My grandparents are in the region for the week and have made themselves at home in an interesting hotel on the Wirral called Leasowe Castle. It’s great having them up here because I get free lunches. No, that’s not the reason it’s great having them up here and anyone who suggests it is will be smacked across the back of the neck with the Observer travel supplement. The reason it’s great having them up here is that it’s lovely to see them, although I’ll not pretend the lunches aren’t a bonus.
I got a train over to Leasowe and met them in the station car park. They’re really quite adventurous seeing as they’re now both in their 80’s and think nothing of getting in the car and dashing off to other parts of the country. There are people in their 80’s who make a ruddy great song and dance about going down to the local butchers, or consider a trip out to a neighbouring village for a cup of tea to be a more significant adventure than Columbus crossing the Atlantic, but my grandparents aren’t like that. They are quite young at heart.
They like Liverpool and especially like The Wirral where they’ve been caravanning a couple of times. I suggested we drive along to New Brighton but that was an error of judgement. The last time I’d been to New Brighton was on a burning hot August afternoon a couple of years ago and it was alive. This was a unseasonably cold May day in a hurricane and the place was desolate. It displayed everything bad about decaying seaside towns – the graffiti holding together the dilapidated and wrecked pavilions and promenades. That dreadful forced jollity of the rusting amusements and the promise of a burger that will take four years off your life. The wind was fierce and there wasn’t anyone about – and so we pushed our way back to the car against the weather and reassessed.
We decided to drive along the coast through Hoylake and West Kirby, which are pleasant enough. The sun came out, the surroundings abandoned their seaside nature and became proper towns with inland architecture and the journey was enjoyable. We were headed for a pub they knew about from a previous caravanning expedition in Thurstaton called The Cottage Loaf. They know the scene, do Roy and Rene.
After lunch we drove down to the caravanning park they’d stayed at three years previous. It’s well appointed and extraordinarily neat but I can’t understand why anyone would want to spend two weeks living in an inferior version of their own home. The comic Jeff Green used to do this thing about caravanning ‘we don’t get on as a family, so let’s see what happens if we live in a far more confined space for a bit’. I concur, it doesn’t make any sense, but then people are hardcore devotees of the lifestyle so it must have something to offer. Then again, there are hardcore devotees of Top Trumps. And bog snorkelling.
The wind was still making a comfortable walk impossible but one couple in the caravan park were resolutely sat outside their van in deck chairs, trying to get a few rays. The steely determination some folk have to enjoy the weather against any odds is bewildering. Any other country in the world… “To Hell with that, it’s freezing out there!� Not here – they’ve come for a bit of sun by the coast and a bit of sun they’re damn well going to get, even if it does mean spending another couple of weeks in a hot bath. Do you admire such people or deride them? It’s difficult because they’re sticking to their guns quite admirably, but it’s not like they’ve not got other options so you have to err on the side of derision. They’ve got a car, they could be exploring the local museums or something, out of the cold. But no, deckchair, novel, sunglasses, a good thick rope to stop them being blown off the cliffs by a sudden gust. You can’t help but look at them and think ‘How much was that caravan? Ten grand? You know you can go to Italy for about eight quid don’t you?’
On the drive back to Leasowe we passed a shop in Hoylake which has a blackboard outside which advertised, in bold handwriting;
CHOCOLATE
FRUIT
KEBABS
At first I though it might be advertising three separate, rather random, items they sold. But I don’t think that’s the case, I think they were selling ‘chocolate fruit kebabs’. I might be well off here, but I can imagine these to be pieces of fruit, dipped in chocolate, skewered on a kebab stick, and left to set. Perhaps it’s to encourage children to eat for fruit? Strange and worrying how you have to get fruit into their stomachs voluntarily by covering it in chocolate and discussing it as a meat dish favoured by drunks.
If you live in Hoylake and know the truth behind this advertisement, or indeed what a chocolate fruit kebab tastes like, please let me know. Damn it all, I might have to go back and find out, despite not really liking chocolate or kebabs. Maybe it’s a Hoylake thing. Perhaps it’s not to encourage children to eat more fruit at all, but the people of Hoylake have always enjoyed their chocolate fruit kebabs, as far back as the seventeenth century. It’s a local thing, but unlike Eccles Cakes, the rest of the country hasn’t caught on.
Hoylake should market itself to tourists on the back of its amazing chocolate fruit kebabs. They should be on the front of any tourism brochures.
There’s the chance that three separate items were being advertised but then why would you group those three things together? The wasn’t a shop next door advertising
PEGS
DESIGNER GOODS
ROOF RACKS
We must get to the bottom of this. There’s a shop in Hoylake with either the most random advert of all time, or one that selling the most extraordinary new chocolate/fruit based Greek style product. We have a duty to find out what the HELL’S going on here.
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