Just Another Bit Of History Repeating (Part III - 1984)

Lyme Regis. August 1984.

I'd only agreed to come, if they'd agreed to driving-lessons.
I had no reason to doubt them.
But fuck, I was bored.
The last-minute deal, summer holiday-plan, resulting in Spain, or at worst Greece,
had been hastily replaced by a safe, home-fires vacation, in Blighty.
Mum & dad had grown up with the blitz and bombs, real ice-cream and bicycle rides in the country.
Abroad was still very foreign.
And it was safer therefore, and ultimately more enjoyable, on home shores.

Dad was constantly on edge with regard to the Middle East.
He'd spent a lot of time there, peace-keeping on behalf of the rest of us.
Mum, having worked in the Benghazi Library in the 60's, was equally sceptical.
After the shooting of WPC Fletcher, and the Libyan Embassy siege,
dad, Thatch, mum and Ronnie Reagan all went a bit gung-ho
(the latter taking it all a bit too far, a couple of years later).

So, I was stuck in Lyme Regis in 1984.
And I was horny.
Lots of doublespeak, and very little sexcrime.
Mum & dad were still a bit edgy with the new-age business crowd, taking over the tea-shoppes with their arty things, and their homegrown produce.
I was intrigued by the fat woman with no bra.

Daily, we enacted a favourite routine;
a walk, a cream tea, back to the caravan for a pretend shower;
pub, another pub, fish & chips and back to the caravan again.

An English family holiday, prior to the concept of 'stay-cation'.

I tried to get pissed on the shandies my father proferred.
I made roll-ups from the ash-trays I dutifully offered to empty.
I wanked in the caravan-park toilets, and I wished I was at home.
Or in Torremolinos.

The telly in the clubhouse bar was full of Arthur Scargill and the police and disturbances.
The jukebox in the games room was playing 'Two Tribes' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
The formica tables were littered with cockle-less polystyrene cups, and grubby pots of Saxa white pepper and malt vinegar.
And I was a mess.

I was emphatically in-tune with Billy Bragg, the miners, the GLC, and Red Ken, and the Smiths and CND & everything.
I bought The Clash's 'Sandanista' and voted in a Smash-Hits Reader's Poll concerning Nicaragua.

But I just wanted to have sex.
Lots of it.

With every girl I fancied.
(And quite a few I didn't)

And there wasn't any of either, in olde worlde Lyme Regis.
Just pickled eggs, warm beer and fossils.

In the morning, I stuffed a pound-note into my jeans, and walked to the campsite shop.
I bought a copy of the Sunday Mirror to find out exactly where Libya was.
And a copy of TitBits.