One evening last week, I trotted over to the caravan site’s clubhouse to use the wifi and pick up emails. One email was from a friend who reported that someone had described me, after meeting me for the first time, as an ‘intellectual’. Unsure whether to be flattered or appalled by this misjudgment, I ordered a hot panini (cheese and red onion) to save cooking dinner back at the caravan and running the battery down on the smoke detector, which was going off so often when I cooked that I’d begun using it as a timer.
As I rammed the panini into my face, an elderly man, with what was almost certainly a chapel Christian face, came and set up a table, chair and microphone in a central position. Another smaller, facetious-looking fellow came round issuing biros, clipboards and paper. ‘You’ll join us for the quiz,’ he said. My cheeks bulging with panini, I shook my head. He gave me a clipboard and biro anyway.
He then ordered me to move across and join a team consisting of a woman and her daughter who’d brought three hens on holiday with them. I’d noticed them — three plump brown hens in a wood and wire coop — on my daily jog around the site. Once I’d stopped near the coop for a breather, and the woman had come out and presented me with a freshly collected egg, which I’d jogged back with, smooth and still warm in my hand. She and her daughter were drinking Harvey Wallbangers.
Then the facetious-looking man decided instead that I should join forces with a late arrival, who drew up a chair opposite mine. He was also drinking Harvey Wallbangers. (I assumed this was due to a special promotion rather than to a peculiarity of the local Cornish culture.)
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in