The Gran Tour

by Ben Aitken

  11

  Alexa, find Facebook, says Nan

  Our first port of call for the day is Betws-y-coed, a picturesque town that sits in the Conwy Valley, beneath the hills and mountains of Snowdonia. After being put down outside the post office, Nan and I wander over to the visitor centre to watch a film about the local area. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to its creators, but the best part of the film is when Nan turns to me and says: ‘I saw the pigeon racer at breakfast. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he did something like that.’ After the film, we take a quick look at the River Llugwy and the modest waterfall there, before returning to the coach via the village green, where a puppy called Bilbo is currently being chased by its elderly owner. When Nan pops to the ladies, Patrick approaches out of nowhere.

  ‘Same time tonight?’ he says, looking away from me.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You remember the number?’

  ‘Under the stairs, right?’

  He nods and then walks away, and I’m left feeling like something illicit just happened.

  Approaching the old slate town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, the scenery changes planet. Instead of fields and woodland, there’s a landscape of slate – hills of it, dunes of it, a very sea of the stuff. The local slate industry boomed after the Great Fire of London in 1666, because all of a sudden, everyone needed a roof. Oakley’s quarry was the biggest in the area, employing 6,000 men. ‘I say men but there were lads as young as twelve working in the mines and quarries,’ says Tim. ‘They’d do 60-hour weeks and be expected to die at 38, which is certainly something to think about the next time you moan about the demise of British industry.’

  We pass through Blaenau and continue to Porthmadog, a small coastal town which grew up to serve the local slate industry. It was from here that the slate would be sent by boat to wherever it was wanted. It was big business while it lasted, but nowadays the town relies on the likes of us to tick over. It won’t be getting much off the man Nan’s talking to however. He’s refusing to look around anymore shops or have another coffee. He’s rejected his wife’s claim that all shops are different, and that every coffee is unique, and is standing his ground in the car park. He says his wife likes to say that a hot drink is like a river, in that you can’t step into the same one twice. He says that he wishes coffee was a river because at least then he could fish in it. He also says he wishes they had some grandchildren with them, like Nan does. He says he’s not short of grandchildren, nor is he short of great-grandchildren, though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, so rarely do they pop over. He sums up his great-grandchildren thus: the boys are boys and the girls are angels. To my mind, the man’s summary is a bit reductive, but I suppose it’s not for me to tell great-grandparents how to advertise their descendants.

  I take Nan to the Royal Sportsman Hotel for lunch. Upon our arrival, I unnecessarily inform the barman that I stayed at the hotel when I was retracing the journey taken by Bill Bryson in Notes from a Small Island. While Nan looks on proudly as I regale these details, the barman gets the wrong end of the stick and phones the owner, who is at Tesco, and tells him that Mr Bryson is at the hotel. The owner rushes back in time to see Nan and I making a start on our lunch. I watch a look of disappointment unfold on the owner’s face as he realises that neither Nan nor I are Bill Bryson. To his credit, he is magnanimous enough to come over and ask how the rarebit is. In the loo of the Sportsman about five minutes later, I find myself facing the wall alongside a lad called Ron who’s also on the Llandudno holiday. As we do our business, I say I’m thinking of Eastbourne next. Ron says, ‘Don’t mention Eastbourne, or you’ll get me excited.’

  Heading back to the carpark, we run into Patrick. He and Nan link up for a stretch, while I walk behind. It’s a nice prospect, the pair of them ambling along, enjoying a bit of back and forth about Cheltenham or the fine weather or how good it is to be alive or the circular nature of all things or how nice it is to be able to put one foot in front of another and so on until one has got somewhere. That’s how I imagine their chat. In the event, when I overtake the pair, on the lovely stone bridge that crosses Porthmadog harbour, I hear Patrick say, ‘So in conclusion, Janet, I won’t be buying those crisps again.’

  We take a ride on a steam train, from Porthmadog to Blaenau, where Tim will meet us with the coach. This stretch of railway was laid 150 years ago so slate could be carted down from the quarries at Blaenau. Now it carts a different load – often as dense – back and forth for a laugh. It’s a terrific course: a steady, turning climb north-east, through forests and hills, by villages and meadows, through that lovely sweet countryside caught so well by the paintings of Rob Piercy. And what’s more, there’s no commentary. As much as I’m a fan of Tim and just about everything that exits (and indeed enters) his mouth, it’s nice to just sit and watch and not listen. It’s nice to just gander the flat sands of Cardigan Bay; a glistening cemetery; a gardener in Penrhyn who stops what they’re doing to stand up straight and wave happily at the passing coincidence. I wave back at the gardener enthusiastically, and compare my cheerful reaction to how I behaved when I last rode this railway, just a few years ago.24 Just beyond Minffordd, we come to a halt beside a run of back gardens. The back walls are made of slate tiles, piles of them like black-grey books. Along the top of one wall are a few old boots, sprouting flowers. ‘Nice to see flowers in odd places,’ says Nan.

  When the refreshment trolley comes by, the ladies next to us, Val and Deborah (Madonna and child), inform the trolley that if they were any more refreshed they’d get gout. Nan takes confidence from this remark and leans across the aisle to say, ‘Aren’t the noises nice?’ Val and Deborah both agree that they are, despite probably not knowing what noises Nan is on about. I reckon she has the train’s warning hoots in mind; and its old-fashioned respiratory system, the in-out of its combustive lungs; and the slow scrape of our upward progress, as we climb a metre for every 40 metres of track. Val points to the little spring lambs falling over each other in a neighbouring field, and remarks how giddy they are to be alive, how pleased with it all. ‘Mint sauce,’ says Nan. I can only guess she heard a question that hadn’t been asked, or was kicking-off a sort of word association game, without warning anyone else.

  I eavesdrop awhile. Bits and pieces from the conversations around me – senseless when taken out of context, but pleasing and intriguing nonetheless. ‘I had a terrific birthday, thank you. It lasted a month.’ ‘Well, you know Trevor.’ ‘She’s nice but just not at that time of year.’ And then from Val: ‘Manchester United have signed another Frenchman, Deborah.’ It occurs to me that the sum of these bits, these scraps, these chance soundbites, better reflect a people, a generation, a species, a carriage, an afternoon, than any canon of literature. Literature is too thoughtful, too affected. I should like an anthology of one-liners overheard on the train. I’d have that as my desert island item. You could spend years guessing at their stories, their contexts, their before and after. It would be called Mint Sauce.

  Tan-y-Bwlch is not a Wi-Fi password but a station, a place. We pause here a while, so the engine can catch its breath. The platform is lively with children, who must be off school or skipping it. They are running amok, tripping each other up, sitting in the barrels meant for flowers. They’re like the lambs, this lot, giddy on life, thinking it’s all a great game – and I suppose it is, really. Watching the children, I half expect to hear Nan say mint sauce again, such is their likeness to the lambs. In the event, she holds her tongue, knowing that children need nothing on the side. As the train takes a corner, its locomotive comes into view. Heads swerve to get a glimpse of the old carthorse.

  The climb keeps giving. Wild gorse, a nuclear power station, trees thinking of spring (or remembering winter), rusty shrubs and dark rock, a reservoir, a football pitch. The scene grows as we climb, gains weight as we go. And with that going comes perspective – it’s easier to see from up here, to sense the bigger picture. Not that many are looking back. They’re too
busy finishing ice creams and stacking the tubs on shared tables, or taking pictures of dogs with their tongues out. As we approach Blaenau, more people wave as we pass, and Nan or Val says how friendly people are. Deborah counters that people only wave at things there’s no chance of them actually having to interact with. Nan sees Deborah’s point, and says it’s a shame that we restrict our waving to passing trains and boats, but then, after briefly imagining the alternative, corrects herself and decides it’s best as it is. ‘Why, you wouldn’t stop waving,’ she says.

  Tim meets us at the terminus. He’s had an hour alone. I like to think he spent the time telling himself about the local area. I ask him about his job and he says he used to go to Europe, to Italy and Holland, but then came to the opinion that Europe isn’t somewhere you want to drive to once a week for the rest of your life. Besides, he says, when you do a Europe trip you’re obliged to travel with a co-driver (i.e. co-historian, co-comedian), which, in Tim’s opinion, isn’t ideal for Tim. When I get on the coach and sit down next to Nan, she says, ‘Did Tim mention a wife?’ No, Nan, he didn’t. ‘And is it true he lives in Peckham?’ I admire Nan’s curiosity. It’s up there with Alice’s. If there was a rabbit hole, I don’t reckon Nan would look twice. She’d fall to the bottom, dust herself off, and then ask the White Rabbit, ‘Does the Mad Hatter have a wife?’ Nan says she used the toilet at Blaenau and that toilet is toiled in Welsh, which sounds about right to her. Then she notices that Deborah’s back on the bus, but Val isn’t.

  ‘Do you think Deborah’s realised?’ says Nan.

  ‘She’d have to be pretty absentminded not to, Nan.’

  ‘Well they are these days, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Nan, Deborah’s over 50.’

  ‘Oh, here’s Val. She must have been on the toiled.’

  Tim puts the radio on. It’s The Hollies, ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. People sing quietly, privately – and yet somehow together. I’ve heard the song dozens of times, but I’ve not heard it like this. On this occasion, its claims sound more real – ‘the road is long’, ‘no burden is he’ – and its questions less rhetorical – ‘that leads us to who knows where?’ Just as I’m thinking that Nan’s brother was buried in a little white coffin, Nan says:

  ‘Grandad’s off to West Ham on Saturday.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘He’ll do these things now and again. Go off on his own. It’s good practice.’

  ‘What’s he been up to, did he say?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. Bargain Hunt mostly. Walking the dog. Plus they’ve got the scaffolding up now. They’re painting the shutters. I told him about all the people I’ve had little chats with and he says I should let people have some peace and quiet.’

  ‘It does seem that you know everyone in the hotel by now.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? We’re only here for four nights.’

  ‘Alexa, find Facebook,’ says Nan.

  We’re sitting in the upstairs lounge, our backs to the sea. Alexa does what Alexa is told, and then Nan shows me a video of two of my young cousins – Erin and Anya – climbing all over me a few years ago. ‘I’ve got them all stored,’ she says.

  Dinner is paté followed by korma, and not bad at all. During the latter, I bring up The Hollies, and in particular their winding road that leads to who knows where.

  ‘What about it?’ says Nan.

  ‘Well, where does it lead?’

  ‘Basingstoke, probably.’

  ‘I’m being serious, Nan.’

  ‘I’m not worried either way.’

  ‘Are you not?’

  ‘I’ve had a good stint. Can’t complain.’

  ‘And you don’t worry about …’

  ‘Not really. I was dead for millions of years and I didn’t mind it one bit.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And anyway. Say there was an afterlife. Well, when does that end?’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘And can you imagine the conditions?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The overcrowding.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘A hundred billion have died before me. Now, what’s for afters?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing Nan, nobody knows.’

  ‘Well you might not know, but I’m having the Bakewell tart with custard.’

  Patrick’s door is ajar. I’m better with the drops. I manage first time, with very little spillage, causing Patrick to say, ‘Well that wasn’t very exciting.’ And my bedside manner is better, I like to think. I was a bit anxious yesterday, and the whole thing became more about me than him. This time I know roughly what I’m doing, so I’m more relaxed. I’m even able to chat with Patrick as I do the business, as a hairdresser might. He says the best part of his day was having his packed lunch in the sun – apart from the crisps. I tell him I’m heading out to watch the football.

  ‘I thought I’d give Nan a break from me,’ I say.

  ‘Well she’s welcome to chat with me in here.’

  ‘Your best bet is to find her in the lounge, by the reception.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I could make it that far if I’m honest.’

  ‘Tired?’

  ‘Very. I’ll probably call it a day soon. How old is Janet out of interest?’

  ‘Eighty-two.’

  ‘Eighty-two?!’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Far too young for me then.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you said that.’

  ‘Not if I tell her first.’

  I go to a place called 147. It’s dark and cavernous. The only light is coming from the twenty or so screens showing football. Nineteen of those screens are showing Liverpool, with just one showing Manchester City. This imbalance makes sense because most people in North Wales are Liverpool fans, but what doesn’t make sense is that the majority of the people in the bar are watching the Man City match. I raise this with the barman and he shrugs and suggests that maybe it’s more important that Manchester lose than Liverpool win. I think of the Welshman who built two churches so he didn’t have to go to one of them.

  I call it a day at half-time. Walking back along the promenade, with the sea on one side and hotels on the other, I can’t decide which way to look. The obvious choice is the sea, but my instinct is to look into the front windows of the hotels. I’m drawn to their small stories, their short scenes, their panes of life. On the front steps of the Imperial, a concierge is juggling grapes.

  When I get back to the hotel, Nan’s still in the lounge, telling Alexa to do things.

  ‘Oh hello, darling,’ she says.

  ‘Alright?’

  ‘Did you have fun?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She’s still fiddling with her device.

  ‘I decided that windows are better.’

  ‘That sounds nice.’

  ‘Have you seen Patrick?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Have you seen Patrick?’

  ‘Yes, I did actually. He was carried downstairs for the bingo.’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘No. It was quite entertaining.’

  ‘Cheeky git told me he was having an early night.’

  24 I put my middle finger up at a young boy.

  12

  It sounds to me like you could do with some grief

  We have a little breakfast as per usual. Val and Deborah give us a wave, and Dennis gives us a wink. No sign of Patrick. ‘He’s probably still downstairs,’ says Nan.

  There are no planned excursions today, so Nan and I go out for a walk. She’s a mind to get up to Happy Valley and have a better look at the Alice sculptures. It’s a fair trek from the hotel, so we make a meal of it, stopping in bookshops and bakeries, and at the odd bench. By the time we get there, I’m ready for a prolonged sit down. Nan, on the other hand, is already doing a lap of the park, nosing the March Hare, prodding the Mad Hatter, stroking a caterpillar. She even goes over to insp
ect the ski slope, for the hell of it. When she returns with two coffees, I ask:

  ‘Nan. Remind me. Alice went down a rabbit hole, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then she met the Queen of Hearts and had a tea party and became a giant and played croquet using a flamingo as a mallet.’ ‘And what does it mean, to go down the rabbit hole?’

  ‘It means to go down the rabbit hole.’

  ‘Yeah but not actually, right?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I suppose it means to be curious.’

  ‘Even if your knees get dirty.’

  ‘Especially if your knees get dirty.’

  As we wait for our coffees to cool down, I can’t help but think that I’ve never enjoyed waiting for anything more. I guess what I mean is I’m happy, now, here, briefly on this bench. It’s been said – and I’m inclined to go along with this – that it’s rare to be uncomplicatedly happy for longer than ten minutes. Well, I manage twenty minutes, just sat next to Nan, listening to her go on about Alice, watching the seagulls terrorise a couple of kids with chips, waiting for our coffees to cool down.

  The kitchen finishes on a high: pea and ham soup, beef stew, black cherry trifle. A man I saw streaming the football last night has balloons tied to his chair, so either it’s just a thing he likes to do now and again or it’s his birthday. Clearing our plates, the waitress asks Nan if she’s had a good holiday, but Nan must mishear because she answers, ‘Could have done with a bit more spice.’ Then she says there’s something on her mind.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m a bit worried about you getting off at London and me continuing down to Portsmouth alone.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d be fine doing that?’