spoilt, sweetheart and it’s not wholegrain.’

  ‘They’re probably gluten intolerant,’ says Dinah.

  On ou
r first day we were tutted at in the Beatrix Potter exhibition after the kids shouted excitedly at a model of Miss Tiggywinkle. On the second day you’d have thought we’d detonated a cluster bomb on an orphanage, the way we were stared at when Phoebe opened a packet of Walkers cheese and onion near the Ruskin Museum. ERGHHHH! NORMAL CRISPS!!… CRISPS WITHOUT SEA

  SALT AND CHIVES, IN A PACKET THAT HASN’T BEEN MADE TO LOOK LIKE IT’S MADE OF ACTUAL WOOD! STAND BACK EVERYONE. IT’S THAT FAMILY WITH THE KINGSMILL AGAIN.

  We’re at the grey stone village of Grasmere ranting as we struggle to find somewhere that’ll heat up Charlie’s baby food. Today it’s been more of the same and we’re reaching breaking point after being shunned aboard the steam yacht Gondola on Coniston Water, where I spent forty-five minutes holding on to the back of Charlie’s shirt so he didn’t topple over the edge into the water after Donald Campbell, who died attempting to break the water speed record here. And while it was fun at the Laurel and Hardy Museum’s small cinema in Ulverston witnessing the kids laughing at the bowler-hatted slapstick (‘Daddy, he just bit that man’s tie’), it ended in tears when Charlie accidentally broke the head off an Ollie statue and we were asked to leave. To cap it all off, in the last half hour we’ve tried to sit down in three restaurants for lunch but each time have been told, despite the empty seats, none of which were marked reserved, that, ‘Sorry, we’re fully booked.’ Meaning, ‘Get out scumbags, we don’t want your noisy kids in here taking up space, chucking homemade cheese and ham galettes around when there are stacks of minted grey heads prepared to pay £15.75 for a chicory salad.’ And now we’re struggling to even get Charlie’s baby food heated up because nobody will admit to having a microwave. (‘I’m sorry, we don’t believe in bombarding our organic apple confit with non-ionising radiation. The Lake District is a national park, you know.’)

  In the end Dinah leaves me with the kids on Grasmere green and moves round College Street to try a few more places. She returns fifteen minutes later looking upset.

  ‘Nope,’ she says, punching the baby food jar into my hand.

  ‘Really?’