BEACHHEAD

When I first came to live in Cat­alo­nia I loved going to the beach. This was partly be­cause of the nov­elty value: Lon­don was bereft of beaches (not to men­tion its scarcity of sun). But mainly it was be­cause the beaches here made me feel I was in any one of dozens of films and TV se­ries in which the height of lux­ury and cool­ness and af­flu­ence and plea­sure in gen­eral was rep­re­sented by shots of good-look­ing, sun­glassed peo­ple loung­ing around on the sand or splash­ing each other on the edge of a sea whose im­mac­u­late blue­ness stretched to the hori­zon and an un­vis­ited be­yond. A cheap ticket would take you on the RENFE’s creak­ing, barely-up­hol­stered trains from Barcelona to nearby places on the Maresme coast (Premià, Vi­las­sar, Arenys, Sant Pol, Caldetes...) and there you’d be, stretched out be­side the sea­side, liv­ing the life of Riley and con­vinc­ing your­self that this was how the other half lived. And if you were a het­ero­sex­ual male ac­com­pa­nied by a girl­friend you could even imag­ine you were play­ing a bit part in one of the early (and sex­ist) Bond films.

I haven’t been to a beach for twenty-three years, be­cause, with time, I have come to loathe the places. It’s not just the phys­i­cal in­con­ve­nience of sand seep­ing into the over­priced sand­wiches and beer you bought at the local beach kiosk, or of hav­ing to smear sun proof chem­i­cals all over your skin leav­ing you smelling like a hos­pi­tal, it’s the at­mos­phere: hun­dreds of peo­ple clus­tered to­gether under their para­sols doing sweet FA, as if they were killing time in a wait­ing room; other peo­ple toss­ing balls around and - for some rea­son - laugh­ing their heads off as they do so; and yet more peo­ple sit­ting in cir­cles and talk­ing trash be­fore they mosey over to a jam-packed beach bar to talk more trash...

In gen­eral, the im­pres­sion any beach gives me now is of an un­bear­ably hot, over­pop­u­lated swathe of sand chock-full of semi-naked adults suf­fer­ing col­lec­tively from a pro­longed at­tack of in­fan­tile re­gres­sion.

And maybe that’s what makes what is some­times im­prob­a­bly called ’beach cul­ture’ so re­pel­lent: most of its acolytes are adults; that is to say that they could be – for ex­am­ple - any one of the grown-ups who ap­pear in the lyrics Vi Sub­versa (aka Frances Sokolov) wrote for the Poi­son Girls’ song ’Per­sons Un­known’ (1980): ’house­wives and pros­ti­tutes, plumbers in boiler suits/tru­ants in cof­fee bars, who think you’re alone/big men on build­ing sites, sick men in dress­ing gowns/agents in motor cars who never go home/.../ac­coun­tants in nylon shirts, fem­i­nists in flo­ral skirts/nurses for when it hurts, per­sons un­known/as­tro­nauts and celi­bates, dee­jays and hyp­ocrites/liars and lu­natics, per­sons un­known/hope­fuls on foot­ball pools, teach­ers in empty schools/kids into heroin not yet full grown/typ­ists and ush­erettes, black men who can’t for­get/.../closet ide­al­ists, bald-headed re­al­ists/ras­tas and bik­ers, the voice on the phone/pimps and econ­o­mists, roy­alty and com­mu­nists/ri­ot­ers and paci­fists, per­sons un­known/vi­sion­ar­ies with coloured hair, leather boys who just don’t care...’ So why the hell do such real-life peo­ple act like the chil­dren they’re not when­ever they find them­selves on a beach? In fact, the only human be­ings who never have to pre­tend when they’re on a beach - be­cause they’re hav­ing such a won­der­ful, in­no­cent, gen­uinely good time – are chil­dren. Every time I pass by the edge of a crammed beach, I can’t help wish­ing that only chil­dren – who are banned from so many other places – were al­lowed on it. And that the adults lark­ing about with un­con­vinc­ing smiles were some­where else, any­where else, being house­wives and pros­ti­tutes, plumbers in boiler suits...

Opin­ion