by Bill Bryson
Exeter is not an easy place to love. It was extensively bombed during the war, which gave the city fathers a wonderful opportunity, enthusiastically seized, to rebuild most of it in concrete. It was only a little after six in the evening, but the city centre was practically dead. I wandered around beneath gloomy street lights, looking in shop windows and reading those strange posters - bills, as they are known in the trade - that you always find for provincial newspapers. I have an odd fascination with these because they are always either wholly unfathomable to non-locals (‘Letter Box Rapist Strikes Again’, ‘Beulah Flies Home’) or so boring that you can’t imagine how anyone could possibly have thought they would boost sales (‘Council Storm Over Bins Contract’, ‘Phone Box Vandals Strike Again’). My favourite - this is a real one, which I saw many years ago in Hemel Hempstead - was ‘Woman, 81, Dies’.
Perhaps I took all the wrong streets, but there seemed to be no restaurants anywhere in central Exeter. I was only looking for something modest that didn’t have ‘Fayre’, ‘Vegan’ or ‘Copper Kettle’ in the title, but all that happened was I kept wandering down restaurantless streets and coming up against monstrous relief roads with massive roundabouts and complicated pedestrian crossings that clearly weren’t designed to be negotiated on foot by anyone with less than six hours to spare. Finally, I happened on a hilly street with a few modest eateries and plunged randomly into a Chinese restaurant. I can’t say why exactly, but Chinese restaurants make me oddly uneasy, particularly when I am dining alone. I always feel that the waitress is saying: ‘One beef satay and fried rice for the imperialist dog at table five.’ And I find chopsticksfrankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years, haven’t yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food? I spent a perplexed hour stabbing at rice, dribbling sauce across the tablecloth and lifting finely poised pieces of meat to my mouth only to discover that they had mysteriously vanished and weren’t to be found anywhere. By the time I finished, the table looked as if it had been at the centre of a violent argument. I paid my bill in shame and slunk out the door and back to the hotel where I watched a little TV and snacked on the copious leftovers that I found in sweater folds and trouser turnups.
In the morning, I rose early and went out for a look round the town. Exeter was locked in a foggy gloom that didn’t do anything for its appearance, though the cathedral square was very handsome and the cathedral, I was impressed to find, was open even at eight in the morning. I sat for some time at the back and listened to the morning choir practice, which was quite wonderful. Then I wandered down to the old quay area to see what I might find there. It had been artily renovated with shops and museums, but all of them were closed at this time of day - or perhaps this time of year - and there wasn’t a soul about.
By the time I returned to the High Street, the shops were opening. I hadn’t had breakfast because it wasn’t included in my special room rate, so I was feeling immoderately peckish and began a hunt for cafes, but again Exeter seemed strangely lacking. In the end, I went into Marks & Spencer to buy a sandwich.
Although the store had only just opened, the food hall was busy and there were long queues at the tills. I took a place in a line behind eight other shoppers. They were all women and they all did the same mystifying thing: they acted surprised when it came time to pay. This is something that has been puzzling me for years. Women will stand there watching their items being rung up, and then when the till lady says, That’s four-twenty, love,’ or whatever, they suddenly look as if they’ve never done this sort of thing before. They go ‘Oh!’ and start rooting in a flustered fashion in their handbag for their purse or chequebook, as if no-one had told them that this might happen.
Men, for all their many shortcomings, like washing large pieces of oily machinery in the kitchen sink or forgetting that a painted door stays wet for more than thirty seconds, are generally pretty good when it comes to paying. They spend their time in line doing a wallet inventory and sorting through their coins. When the till person announces the bill, they immediately hand over an approximately correct amount of money, keep their hand extended for the change however long it takes or foolish they may begin to look if there is, say, a problem with the till roll, and then - mark this -pocket their change as they walk away instead of deciding that now is the time to search for the car keys and reorganize six months’ worth of receipts.
And while we’re on this rather daring sexist interlude, why is it that women never push toothpaste tubes up from the bottom and always try to get somebody else to change a lightbulb? How are they able to smell and hear things that are so clearly beyond the range of human acuity, and how do they know from another room that you are about to dip a finger into the icing of a freshly made cake? Why, above all, do they find it so unsettling if you spend more than four minutes a day on the toilet? This last is another long-standing mystery to me. A woman of my close acquaintance and I regularly have surreal conversations that run something like this:
‘What are you doing in there?’ (This said in an edgy tone.) ‘I’m descaling the kettle. What do you think I’m doing in here?’ ‘You’ve been in there half an hour. Are you reading?’ ‘No.’
‘You’re reading, aren’t you? I can hear the pages.’ ‘Honestly, I’m not.’ That is to say, I was reading until a minute ago but now, of course, I’m talking to you, dear.
‘Have you covered up the keyhole? I can’t see anything.’ ‘Please tell me that you’re not down on your hands and knees trying to look through the keyhole at your husband having a bowel movement in his own bathroom. Please.’
‘You come out of there now. You’ve been in there for nearly three-quarters of an hour just reading.’
As she retreats, you sit there thinking, Did all that really just happen or have I wandered into a Dada exhibition? And then, shaking your head, you return to your magazine.
Still, it must be said that women are great with children, vomit and painted doors - three months after a painted door has dried they will still be touching it as if suspecting it might turn on them - which makes up for a lot, so I smiled benignly at the parade offlustered ladies ahead of me until it was my turn to demonstrate to the ones following how to do this sort of thing properly, but frankly I don’t think they took it in.
I ate my sandwich on the street, then returned to the hotel, gathered up my things, settled the bill, stepped back outdoors and thought: Now what? I wandered back to the rail station and had a look at the flickering television screens. I thought about catching a train to Plymouth or Penzance but the next one wasn’t for a couple of hours. There was, however, a train to Barnstaple leaving shortly. It occurred to me that I could go there and then make my way by bus along the north Devon coast to Taunton or Minehead. I could stop en route at Lynton and Lynmouth, and possibly Porlock and Dunster. It seemed a capital idea.
I asked the man in the ticket window for a single to Barnstaple. He told me a single was £8.80, but he could do me a return for £4.40.
‘You wouldn’t care to explain the logic of that to me, would you?’ I asked.
‘I would if I could, sir,’ he responded with commendable frankness.
I took my pack and ticket to the requisite platform, where I sat on a bench and passed the time watching the station pigeons. They really are the most amazingly panicky and dopey creatures. I couldn’t imagine an emptier, less satisfying life. Here are instructions for being a pigeon: 1. Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items. 2. Take fright at someone walking along the platform and fly off to a girder. 3. Have a shit. 4. Repeat.
The platform televisions weren’t working and I couldn’t understand the announcements - it took me ages to work out that ‘Eczema’ was actually Exmouth - so every time a train came in, I had to get up and make enquiries. For reasons that elude rational
explanation, British Rail always puts the destinations on the front of the train, which would be awfully handy if passengers were waiting on the tracks, but not perhaps ideal for those boarding it from the side. Most of the other passengers evidently couldn’t hear the announcements because when the Barnstaple train eventually came in, half a dozen of us formed a patient queue beside a BR employee and asked him if this was the Barnstaple train.
For the benefit of foreign readers, I should explain that there is a certain ritual involved in this. Even though you have heard the conductor tell the person ahead of you that this is the Barnstaple train, you still have to say, ‘Excuse me, is this the Barnstaple train?’ When he acknowledges that the large linear object three feet to your right is indeed the Barnstaple train, you have to point to it and say, ‘This one?’ Then when you board the train you must additionally ask the carriage generally, ‘Excuse me, is this the Barnstaple train?’ to which most people will say that they think it is, except for one man with a lot of parcels who will get a panicked look and hurriedly gather up his things and get off.
You should always take his seat since you will generally find that he has left behind a folded newspaper and an uneaten bar of chocolate, and possibly a nice pair of sheepskin gloves.
Thus it was that I found myself sliding out of Exeter St David’s Station while a man laden with parcels trotted along beside my window mouthing sentiments I couldn’t decipher through the thick glass, and taking stock of my new possessions - a Daily Mirror and a Kit Kat, but unfortunately no gloves. We rattled out through the Exeter suburbs and into the lush Devon countryside. I was on what was called the Tarka Line - something to do with that story about an otter, which evidently was written somewhere in the vicinity. The countryside round about was gorgeous and extravagantly green. You could be excused for thinking that the principal industry of Britain is the manufacture of chlorophyll. We chuntered along between wooded hills, scattered farms, churches with square towers that made them look like leftover pieces from a very large chess set. I soon settled into that happy delirium that the motion of a train always induces in me, and only half noted the names of the little villages we passed through - Pinhead, West Stuttering, Bakelite, Ham Hocks, Sheepshanks.
It took over an hour and a half to cover the thirty-eight miles to Barnstaple, where I alighted and headed into town across a long bridge over the swift-flowing River Taw. I wandered around for a half an hour through narrow shopping streets and a large, cheerless covered market thinly arrayed with people selling handicraft items, and felt content that there was no need to linger here. Barnstaple used to be a major rail interchange, with three stations, but now there is just the one with its infrequent pootling services to Exeter, and a bus station overlooking the river. I went into the bus station and found two women sitting in an office beyond an open door, talking together in that quaint ‘Oi be drinkin zoider’ accent of this part of the world.I asked them about buses to Minehead, about thirty miles to the east along the coast. They looked at me as if I’d asked for connections to Tierra del Fuego.
‘Oh, you won’t be gittin to Moinhead this toim of year, you won’t be,’ said one.
‘No buses to Moinhead arter firrrrst of Octobaaarrrr,’ chimed in the second one.
‘What about Lynton and Lynmouth?’
They snorted at my naivety. This was England. This was 1994.
‘Porlock?’
Snort.
‘Dunster?’
Snort.
The best they could suggest was that I take a bus to Bideford and see if I could catch another bus on from there. They may be runnin the Scarrrrrrlet Loin out of Bideforrrrrd, they may be, oi they may, they may - but can’t be sartin.’
‘Will there be more people like you there?’ I wanted to say but didn’t. The only other option they could suggest was a bus to Westward Ho! but there didn’t seem much point since I couldn’t go anywhere else from there and anyway I couldn’t face spending the night in an ejaculation, as it were. I thanked them and departed,
I stood outside in a froth of uncertainty and tried to think what to do next. All my carefully laid plans were coming unravelled. I retired to the curiously named Royal and Fortescue Hotel, where I ordered a tuna sandwich and a cup of coffee from a mute and charmless waitress, and rooted in my pack for my timetable, where I discovered that I had twenty-three minutes to eat my sandwich, drink my coffee, and waddle the mile back to the railway station to catch a train to Exeter, where I could start again.
I swallowed my sandwich nearly whole when it came, gulped two sips of coffee, threw some money on the table and fled for the station, terrified that I would miss the train and have to spend the night in Barnstaple. I just made it. When I got to Exeter, I marched straight up to the TV screens, determined to take the first train to anywhere.
Thus it was that I found myself in the hands of fate and bound for Weston-super-Mare.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WAY I SEE IT, THERE ARE THREE REASONS NEVER TO BE UNHAPPY.
First, you were born. This in itself is a remarkable achievement. Did you know that each time your father ejaculated (and frankly he did it quite a lot) he produced roughly 25 million spermatozoa -enough to repopulate Britain every two days or so? For you to have been born, not only did you have to be among the few batches of sperm that had even a theoretical chance of prospering - in itself quite a long shot - but you then had to win a race against 24,999,999 or so other wriggling contenders, all rushing to swim the English Channel of your mother’s vagina in order to be the first ashore at the fertile egg of Boulogne, as it were. Being born was easily the most remarkable achievement of your whole life. And think: you could just as easily have been a flatworm.
Second, you are alive. For the tiniest moment in the span of eternity you have the miraculous privilege to exist. For endless eons you were not. Soon you will cease to be once more. That you are able to sit here right now in this one never-to-be-repeated moment, reading this book, eating bon-bons, dreaming about hot sex with that scrumptious person from accounts, speculatively sniffing your armpits, doing whatever you are doing - just existing - is really wondrous beyond belief.
Third, you have plenty to eat, you live in a time of peace and ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’ will never be number one again.
If you bear these things in mind, you will never be truly unhappy - though in fairness I must point out that if you find yourself alonein Weston-super-Mare on a rainy Tuesday evening you may come close.
It was only a little after six when I stepped from the Exeter train and ventured into the town, but already the whole of Weston appeared to be indoors beyond drawn curtains. The streets were empty, dark and full of slanting rain. I walked from the station through a concrete shopping precinct and out on to the front where a black unseen sea made restless whooshing noises. Most of the hotels along the front were dark and empty, and the few that were open didn’t look particularly enticing. I walked a mile or so to a cluster of three brightly lit establishments at the far end of the promenade and randomly selected a place called the Birchfield. It was fairly basic, but clean and reasonably priced. You could do worse, and I have.
I gave myself a cursory grooming and wandered back into town in search of dinner and diversion. I had an odd sense that I had been here before, which patently I had not. My only acquaintance with Weston was that John Cleese had once told me (I’m not really dropping names; I was interviewing him for a newspaper article; he is a jolly nice fellow, by the way) that he and his parents lived in a flat in Weston, and that when they moved out Jeffrey Archer and his parents moved in, which I thought was kind of remarkable - the idea of these two boys in short trousers saying hello and then one of them going on to greatness. What made Weston feel familiar was, of course, that it was just like everywhere else. It had Boots and Marks & Spencer and Dixons and W.H. Smith and all the rest of it. I realized with a kind of dull ache that there wasn’t a single thing here that I hadn’t seen a million times already
.
I went into a pub called the Britannia Inn, which was unfriendly without being actually hostile, and had a couple of lonely pints, then ate at a Chinese restaurant, not because I craved Chinese but because it was the only place I could find open. I was the only customer. As I quietly scattered rice and sweet and sour sauce across the tablecloth, there were some rumbles of thunder and, a moment later, the heavens opened - and I mean opened. I have seldom seen it rain so hard in England. The rain spattered the street like a shower of ball-bearings and within minutes the restaurant window was wholly obscured with water, as if someone were running a hose over it. Because I was a long walk from my hotel, I spun out the meal, hoping the weather would ease off, but it didn’t, and eventually I had no choice but to step out into the rainy night.
I stood beneath a shop awning next door and wondered what to do. Rain battered madly on the awning and rushed in torrents through the gutters. All along the road it poured over the sides of overstretched gutters and fell to the pavement in an endless clatter. With my eyes closed it sounded like I was in the midst of some vast, insane tap-dancing competition. Pulling my jacket above my head, I waded out into the deluge, then sprinted across the street and impulsively took refuge in the first bright, open thing I came to -an amusement arcade. Wiping my glasses with a bandanna, I took my bearings. The arcade was a large room full of brightly pulsating machines, some of them playing electronic tunes or making unbidden kerboom noises, but apart from an overseer sitting at a counter with a drooping fag and a magazine, there was no-one in the place so it looked eerily as if the machines were playing themselves.
