Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea - A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain

"Hands up, all those who aren't working," one comedian said.

A number of hands went up — eight or ten — but this was a terrible admission, and down they went before I could count them properly.

The comedian was already laughing. "Have some Beecham Pills," he said. "They'll get you 'working' again!"

There were more jokes, awful ones like this, and then a lady singer came out and in a sweet voice sang "The Russian Nightingale." She encouraged the audience to join in the chorus of the next one, and they offered timid voices, singing,

"Let him go, let him tarry,

Let him sink, or let him swim.

He doesn't care for me

And I don't care for him."

The comedians returned. They had changed their costumes. They had worn floppy hats the first time; now they wore bowler hats and squirting flowers.

"We used to put manure on our rhubarb."

"We used to put custard on ours!"

No one laughed.

"Got any matches?"

"Yes, and they're good British ones."

"How do you know?"

"Because they're all strikers!"

A child in the first row began to cry.

The dancers came on. They were pretty girls and they danced well. They were billed as "Our Disco Dollies" on the poster. More singers appeared and "A Tribute to Al Jolson" was announced: nine minstrel show numbers, done in blackface. Entertainers in the United States could be run out of town for this sort of thing; in Cromer the audience applauded. Al Jolson was a fond memory and his rendition of "Mammy" was a special favorite in musical revues. No one had ever tired of minstrel shows in England, and they persisted on British television well into the 1970s.

It had been less than a month since the end of the Falklands War, but in the second half of Seaside Special there was a comedy routine in which an Argentine general appeared — goofy dago in ill-fitting khaki uniform—"How dare you insult me!"

I could hear the surf sloshing against the iron struts of the pier.

"And you come and pour yourself on me," a man was singing. It was a love song. The audience seemed embarrassed by it. They preferred "California Here I Come" and "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," sung by a man named Derick, from Johannesburg. The program said that he had "appeared in every top night spot in South Africa and Rhodesia." Say "top night spot in Zimbabwe" and it does not sound the same — it brings to mind drums and thick foliage.

One of the comedians reappeared. I had come to dread this man. I had reason. Now he played "The Warsaw Concerto" and cracked jokes as he played. "It's going to be eighty tomorrow," he said. "Forty in the morning and forty in the afternoon!"

His jokes were flat, but the music was pleasant and the singers had excellent voices. In fact, most of the performers were talented, and they pretended to be playing to a full house — not the thirty of us who sat so silently in the echoing theater. The show people conveyed the impression that they were enjoying themselves. But it can't have been much fun, looking at those empty seats. Cromer itself was very dull. And I imagined these performers were miserably paid. I wanted to know more about them. I played with the idea of sending a message backstage to one of the chorus girls. I'd get her name out of the program. Millie Plackett, the one whose thighs jiggled. "Millie, it's for you! Maybe it's your big break!" Meet me after the show at the Hotel de Paris … That was actually the name of my hotel, an enjoyable pile of brick and plaster splendor. But I didn't look the part. In my scratched leather jacket and torn dungarees and oily hiking shoes, I thought Millie Plackett might misunderstand my intentions.

I stayed until the end of the show, finally admitting that I was enjoying myself. One act was of a kind I found irresistible — the magician whose tricks go wrong, leaving him with broken eggs in his hat and the wrong deck of cards. There was always an elaborate buildup and then a sudden collapse. "Presto," he said as the trick failed. And then the last trick, the one that looked dangerous, worked like a charm and was completely baffling.

They saved the saddest song for the end. It was a love song, but in the circumstances it sounded nationalistic. It was sentimental hope, Ivor Novello gush, at the end of the pier that was trembling on the tide. I had heard it elsewhere on the coast. It was anything but new, but it was the most popular number on the seaside that year:

We'll gather lilacs in the spring agine,

And walk together down a shady line…

ON MY LAST LONG TRUDGE, curving down the rump of England on the Norfolk coast and into Suffolk, I thought: Every British bulge is different and every mile has its own mood. I said Blackpool, and people said, "Naturally!" I said Worthing, and they said, "Of all places!" The character was fixed, and though few coastal places matched their reputation, each was unique. It made my circular tour a pleasure, because it was always worth setting off in the morning. It might be bad ahead, but at least it was different; and the dreariest and most defoliated harbor town might be five minutes from a green sweep of bay.

This was the reason "typical" was regarded as such an unfair word in England. And yet there was such a thing as typical on the coast — but to an alien, something typical could seem just as fascinating as the mosques of the Golden Horn.

There was always an Esplanade, and always a Bandstand on it; always a War Memorial and a Rose Garden and a bench bearing a small stained plaque that said, To the Memory of Arthur Wetherup. There was always a Lifeboat Station and a Lighthouse and a Pier; a Putting Green, a Bowling Green, a Cricket Pitch, a Boating Lake, and a church the guidebook said was Perpendicular. The news agent sold two Greetings From picture postcards, one with kittens and the other with two plump girls in surf, and he had a selection of cartoon postcards with mildly filthy captions; the souvenir stall sold rock candy; and the local real estate agent advertised a dismal cottage as "chalet-bungalow, bags of character, on bus route, superb sea views, suit retired couple." There was always a fun fair and it was never fun, and the video machines were always busier than the pinball machines or the one-armed bandits. There was always an Indian restaurant and it was always called the Taj Mahal and the owners were always from Bangladesh. Of the three fish-and-chip shops, two were owned by Greeks and the third was always closed. The Chinese restaurant, Hong Kong Gardens, was always empty; Food to Take A way, its sign said. There were four pubs, one was the Red Lion, and the largest one was owned by a bad-tempered Londoner—"He's a real Cockney," people said; he had been in the army.

TO TOWN CENTRE, said a sign on Marine Parade, where there was a tub of geraniums, GOLF LINKS, said another, and a third, PUBLIC CONVENIENCES. A man stood just inside the door of gents and tried to catch your eye as you entered, but he never said a word. The man with the mop stood at the door of ladies. Outside town was a housing estate called Happy Valley. Yanks had camped there in the war. Beyond it was a caravan park called Golden Sands. The best hotel was the Grand, the poorest the Marine, and there was a guest house called Bellavista. The best place to stay was at a bed and breakfast called the Blodgetts. Charles Dickens had spent a night in the Grand; Wordsworth had hiked in the nearby hills; Tennyson had spent a summer in a huge house near the sandy stretch that was called the Strand; and an obscure politician had died at the Rookery. A famous murderer (he had slowly poisoned his wife) had been arrested on the Front, where he had been strolling with his young mistress.

The muddy part of the shore was called the Flats, the marshy part the Levels, the stony part the Shingles, the pebbly part the Reach, and something a mile away was always called the Crumbles. The Manor, once very grand, was now a children's home. Every Easter two gangs from London fought on Marine Parade. The town had a long history of smuggling, a bay called Smugglers' Cove, and a pub called the Smugglers' Inn.