The Gran Tour Read online

  Finally, I’ve got a sort of older mate called Terry. First time I met him was in the sauna at the gym. We had a little chat about something inconsequential, and then when we got out to shower and dress etc., it turned out our lockers were next door but one. As if emboldened by the coincidence, Terry said: ‘You won’t believe this, but my wife accused me of being a transvestite this morning.’ I didn’t really know what to say to this, so continued drying my feet. Then Terry said: ‘I wasn’t going to put up with that, obviously. So I packed all her things and left.’ I saw Terry most Mondays after that, around 10.30am, either in the sauna or elsewhere in the gym. He was well liked by everyone it seemed – by all the staff, and all the boys that had been going to the gym for decades. Anyway, last winter, the winter just gone, I didn’t see Terry at the gym for months. Eventually I asked someone if he was alright.

  ‘He’s gone to another place,’ they said.

  Ah. Bugger. That’s … ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah the old bastard’s joined Virgin Active. He reckons they’ve got a better jacuzzi.’

  When we enter Devon, Chris taps the microphone to get our attention. The lady in front of Meg struggles to wake up the man in front of me.

  ‘Kieran. He’s got something to say.’ A small, London accent.

  ‘I don’t care about no willow man.’ A large, Irish one.

  The news isn’t willow-based. It’s to do with the planned excursions. Chris tells us that some are included in the holiday, but that others carry a £10 supplement. I ask if there’s a student discount.

  ‘I’m deaf as a post – would you say that again?’

  ‘Any student discount?’

  ‘Any student— No. What do you think— twenty years I’ve been on these coaches, folks, and I’ve never heard anything quite like that. Tell you what young man, even if you were pregnant with students, you’d still not get a discount. How’s that?’

  By the time we get to St Ives, I’m pretty keen to get off the coach and stretch my legs, but have to wait on the large Irish fella in front, who has misplaced something. He’s on his knees in the aisle. It’s his phone.

  ‘Oh, Kieran. When did you last use it?’

  ‘It was before Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean. You’re always doing this.’

  ‘Don’t be giving out on me, Imelda – it’s not my fault. If they’re going to make them small, then what do they expect?’

  Despite his backchat, it’s clear that before me – or beneath me rather – is a sweet, soft man, albeit one built to scare the bejaysus out of people. He finds the phone. It was in his other pocket. He can’t believe it. ‘I swear to God, Imelda, I’ve never put a thing in that pocket my whole life.’

  We’ve been allocated a table for two near the fire exit. Someone has to be, I suppose, and it makes sense to stitch up the youngsters – after all, they’ve more time to get over it. I’ve got my back to the wall and can see the other diners, but Megan only has a view of me, bless her. Halfway through the fishcake it dawns on me that we’ve only ourselves to talk to. I miss Alan.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did you say, “I miss Alan”?’

  Other couples have been paired up and put on tables of four. They’re currently enjoying the first movement of an eight-meal, four-day symphony. Whoever did the seating plan evidently thought it best not to mix May with December. Anyway, I’d better say something to Megan. She’s currently squinting. I think she’s trying to watch the action of the dining room via its reflection on the wall behind me. I ask about her great grandparents, what she knows of them.

  ‘My nan’s mum was Nanny Lil. She lived in Clacton with Grandad Bob. It was a cottage. It had a pretty garden. I remember there was a jar of 2p coins in the living room, which we’d take to the arcades on the pier. Bob would drive us on his mobility scooter. He’d let us pretend to direct him. Bob was a real softie, but Nanny Lil wasn’t. She was a hard woman. I don’t remember ever cuddling her. After Bob died she went downhill. She went into a home. She wouldn’t eat the dinners. She wasn’t used to being cooked for – she rejected the emancipation. She would make herself ham sandwiches. She was tiny at the end. I painted a portrait of her for my A-level coursework. I was working from a photo – she was dead by this time – but it brought me closer to her. I gave the painting to my mum because she loved her Nanny Lil. It’s in the spare room.’

  There’s another couple sat on their own. He’s got her name inked all over his arms (at least one hopes it’s her name), and she’s taking a picture of him finishing his soup the way he always does. He’s laughing, pretending to lick the bowl. I think of that John Betjeman poem about the couple in a teashop.11

  We go through to the entertainment zone. The set-up is much like the set-up in Scarborough – a bar, a small dance floor, a little stage, tables and chairs, a few sofas. We get a small table, next to Bryan and Yvonne, former teachers from Birmingham.

  ‘You two are a bit young for this,’ says Yvonne.

  ‘I thought it was an 18–30 sort of thing,’ I say. ‘Turns out it’s an 1830s sort of thing.’

  ‘Ah, you’re rotten. I’ve got a mate who’s 66 but he won’t come because he says he’s not old enough. He’s two years younger than me.’

  While the compère sets up his random number generator for the bingo, the four of us talk about education, about teaching. There’s talk of grammars, comprehensives, privates – the pros and cons of each. Bryan says that one thing he’s noticed over the years is that the parents of the children struggling the most in class were the least likely to come to parents’ evening. He says that’s telling. He says that shows that education starts and finishes at home. ‘School’s the cheese, the pickle, the peanut butter, but parents are the bread. If you take away the bread, you’ve no chance of a sandwich, to say nothing of a picnic.’

  I attempt to make a mental note of this analogy.

  ‘That said,’ says Bryan, ‘there’s always exceptions. I know a kid whose parents tried very hard with him. But he got in with the wrong crowd and he hasn’t looked back since. So I suppose you could say that even with bread and filling you might not end up with a sandwich.’

  ‘One thing’s sure,’ says Yvonne, ‘kids are less engaged and less respectful these days.’

  ‘You know Socrates said the same thing,’ I say.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning it might not be children that change, but our perspective of them, our relation to them.’

  ‘Well,’ says Yvonne, ‘Socrates clearly didn’t teach at Solihull Park.’12

  Yvonne met Bryan at a disco in Birmingham. They were both about sixteen. Yvonne and two of her mates went up to Bryan and two of his mates and asked if they wanted to play Postman’s Knock in the hallway.13 A consequence of the game was that Yvonne had to kiss Bryan – and more than once. At first she didn’t think much of the experience, but after the fourth time – Bryan was obviously a keen postman, with a lot of mail in his pouch – she’d somehow acquired a taste for it. As Yvonne grew accustomed to kissing Bryan, so the other two girls grew accustomed to kissing the other two boys. Between them, the three couples have now been married for 130 years. ‘And you know what?’ says Yvonne. ‘To this day, whenever the postman calls, we have a little smooch.’ ‘Yeah,’ says Bryan, ‘which is why I’ve started telling my bank to email instead.’

  Since Scarborough, I’ve learnt a few things about bingo. Here are the highlights: 1) Bingo Airways was a Polish airline which ceased operations in 2014, probably because the airline was explicitly associated with a game of chance. 2) Bingo is a town in the Bingo Department of Boulkiemdé Province in central western Burkina Faso. 3) In 2003, Butlins holiday camps modernised their bingo calls in an attempt to bring fresh interest to the game. One addition was Stroppy Teen for fifteen, which is ageism of the most blatant sort.14 4) Carolyn Downs of the University of Lancaster published a social history of bingo in 2
005. Much of the work explores links between bingo and criminality. Listed among the bingo-related acts of criminality is what happened to me in Scarborough last week, when that lady from Rhyl shafted me after I gave her the winning ticket.

  Megan is in most ways my superior – morally, practically, intellectually. She knows how to make red pepper hummus, paints like Vanessa Bell, runs like Hermes, and cares about anemones and arachnids. In spite of her wide-ranging superiority, she can sometimes be bone stupid. For example, when I present her with a book of bingo coupons, she studies them for a short while then asks, ‘Am I meant to fill in the gaps?’

  During the first game, I have to keep an eye on her. It seems to be taking a long time for the information (the ball number) to travel from the caller’s mouth, into Megan’s ear, into her brain, and then onwards to her hand. I’ve never seen her look so flustered or anguished. It’s like she’s never heard the numbers before, it’s like they’re being called in Yiddish, and have been represented on her coupon in Roman numerals. I knew she was easily confused, but this is taking the piss. I win the first game – just a line – and get a tenner for my efforts. I don’t even celebrate. I’m just glad it’s over for Megan’s sake. Between games one and two, Megan pops to the loo. I hope she pulls herself together in there, because she’s embarrassing our generation the way she’s carrying on. When she returns, her face is damp and she’s tied her hair back.

  ‘Alright?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She wins the next game twice. This is how she did it. She needed one more number and it came up so she shouted ‘bingo!’ and the caller stopped the game, at which point Megan realised that, in fact, it wasn’t bingo and that she still had one more number to get. She communicated this to the room by saying, ‘Nope. Sorry, nope. I haven’t won. I didn’t see. I missed. I need. Sorry.’ The next ball called was the one she needed. You’d expect her second call of ‘bingo!’ to sound somewhat apologetic, muted, humble even. None of it. She cried ‘bingo!’ so loud you’d be forgiven for thinking she was trying to get the attention of someone in Bingo, Burkina Faso.

  ‘You seemed to enjoy that,’ I say, when she’s back with her 50-quid winnings.

  ‘I did. I really did. When I won, my vision went blurry. Something physical happened. It was amazing.’

  After the third game, in which neither of us prosper, Bryan gets another bottle of red in and our caller becomes our crooner and the dancing starts. Within a couple of minutes, there’s a dozen or so on the dance floor, and Megan’s among them. Imelda’s up there as well, swinging her arms around, and so is her fella Kieran, who’s doing some kind of crouching move. Perhaps he’s looking for his phone again. Megan invites me to join her, but I’m unresponsive. It’s not self-consciousness that holds me back, but a straightforward, well-thought-through dislike of dancing. I’m not a big fan of random limb movements in any context, and even less of one in front of others to Billy Joel. My friend Charlie’s the same. He can’t see the point. But he deals with the pressure and expectation to dance in a very different way to me. He gets up and does it as absurdly as he can for as long as he can. He wants everyone to look at him and think, ‘What the f*ck is he doing?’, and thereby be prompted to ask themselves, ‘Hang on, what the f*ck am I doing?’ He’s been undermining dance floors for years.

  Megan skips towards me, still that bingo-grin on her face. I fear she’s going to try and pull me up.

  ‘You can’t make me do it,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m not going to dance, Megan. I know you think I’m boring but I can’t do it very well and I’d—’

  ‘Ben. It’s alright. I just wanted to ask if you’ve got any spare vouchers.’

  9 Alain de Botton wrote that it is rare to be uncomplicatedly happy for longer than fifteen minutes. I reckon it’s similar with love. Outside of my family, who are sort of different, I love Megan more often than anyone else. In second place is Benedict Cumberbatch, which tells you just how well Megan is doing.

  10 Cornwall is one of the ‘Celtic nations’. The others are Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Brittany in France. The Celts used to occupy most of Europe, but they were gradually pushed west, to the fringe of the continent.

  11 ‘“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another— / Let us hold hands and look.” / She such a very ordinary little woman; / He such a thumping crook; / But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels / In the teashop’s ingle-nook.’

  12 Is this generation gap different to the gaps that came before it? It’s possible. For a start, this gap has digital immigrants on the one side and digital natives on the other. Then, there’s the simple fact that new technology has altered how people relate, how they converse, how they mix. Search engines have threatened the role of elders as repositories of information, anecdotes, advice. Practical acumen is no longer handed down manually or verbally as it once was. Instead, people Google. Technology has also changed the way we entertain ourselves. We are now masters of our own entertainment in a way that was unthinkable only ten years ago. When I was a kid and went to visit elder relatives or family friends, I had to hang out with the adults. Although unbearable at the time, I can now see the dividend that such encounters paid. Now, kids and teens and young adults can whip out their phones and be on another planet. You can’t tell me that hasn’t had an effect on intergenerational relations. You can’t tell me that hasn’t widened the gap.

  13 A kind of kissing game, like spin the bottle, wherein you get a mixed group (or not) and send one person away to be the Post(wo)man. The Post(wo)man then closes their eyes and knocks on a door. In return for the letter they deliver, they get a kiss. This kiss could be from the person they fancy, or it could be from their mate Tony. For the record, I played spin the bottle once. Every time the bottle was pointing at me, which meant Lucy or Sandy or Wilma had to kiss me, they’d say it was pointing at someone else, even if it was irrefutably pointing at me. I learnt that day that people believe what they want to be true, not what’s blindingly obvious.

  14 I got in touch with Charlie Blake, Professor of Popular Culture at the University of Northampton, who was responsible for the modernisation of the bingo calls. I asked about the apparent ageism of Stroppy Teen for fifteen. He was unrepentant: ‘Look. I had a fifteen year old at the time and he was a stroppy $%£&.’

  6

  Well, pardon me, Mrs Robinson

  Brushing my teeth, I watch Megan out of the corner of my eye sat up in bed, frowning at her phone. She’s prone to worry and anxiety, and I wonder how much that has to do with her age, and how much to do with her phone. Children and elders, from what I’ve seen, are generally less fussed about things. You only have to watch a toddler draw or bake, or an elder share a political opinion, to see they’ve little concern for precision or correctness – they’re just after making a splash, giving it a whirl, slapping it on, getting it out. Megan has none of that flippancy. Watching her scroll and thumb and swipe, it occurs to me that, on top of her age, Megan’s anxious disposition can’t be helped by comparison websites like Facebook and Instagram. She’s not materialistic. She’s not vain. But she’s human, and humans turn to each other in search of meaning, direction, to see how they rank, how they differ, how they compare.

  Today’s millennials might be in their prime, but they also feel the pinch. The stage of the life course they currently occupy has been so relentlessly glamorised and airbrushed and hyped-up that it is rarely associated with struggle or pain or sadness or difficulty or imperfection or failure; instead, it is readily associated with beauty, energy, success, indulgence, perfection, gaiety, enterprise and adventure. The life template millennials are shown (and propagate) is often wildly at odds with the reality of the millennial experience. A lot of millennials expect a lot of themselves. They expect to earn, produce, climb, compete, seize the day, live the dream, have a kid, set up sticks, pay off debt,
splash the cash, love like they do in the films and songs and poems, stay in touch, stay young, stay hip, keep fit, keep up, earn more, grow more, win more, chill more, give a TED talk, juice, stretch, blend, be happy, be open, be careful, be woke, be liked, be followed, be shared, be seen, be real, be unreal. That’s a lot of expectation. Some won’t expect all that of themselves, but a lot will, and some will expect even more. All I’m getting at is this: it can be a tricky phase of life. It lacks both the frivolous obliviousness of youth, and the perspective and philosophy that come with age. And it’s a phase of life that’s been made that little bit trickier, I feel, as a result of much of it being played out online. When I finish brushing my teeth, I ask Megan what she’s up to. She says: ‘Vicky got promoted and had a boob job on the same day.’

  We go to Falmouth for a river cruise (£10, no student discount). The steps from the pier down to the boat are very slippery. I have to hold on to Michelle, who has to hold on to Megan. Kieran almost falls in. ‘Watch yerself, Imelda. It’s feckin’ deadly.’

  Once aboard, I get myself and Megan a cup of tea, while she nabs a couple of seats up on deck. It feels good to take to the water. Here’s a description of the scene using all five senses: I can smell the sweetness of Megan’s tea but not the sweetness of my own – odd; I can hear the bobbing and lolloping of buoys and small sailing boats; I can see a sky that is grey and teal and mint and green, and Megan’s windswept hair as she sketches; I can feel the heat of my tea, my beard when I touch it, the wood of my seat; and I can taste nothing because I burnt my tongue five minutes ago.