7268/19788
Out of Center Parcs by 10am and arrived in Cheddar before 11 for a couple of days with my folks.
We came down through the gorge and I tried to show the family the wonders of the towering cliffs, but they weren’t too interested. It’s only spectacular nature, but then again I had just told them that my parents used to take me on walks on the hills above the gorge and I hated it (or at least didn’t want to go along, but was forced to and then quite liked it once I was there, but couldn’t admit that).
We passed the Cliff Hotel, right in the heart of the touristy bit of the Gorge. It’s been empty and unused for several years, but now it’s finally being demolished and was surrounded by white coverings so I couldn’t see how much of it was left.
I told the kids that this was the first place that I had ever played Space Invaders. Phil Fry had taken me there after school and I was not only slightly excited about going into a pub (even if it was pretty deserted at that point) but got to experience the wonder of video games for the first time. I could almost feel the big, two-shilling-sized 10p pieces we clutched in order to play. I watched Phil and then had a go myself, blasting wildly, dying quickly. Phil mocked me for not knowing the tactic of taking out the end columns first so that the descent of the invaders would be slower. How did he know so much more than me.
It wasn’t a bar that we went to much as teenagers, presumably because they didn’t server 14 year olds, unlike some of the other pubs in the village, but I remember a pub crawl that I’d gone on with the staff of the caves when I was about 20. I had worked at the caves for a few weeks over the previous couple of years, but wasn’t working there this holiday, so was just catching up with my friends. There was a couple of female Aussie students working there now and I remember impressing one of them in the Cliff, probably by being funny (yeah right) but also because I walked out of the bar with a pint glass as we went to the next pub. She was called Sian and we nearly got together that night, but my friend Ben jokingly later went to push her off a wall she was sitting on and accidentally pushed her off the wall and she banged her head on the floor. I was probably more upset about the loss of a rare snog with a pretty girl than the fact she’s been hurt (back then it seemed there was always something that would thwart my romantic -or less romantic- intentions). But I’d impressed Sian enough for her to come and visit me at college a couple of weeks later and so this romance would briefly lead somewhere, but fizzled out quite quickly because I was a clueless fool and she wanted me to make love to her whilst listening to Enya, which I found quite off-putting. Where was the beat? The very very fast beat?
I told the kids that I had kissed someone called Sian in that pub, which I don’t think was entirely accurate, but that she wasn’t the Sian who was my first girlfriend. I had kissed two girls called Sian in Cheddar by 1987, which seemed like a large number of Sians given the number of people I’d kissed at that point. We’d seen a polygamous man on Sprogglebox and I said that I only went out with women called Sian, so that I could marry them all, making it easier for me to remember all my wives’ names. I could just call for Sian. My daughter pointed out that all the Sians would turn up and I said that was OK, as I wouldn’t be able to tell one Sian from another. Probably a bit weird to riff with my kids about that. Not as weird as only going out with people called Sian though.
Hello to all the Sians I went out with though. I didn’t actually manage to date any more Sians and the two I did lost interest in me, so I had to change my marital plans. If there are eight Sians reading who’d like to marry me and share me with seven more Sians, then get in touch. I am not weird.
Lovely for my kids to spend time with their grandparents and vice versa. They got a lot out of it. Phoebe was very insistent on making jokes about poo to my dad, who pretended to be above it all, but who I think enjoyed the giggles and the attention, even if he had about 12 years of this with me.
