The Gran Tour Read online

  The bingo caller changes his jacket and does a few songs. He’s got good range: Roy Orbison, Robbie Williams, The Human League. When he does the latter’s ‘Electric Dreams’, one bloke from Sheffield looks ready to get up on the tables, though he might need a stairlift to do so. ‘100 per cent Sheffield that is!’

  It’s not all jolly, mind you. There are a few couples, scattered around the room, who are looking a bit down, a bit left out. After all, not every marriage is a never-ending Fred Astaire routine. When Alan calls it a night, I go and sit with one such couple. They’re from Corby, Northamptonshire. Dennis and Clementine, or Clem. The former does most of the talking. He wears the trousers and the skirts, I’d say. Nice enough bloke, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t mind knowing if Clem’s got owt to say. When I tell them it’s my first time, they’ve lots of tips for me. I’m to make sure I use all my vouchers; to invest in a travel pillow if I’m going abroad; and to make bacon butties at breakfast and then have them for lunch. And – especially important – I’m not to bother paying extra for a sea view. They did that once and felt like they couldn’t leave the room.

  Dennis checks his watch. Then he looks at my spare vouchers. He puts two and two together and sends me up to the bar to make use of them. The reason I’ve got spares is because I’ve been trying not to drink lately. Edward Albee said everyone’s got a certain amount of drink in them, and that while some spread it out over 60 years, others get through it in ten. I fancy I fall into the latter category. When I get back from the bar, Dennis says he’s got something to tell me. Oh yeah? He says that he knows my game, that he saw me chatting to your woman at the bar. I hand over one of the two pints (I’m on holiday after all) and tell him, quite sincerely, that I wouldn’t dream of it.

  1 David Willetts wrote a book called The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children’s Future, which argues that the boomers (born 1945–65) have pulled up the property ladder and any other ladder they could get their hands on. For the record, I took David’s book with a titular pinch of salt. I know plenty of boomers who’ve barely a rung to stand on, to say nothing of a ladder to pull up.

  2 I’m 33.

  3 Not sure why Yorkshire acquired this nickname. Maybe it has to do with the countryside – the dales and the moors. Else it could have to do with Michael Palin, Judi Dench, Alan Bennett, J.B. Priestley, Barbara Hepworth, Sean Bean and the Chuckle Brothers – all of whom are of the county, and a heaven-sent consortium if ever there was one.

  2

  There’s an art to eating happily alone

  I slept well. It’s not hard when you’ve bingo winnings under your pillow. And I like single beds. I find the lack of options restful. Boundaries can be good for us – when the world’s our oyster, it can give us a dodgy tummy.

  I go down for breakfast. We’re in the same room as dinner, with the wide, west-facing bay window now full of things it hadn’t been – namely, a terrace of Victorian houses and part of the North Sea. I’ve a boundary down here as well: I’m expected to sit at the same table for the duration of my holiday (says a waitress when I try to sit by the window), so I’d better get used to Alan and 13.

  As I investigate the buffet, someone says: ‘You did well last night.’ Then someone says words to the same effect as I’m waiting on my toast. And then someone says well done as I’m sitting down. At first I’m apologetic – ‘It won’t happen again. I promise.’ Then I change my tune: ‘Yeah, I’m good at bingo and I’ll be good at it tonight as well.’

  I butter my toast nervously. The feeling of oddness is back from last night. I try to look appreciatively over the talking heads and out the window, but I’m kidding myself, I’m posturing. I’m pretending to be at ease, to be nonchalant. There’s an art to eating happily alone. I don’t have it. Alan arrives and says: ‘Aaron Ramsey has gone to Juventus for silly money.’ I’m pleased to be wrenched from my own neurotic half-thoughts. I’m pleased to see Alan.

  We’re off to York this morning.4 Roger’s commentary begins before I’ve got my seatbelt on. He tells us that Anne Brontë came to Scarborough and liked it so much she never left, which only works as a joke if you know she’s buried in the church next to the hotel. He tells us that McCain’s (of frozen chips fame) are a big local employer, and that the Eastfield estate on the edge of town is about as troublesome as they come. ‘If you want drugs,’ says Roger, ‘let me know as I can get you a discount.’

  When we reach our destination, Roger puts us down in a carpark and tells us to be back in a couple of hours. People head off in separate directions – like a search party splitting to cover the most ground. I pop into a riverside café and ask the barista what’s lovable about York, alluding to the fact that the city has repeatedly been elected Britain’s best place. ‘I like it when the river floods,’ he says. I ask him what he thinks other, less peculiar people might love about York, suggesting the ancient walls, the narrow cobbled lanes, the elderly buildings, the city’s historic relationship with chocolate, or even the Richard III Experience, which has proved incredibly popular with visitors despite involving being taken to a field and shot at with a bow and arrow. The barista says it’s probably the city’s beauty. I ask him to elaborate. ‘I would, but it’s difficult to put your finger on. And to be honest I only notice it when I’m not here.’ There’s philosophy in that last admission. I bet the lad’s not alone in only seeing what’s under his nose once it’s behind his back, if you’ll forgive the impractical construction.

  I do a lap of the city’s old wall. I join it at its northernmost point, round the back of the Minster. Giving the church a once over, I think of the art critic John Ruskin, who reckoned the camera was ruining our ability to notice and appreciate things. And this was back in the 1880s. Instead of photographing things, Ruskin suggested we draw them. I’m not in a position to draw the Minster but I do tarry to look harder, look closer. It’s certainly a sizeable item – the second-largest Gothic church in the world, after the cathedral at Cologne – and is much wider than it is tall, with the effect that if you bunch up your eyes you could easily mistake it for a battleship (albeit a battleship with transepts and lancet windows). Of more interest to me than the Minster, however, is the adjoining Deanery, and in particular its back garden. Within the garden, a pair of yellow socks has been left on the grass below the washing line. Perhaps the Dean was in a rush when bringing the washing in, or perhaps he was in a real rush when putting it out. In any case, were I to draw the scene before me, I’d be tempted to place more emphasis on the socks, and the small drama they hint at, than the Minster. We each have our own sense of importance, I suppose.

  I continue clockwise to Walmgate Bar. During the English Civil War, this bar (or gate) was a key fortification that saw a fair bit of uncivil action. Now it’s a wonderful café with an enjoyable roof terrace. During the war, an attempt was made to undermine Walmgate Bar and blow its bricks off, but the plot was discovered and nipped in the bud. Had it not been, whosoever happened to be up on the roof terrace drinking coffee would have been a very flat white indeed. The barista is Australian. When I tell him about Walmgate Bar nearly being blown to smithereens, he says: ‘You guys are so lucky to have history.’

  I drink my coffee on the roof and survey the scene. Of all its elements – and there are many – it is the non-smoking industrial chimney that holds my attention. Not because it’s the most dynamic or curious or aesthetically pleasing element of the landscape, but rather because I recently saw a documentary about a steeplejack called Fred Dibnah, who back in the 70s and 80s, when health and safety regulations were a thing for wimps, would climb such chimneys by a series of conjoined ladders and then knock them down brick by brick, often in the middle of winter, and invariably with a fag in his mouth. Fred said some terrific things in that programme, some moving things, and all in a thick Boltonian accent. On the matter of death, Fred reckoned ‘the ideal way out would be, I think, instead of dying in bed of lung cancer or something ’orrible like that, just to drop off
a chimney one sunny day.’ Turned out to be a pipe dream. Fred died of bladder cancer in 2004.

  York is better for its wall. It encourages you to think about its historical function, about who it was meant to repel (Vikings, Normans, Parliamentarians), and what it was meant to contain (scandal, cholera, Royalists). To my mind, a walk on the wall has the quality of a ride. It is always a tiny bit exciting to rise above the rooftops, to look down on what is normally above. The change of perspective helps one see more, or see the same things in a different way. So much so that, with a bit of effort, I can just make out, in the garden of the Royal Oak (it’s either Royal Oak or Loyal Oat), a crouching figure tying his laces with a fag in his mouth which is unmistakably Alan.5

  Crossing the River Ouse on my way back to the coach, I remember that book by Graham Swift, Waterland, which goes on about this river. I remember a flow of startling pages that made me see the brilliance and magic and circularity of rivers, of history, of time. The book really got the thumbs up from me, which wasn’t something that happened often back then. Not because I was a tough critic, but rather because I hadn’t really read any books. I was in my second year at university, and was to all intents and purposes, and by all accounts, a dipstick. I’d read only six books right the way through (two of those being diaries of Bridget Jones), and had about as much interest in rivers and history as a poached egg. The best books can do that though, can take you by surprise, can ambush and capture you, no matter what they’re on about.

  On the way back to Scarborough, Roger tells us about a couple of local news stories. He says an aluminium rhinoceros was stolen from outside a college a few years ago, and that some penguins at a nearby zoo have been prescribed antidepressants.6

  Alan thinks the man who smokes cigars might be autistic. I tell Alan that my girlfriend is a teaching assistant at a school for children with autism. I tell him she likes it much more than the school for children without autism that she used to work at, where she routinely opted to wear shin pads, so often did she get booted in the legs for having the cheek to ask what the capital of Kenya was. Alan asks whether my girlfriend takes off the pads when she gets home, implying that I’m in the habit of booting her in the shins as well. I order whitebait to start, then hake, then lemon sponge. Alan says I’m naive to double-fish.

  Talk of autism leads to talk of Alzheimer’s. Alan’s dad had dementia, and Alan was the only one of his five siblings that was prepared to care for him. ‘He was strict when we were growing up. He wouldn’t let us do our homework. He’d give us chores instead. He wouldn’t let Mum listen to the radio. And she wasn’t allowed to touch the telly.’

  ‘My dad was the opposite,’ I say. ‘We’d go to him on the weekend and it was carte blanche or whatever the term is as far as he was concerned. We lived off Pot Noodles and Kit Kats. I don’t think we let him touch the telly. That or he shared our taste for Gladiators and Baywatch.’

  ‘Not impossible,’ says Alan.

  ‘No, he’s a good bloke my dad. Once, I needed a cricket bat but he couldn’t afford a smart proper one, so he made one. Me and my brother would play in the concrete garden, three-by-three metres, with a drainpipe for the stumps. I was a decent bowler in my teens and I’m sure it was because I grew up aiming for a drainpipe.’

  ‘Mine didn’t make cricket bats,’ says Alan. ‘Mine was a policeman. He used to come home and play the harmonica and tell us about the scoundrels he’d walloped. Then one day, he just stopped playing. I don’t remember him touching a harmonica for 40 years. Then when he got dementia, I bought him one and took it to him. He just stared at it for some time then picked it up and started playing it like it was yesterday.’

  I let this sit for a bit. And then a bit more. And then:

  ‘My dad’s so cheerful it does my head in,’ I say. ‘It makes me look awful. There I am, trying to drag myself out of bed, moaning and groaning like I’ve got swine flu, and in he wanders with a cup of tea for me, whistling a tune, saying he can’t wait to finish the wheelbarrow he’s been working on, then drawing my curtains like Mary Poppins and looking out at the grim terraces of inner Portsmouth as if they were an orchard of cherry blossom trees. I’ve told him more than once: “Dad, I’m going to stop you coming in here if you’re going to carry on like that. You’re making me look like a prick.”’

  ‘Fathers, eh?’ says Alan.

  I go through to the lounge for the bingo. I sit with a couple who live in Rhyl, North Wales.

  ‘You did well last night,’ he says. ‘The wife’s normally very good at bingo but she hasn’t won for three years.’

  I smile at this idea of normality – that something can still be normal even if it hasn’t happened for three years. Then I ask the man why he thinks his wife hasn’t won recently. He says he reckons she’s got complacent. I ask the wife if she agrees with her husband’s point of view, but he says: ‘You won’t get a word out of her. Not until the bingo’s over.’

  I buy two bingo coupons from reception. One for me and one for the lady from Rhyl – to save her legs. She tries to give me the three quid but I tell her not to bother. ‘Well which one is mine?’ she says. I hold out the two coupons. She closes her eyes and takes the one on the left, then puts it back and takes the other.

  The lady from Rhyl is off to a flier. She’s very focused. Almost possessed. Her feet are tapping away under the table. Her husband says he doesn’t like playing but he certainly likes peering over at her card, making sure she doesn’t miss a trick. Ten balls have been called and I haven’t one of them. It’s starting to wind me up to be honest. Then a run of numbers – same both ways, two fat fellas, a pair of crutches – and I’m back in the hunt. Another good run and I only need seventeen. My mind races ahead to the prize ceremony. I’d have to refuse. They’d throw me into the North Sea if I won again.

  I don’t mind that the lady from Rhyl won the bingo. Not really. I don’t even mind that she didn’t think, after collecting her 60-odd quid in cash (lots of cheering for her, by the way, which is ageism in action if ever I saw it), to offer me my three quid back, or thank me for presenting her with the winning ticket, or slip me one of her drinks vouchers by way of compensation. Nah, not really. I suppose after a drought of three years, a bingo win is going to cloud your judgement a bit, play a bit of havoc with your manners. She’ll probably realise when she’s in bed. She’ll omit a sigh and put her hand to her forehead, and her husband will turn to her and say, ‘What is it, love?’ And she’ll say, ‘That young man. What was his name? Bill, was it? I didn’t even thank him. I’ve not won for three years and he goes and hands me the winning ticket and I don’t so much as offer him a drinks voucher.’ And he says: ‘I wouldn’t worry, love. I bet he’s not given it a second’s thought.’

  I move to one of the comfy chairs closer to reception. I sit with a bloke called Paul and his two support workers – Doughnut 1 and Doughnut 2, he calls them. One of the doughnuts explains that Paul’s got Down’s syndrome and that she and her friend take him on holiday twice a year. Paul doesn’t think much of her explanation. ‘I take you two on holiday, more like,’ he says.

  Doughnut 1 shows me a picture of her dog and says that she got him after she had a stent put in her leg which enabled her to walk again. ‘I was walking everywhere!’ she says. ‘That dog’s done more miles than a Vauxhall Astra. I know it’s a cliché but you don’t know you’ve got any legs until you haven’t.’

  I tell her that my dad had a stent put in his leg to unblock one of the arteries so the blood could get round. The doctor told him that if he doesn’t pack up smoking, the other leg’s going to block up and they won’t give him an operation, because it will be his own sodding fault.

  ‘And has he stopped?’ she says.

  ‘Nope,’ I say.

  ‘Twat,’ she says. ‘In a nice way, like.’

  I explain that I don’t hassle him too much because he gets defensive and worried and ends up smoking more, which isn’t really what I’m after. Besides, he’s an alcohol
ic who hasn’t had a drink for ten years, which takes some doing, and if he reckons he can’t stop, or doesn’t want to, then I’m inclined to listen to him, or at least respect his decision.

  ‘How did he give up the drinking?’ she says.

  ‘A banjo,’ I say.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘One day after umpteen attempts to stop and not managing it, he comes home with a four-hundred pound banjo.’

  ‘That’s bloody heavy,’ says Paul.

  ‘He’d never played a musical instrument in his life. I guess the thinking – if there was any thinking – was that you can’t take something away and just leave a hole. You’ve got to fill it with something.’

  Anyway, now he plays the piano and guitar and drums as well, and is in two bands, and hasn’t had a drink since.’

  ‘Fair play,’ she says.

  ‘Fair play,’ says Paul.

  I call it a night. Paul gives me a fist bump. I climb the stairs to the third floor and think: I don’t know if I’ve ever told my dad just how proud I am of him for turning his back on a 40-year addiction, for buying that banjo, for becoming a new man at the age of 57. I’m sure I’ll get round to it one day.

  4 Known as Eboracum under the Romans, and then Jorvik under the Vikings. Then later as Yerke, Yourke and Yarke. Before a true visionary suggested York and they settled on that.

  5 It wasn’t Alan.

  6 I chased up both stories. Regarding the rhino, PC Michelle Neighbour, of North Yorkshire Police, said, rather helpfully, that ‘the rhino is not something you could just walk off with by yourself,’ before appealing ‘to any scrap dealers or anyone who regularly uses scrap yards to get in touch if they remember seeing the rhino being weighed in.’ Regarding the penguins, it turns out the reason they were prescribed antidepressants was because they’d grown so thoroughly cheesed off with the easterly wind off the North Sea.