Seaside

August spills over into Saturday and I must see my children. My daughter is a chorus girl in The King and I, a production of the Bristol Youth Theatre where she's been doing her drama club every Saturday evening this year. But for some reason they are not performing in Bristol but a little seaside town in North Cornwall called Bude. I ring the train service and wonder how to get there. I need a train to Exeter St. David and then a bus will drive me for two and a half hours to Bude and the Atlantic ocean. How long will it take me to get there, I ask the man in Bombay India where the customer service for British Trains has been outsourced by globalization. Give it about four hours for your train journey and maybe three for the bus sir because of engineering works at the weekend sir. Damnit, I could be in New York in that time. But fathers must do what fathers can do to show their little girls support.

The headache from August's Friday is mild and the train journey is milder and I bury myself in the papers and I'm pleased that the man from Togo has decided to stay with Arsenal and I think the premiership title is coming back to North London and the South Africans are creaming the English in the cricket test matches and the weather looks like it's going back to miserable summer and rain and wind and I wish I was in bed.

The bobby with the transport police at Exeter has his arms covered in tattoos and I think he must have been a sailor or a surfer in his last life and I ask where the bus to Bude can be got and he says just to the left my friend but mind there are only two a day and if you miss it it's £200 by taxi and the hotels are steep around here. I get the message and call the theatre and reserve my seat and call the Bude tourism office and get a bed and breakfast number and book a room and glue myself to the bus stop and watch the faces in a place I've never been to before. The coach gets there and I troop on with the other tourists and backpacking teenagers in love.

The coach meanders over green green fields and we pass grazing sheep and ancient stone towers and 18th century bridges and deep rural England looks pretty and peaceful and the graveyards by the old churches are filled with folk who walked these parts since history began and me and the Korean tourist in the opposite seat nod to each other as our camera lenses dodge the rain drops and we click the pictures we want to commit to memory and blogs. But in every village we pass through, with names like Okehampton, the houses are littered with 'for sale' signs, the little cottages in splashes of sun are all on the market and I think people's holiday homes are becoming victims of the recession and I wonder what I would buy and where when my money ship sails into port.

And as we enter Cornwall I can see the Cornish flag dotted here and there, a white cross on a black background and I wonder if one day Cornwall will have the secessionist politics which now so dominate Wales and Scotland and if already the folk in the English sun are fighting for the right to make Cornish the official language and for representation that is wholly Cornish. I ring her and say I'm coming to watch you on stage darling and she's happy and says are you really have you got a ticket and where are you staying and I take pleasure in telling her that her dad is not that disorganized and he can sort things out when he wants and that my ticket is waiting for me at the theatre reception and my room is in the Teeside b&b opposite the golf course.

Bude itself is another seaside town. Seaside towns are just that, seaside. They seem to have been created with the same blueprint everywhere I've been. In England the surfers and the skateboarders are spotty teenagers and there are plenty of shops selling tat to tourists like surf boards and flip flops and the charity shops are three or four to a street and the restaurants are mainly for fish and chips and they have names like The Plaice and the natives are deeply tanned and the bars are full from midday onwards and here and there the locals are driving in old convertibles and off road vehicles and there are children in buggies everywhere and the mothers seem like teens and everyone is waiting for Saturday night to do exactly what they did on Friday night. I stand by the bus stop wondering where my b&b is and I have an hour and a bit to kill before the performance. A skateboarder with an outrageous 70's hairdo zooms past me and I call him back and tell him to look into my camera. Then I see there are too many taxis for such a small town and I figure it's the biggest employer then I spot a mobile number on top of a mercedes which is called rob's taxi and I ring it and rob reverses and drives me two minutes to my b&b and says it pays to advertise and charges me a minimum fee of three quid.

I check in to my room and the elderly owners rob and jane are sweet and jane says one of the girls in the play used to come here for her holidays when she was only five and now she's fifteen and such a young lady and how fast they grow and she would love to have seen the King and I but she's off to dinner with Rob and I say that's nice, does he take you out often and rob laughs and she says yes he's very good like that. I dump my bags and check if they have wifi and set up and ring the ex and arrange to meet in the theatre and head out for a fish and chips dinner before I join my boy. Walking on the steep little streets I can't help but notice the pretty black woman lost in her own little world and we nearly collide and she smiles and says hello where did you spring from and what a lovely sight to see in Bude of all places. Yes, London hogs all the interesting people someone should send some refugees up here and cause a right wing riot in the conservative club on the high street.

The sea air feels good in my lungs and I walk into a packed theatre and join my boy and his lovely cousin Malaika who are gallantly reserving the seats with pages from the programme. Hey dad can you see from there. See what? The stage. Yes I'm ok. The King and I was ok when Yul did it but up on the stage I'm reminded of the fact that it's a mildly racist text meant for a late 40's audience and the music is basic and the directing not that great here and the lighting unimaginative but the young thespians throw themselves into it and my princess is fabulous and not at all self conscious although I much prefer her on stage with a sax in her hand.

Three hours later we emerge into the cool atlantic sprayed air and I take the kids up to their b&b and to bed and she says did you enjoy it dad and I say I thought you were marvelous and she gets me and laughs. I wander through a little town now teeming with revellers dressed in too short skirts and wearing superman costumes and dancing to tunes only seaside DJ's have in abundance. I'm going to sleep like a log. Or driftwood. Or both.