Bungalog – Day 1
Saturday, April 5, 2008
We arrive at 2:45 and meet Jim and Dot outside 12G, and Dot stands waving from the sliding door and says get in where it’s warm, and I wonder how much warmer the bungalow can be compared to the car. She has a kettle boiled, and cookies in a container, which we can help ourselves to, and she says we can have some tea, and there is milk in the fridge but the bread is for the ducks who come at six every day. We will have to feed them, even though the bread is soft. Dot says that there is a vocalist at the pub this evening named Danny Kent, and she shows the line-up to me on a piece of paper. The pub is nice she says, but whispers that the drinks are quite expensive. Before Dot and Jim leave, Jim asks Dot if she mentioned anything about the vocalist.
We empty the trunk and then go for a walk on the beach and see people bending down on the sand, one man wears kneepads, and Neil and David say that people are digging for worms for fishing, and I say that this is odd, why couldn’t they buy them, and David says well where do you think those worms come from, and it still seems like a bad way to make money, so maybe it’s a hobby I think, but a lot of people are out here doing it, and they don’t all look like the type of people to be digging for worms. I see a pointed shell shaped like a spiral hairclip sticking out of the sand, and l put it in my pocket.
David says there are supposed to be a lot of fossils in this area, and that he used to be very interested in fossils when he was growing up, but that he’s never found one, and then I ask if he ever thought about becoming an archaeologist and he says he did think about it. Then I see one of the worm collectors with a plastic bag holding his hand out flat, and I ask him if he is looking for worms, I am probably going to tell him to leave the worms alone, and he says no, that he is looking for fossils, and he shows me a small spiral shell about the size of a grain of wild rice, and a snake’s vertebrae, and then I take my shell out from my pocket, it is about the size of a fat highlighter pen and ask him if it is a fossil, and he says it is. Neil asks how old it is and the man says he doesn’t know, but points to someone in the distance and says that man in the yellow coat over there is the expert and he’ll be able to tell you.
It takes a while for David to find a fossil, but after he does he starts seeing them everywhere, and then Neil says that there is nothing more boring than excess. After it hails on our faces and ears, we arrive at a building where we watch several men who work at the coast bring a lifeboat out of the water and hose it down. We walk to a store where we each buy Chichster postcards, and then we try to find some lettuce for the evening but the store only has cabbage. The next store is across the street from The Lively Lady, which I misread as The Lovely Lady. This store has lettuce, but only one head, and it is not being kept in a cooler, just on a shelf, at room temperature, so it is wilting. I want them Neil and David take my word for it.
When we get back to the complex we are staying at we visit the holiday centre where there is a “store” in quotation marks that sells a mix of things including a Pirates of the Caribbean sword and 2 coconuts, frozen food, candy, cookware, and a variety of cleaning products. A dog named Missy stands outside and she licks your hand whenever you show it to her. We don’t buy anything and when we are back in the bungalow we rearrange the furniture and set up the projector and screen, and put the lasagna into the oven which is still frozen solid in the centre. It’s a homemade lasagna and not something from the store.
Even though we are home by six o’clock, the ducks do not come by. Neil hands me a small wine rack to turn on its side to keep the laptop from overheating. Later we head over to the Stag’s Head pub where Neil and David order pints of Guinness, and I have a shandy, and according to the price-list Dot is right because a pint of Guinness is £4.10, but for some reason the cost for all 3 drinks comes to only £7.65. We have to show our keychain to prove we are staying at one of the bungalows, so Neil thinks that maybe this gets us a different price on our drinks.
We play pool and watch as an older man and a younger man set up the equipment for the evening’s entertainment and the younger man uses a piece of black fabric with white musical notes on it to cover a stack of electronic equipment and cables. I say something about Brecht. Neil and I think they are father and son, but David is not sure. There are about four men playing cards at a table in front of the dance-floor, just a few stairs down from the bar, and Neil says one of them is a Scouser, and I ask if that is a Scot, but it is someone from Liverpool David says. Neil also thinks one of the men is faking a Glaswegian accent, and this bothers him.
The younger man checks the sound levels by singing along to a pre-recorded tape of a pop-song with all of the lyrics removed. In his narrow jeans and Jim Morrison t-shirt he begins to move and hop around the dance-floor. It’s just a sound-check, David says, he’s not Danny Kent, he’s just a roadie. The old guy is the singer, David says, and Neil agrees, but the younger guy sings another song and moves even closer to the men playing cards, and then I ask someone at the bar if the young guy is the vocalist for the evening and I am told that he is, and we are all surprised because we think Danny Kent is the older man.
The lasagna is almost ready when we return from the Stag’s Head, so Neil makes a salad with sprouts, tomato, and avocado, but Neil thinks the avocado is rubbery, and it probably is because David leaves most of his pieces of avocado in the Japanese style bowls we are eating our salads from. We have a large dark blue bottle of Pinot Grigio that I bought from Costco but think it maybe should have been drunk a while ago but we drink it anyway and some sips taste better than others. We ate a lot and listened to electronic lounge from my laptop, even though Neil doesn’t really like it very much.
At about 11:15 we go back to the Stag’s Head to see Danny Kent perform, and I wonder what he will be wearing, and Neil says he will be wearing the same thing and David says sequins, but I think a dress shirt, maybe purple or mauve, or blue with a pattern, but he wears black pants and a white dress shirt with black pin-stripes and a narrow black tie. He is performing for several 10-year-olds running around the pub, and a table of women with tattoos. There is an unopened bottle of Bells Whiskey on their table and every once in a while the women stand in a row with their backs to Danny and dance facing the group of men who four hours later are still playing cards. And sometimes the Scouser gets up and dances with the one in the white high-heeled boots.
When that song is finished, Danny Kent asks if anyone likes Patrick Swayze, and he sings a song from Dirty Dancing and the women stand in front of him again, so no one can see him now, except probably us, because we are sitting upstairs in the balcony that’s been decorated with a cinema theme which explains the pictures of movie stars hanging on the walls, the film cans attached to posts, and the four very old 16mm projectors that sit on pillars around the room. They are getting dusty up here, and as I handle one of the projectors and remove the take up reel, I see a man sitting at a sound board and notice that he isn’t interested that I am touching all the projectors. He is slouched in his chair, watching Danny Kent, the line of four women, and adjusting the sound levels for the karaoke machine.
We retire to the bungalow by midnight because tomorrow we are watching a long film and we decide to start the Shoah screening at 11:30 in the morning.
