Bill Bryson - Notes from a small Island

All the guesthouses had boards out front listing their many amenities ' Colour TV', 'En Suite All Rooms', 'Hospitality Trays', 'Full CH' which only heightened my sense of unease and doom. How could I possibly choose intelligently among such a welter of options? One offered satellite TV and a trouser press and another boasted, in special jaunty italics, 'Current Fire Certificate' something I had never thought to ask for in a B & B. It was so much easier in the days when the very most you could hope for was H 8c C in all rooms.

I selected a place that looked reasonable enough from the outside its board promised a colour TV and coffeemaking facilities, about all I require these days for a lively Saturday night but from the moment I set foot in the door and drew in the mildewy pong of damp plaster and peeling wallpaper, I knew it was a bad choice. I was about to turn and flee when the proprietor emerged from a back room and stayed my retreat with an unenthusiastic 'Yes?' A short conversation revealed that a single room with breakfast could be had for .19.50 little short of a swindle. It was entirely out of the question that I would stay the night in such a dismal place at such a larcenous price, so I said, 'That sounds fine,' and signed in. Well, it's so hard to say no.

My room was everything I expected it to be cold and cheerless, with melamine furniture, grubbily matted carpet and those mysterious ceiling stains that bring to mind a neglected corpse in the room above. Fingers of icy wind slipped through the single illfitting sash window. I drew the curtains and was not surprised that they had to be yanked violently before they would budge and came nowhere near meeting in the middle. There was a tray of coffee things but the cups were let me be charitable disgusting and the spoon was stuck to the tray. The bathroom, faintly illuminated by a distant light activated by a length of string, had curling floor tiles and years of accumulated muck packed into every corner and crevice. I peered at the yellowy grouting round the bath and sink and realized what the landlord did with his phlegm. A bath was out of the question, so I threw some cold water on my face, dried it with a towel that had the texture of a Weetabix and gladly took my leave.

I had a long stroll along the prom to boost my appetite and pass an hour. It felt wonderful. The air was still and sharp and there wasn't a soul about, though there were still lots of white heads in the hotel lounges and dining rooms, all bobbing merrily about. Perhaps they were having a Parkinson's convention. I walked nearly the length of The Parade, enjoying the chill autumn air and the trim handsomeness of the setting: a soft glow of hotels to the left, an inky void of restless sea to my right and a scattered twinkling of lights on the near and far headlands of Great and Little Ormes.

I couldn't help notice it seemed so obvious now that nearly all the hotels and guesthouses looked markedly superior to mine. Almost without exception they had names that bore homage to other places ' Windermere', 'Stratford', 'Clovelly', 'Derby', 'St Kilda', even Toronto' as if their owners feared that it would be too much of a shock to the system to remind visitors that they were in Wales. Only one place, with a sign that said 'Gwely a BrecwastfRed and Breakfast', gave any hint that I was, at least in a technical sense, abroad.

I dined simply at a small nondescript restaurant off Mostyn Street and afterwards, feeling disinclined to return to my dingy room in a state of stark sobriety, went hunting for a pub. Llandudno had surprisingly few of these vital institutions. I walked for some time before I found one that looked even vaguelyapproachable. It was a typical town pub inside maroonplush, staleodoured, smoky and it was busy, mostly with young people. I took a seat at the bar, thinking I might be able to eavesdrop on my neighbours and receive more immediate attention when my glass was empty, but neither of these was to be. There was too much music and background noise to discern what my neighbours were saying and too much clamour for service at a spot near the till for the single harried server to notice an empty glass and a beggarly face up at my end.

So I sat and drank beer when I could get some and instead watched, as I often do in these circumstances, the interesting process by which customers, upon finishing a pint, would present the barman with a glass of clinging suds and golden dribble, and that this would be carefully filled to slightly overflowing, so that the excess froth, charged with an invisible load of bacteria, spittle and microfragments of loosened food, would run down the side of the glass and into a slop tray, where it would be carefully 1 might almost say scientifically conveyed by means of a clear plastic tube back to a barrel in the cellar. There these tiny impurities would drift and float and mingle, like flaky pooh in a goldfish bowl, awaiting summons back to someone else's glass. If I am to drink dilute dribble and mouth rinsings, then I do rather wish I could do it in a situation of comfort and cheer, seated in a Windsor chair by a blazing fire, but this appears to be an increasingly elusive dream. As sometimes also happens in these circumstances, I had a sudden urge not to drink any more beer, so instead I hauled myself from my barside perch and returned to my seafront lodgings for an early night.

In the morning, I emerged from the guesthouse into a world drained of colour. The sky was low and heavy and the sea along the front vast, lifeless and grey. As I walked along, rain began to fall, dimpling the water. By the time I reached the station it was coming down steadily. Llandudno Station is closed on Sundays that the largest resort in Wales has no Sunday rail services is too preposterous and depressing to elaborate on but there was a bus to Blaenau Ffestiniog from the station forecourt at eleven. There was no bench or shelter by the busstop, nowhere to get out of the rain. If you travel much by public transport in Britain these days you soon come to feel like a member of some unwanted subclass, like the handicapped or unemployed, and that everyone essentially wishes you would just go away. I felt a bit like that now and I am rich and healthy and immensely goodlooking. What must it be like to be permanently poor or disabled or otherwise unable to take a full and active part in the nation's headlong rush for the sunny slopes of Mt Greedy?

It is remarkable to me how these matters have become so thoroughly inverted in the past twenty years. There used to be a kind of unspoken nobility about living in Britain. Just by existing, by going to work and paying your taxes, catching the occasional bus and being a generally decent if unexceptional soul, you felt as if you were contributing in some small way to the maintenance of a noble enterprise a generally compassionate and wellmeaning society with health care for all, decent public transport, intelligent television, universal social welfare and all the rest of it. I don't know about you, but I always felt rather proud to be part of that, particularly as you didn't actually have to do anything you didn't have to give blood or buy the Big Issue or otherwise go out of your way to feel as if you were a small contributory part. But now, no matter what you do, you end up stung with guilt. Go for a ramble in the country and you are reminded that you are inexorably adding to congestion in the national parks and footpath erosion on fragile hills. Try to take a sleeper to Fort William or a train on the SettletoCarlisle line or a bus from Llandudno to Blaenau on a Sunday and you begin to feel shifty and aberrant because you know that these services require vast and costly subsidization. Go for a drive in your car, look for work, seek a place to live, and all you are doing is taking up valuable space and time. And as for needing health care well, how thoughtless and selfish can you possibly be? ('We can treat your ingrown toenails, Mr Smith, but it will of course mean taking a child off a lifesupport machine.')