Global Warning | 24 May 2008

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning

It is when you see the English enjoying themselves that you realise the futility of life. Perhaps I should say trying to enjoy themselves: for in the attempt, rarely successful, they turn either glum or public nuisance.

The occasion of these melancholy reflections was a rainy weekend in Torquay, whither I had gone to attend a medical conference. It took place in the English equivalent of a grand hotel: a mixture of pomposity and grubbiness, whose management had managed to find the last waitresses in Eastern Europe trained in the Soviet school of hostelry.

During a break in the proceedings, I took a ride into the centre of the town. It was evident that 1950s gentility was in the death throes of its hopeless struggle against 21st-century vulgarity, the palm court having ceded to the cannabis plant. The taxi-driver, wheezing from the sheer physical effort of sitting at the wheel, pointed out the sites as we drove through the pastel-painted terraced houses.