You know you’re in for some hardcore sightseeing, when someone asks you what your favourite sort of castle is and then gives you a choice of three you could visit complete with a historical and archaeological precis for each one.
I was going on a road trip to coastal Kent with Dennis Badger, to see some of his childhood haunts. This was exciting on several fronts. First, I never especially go to Kent and second, I never especially go in cars. But I do quite like modern cars and I especially like the way they don’t smell of hot plastic. The smell of hot plastic is in extricably linked in my mind’s nose with the whiff of Kia-Ora. It was the combination of hot plastic and Kia-Ora that so frequently led me to vomit in my father’s beige Avenger in the early 1980s. I did get through a whole day without vomiting in Dennis Badger’s car. Dennis always has cars that do exciting things (and none of them smell of hot plastic). You would feel bad vomiting in them. The one he had in January had seats that went hot and the current one has a roof that comes off. As it was bright crispy day, it was roof off. I felt like I was on a very posh open-top bus tour.
Dennis’s plans were elaborately detailed and vast in their scope. Hence a very early start was required. And start we did in Canterbury, which, as well as having a very big cathedral also has a very small castle. We walked around the outside and then we walked around the inside. It was pretty much the castle equivalent of a cardboard box and we couldn’t really decide how castle-dwellers might have spent their time here back in 1067. We decided it must have been non-stop feasting and the boiling of oil to pour off the battlements onto the postman. It was time for a coffee. In the café opposite, a sweet-faced waitress told us “You can sit anywhere” and then barked “But you cannot sit there!” as we edged towards the window. We froze. “Of course I don’t mind where you sit” she said soothingly, and as we lowered ourselves warily into window seats barked: “You will have to move for other people!” As coffees go, it was not a relaxing experience.
Next we drove to Sandwich. Sandwich is located near a place called Ham and Dennis did promise me a road sign that read ‘Ham/Sandwich’ – but he suspected someone had stolen it. When they replace it I am going to go back and steal it myself. Sandwich is a pretty little of town of bulging, rickety old houses and fascinating knockers. Mostly lion’s heads, but we also spotted George the fifth and a imp with a trumpet. There was clearly a knocker shop (not to be confused with a knocking shop, ho, ho) somewhere in the vicinity. We marauded around and I soon became aware that our overall direction was slightly off-kilter. Not that we were exactly lost as such, but there was a definite sense of not entirely intentional meandering. I come from a fairly traditional background of men snatching maps off me and bellowing “NOT THAT WAY!” so I find it best to adopt a habit of trailing along beside more decisive companions saying things like “Look at that nice duck!” It soon transpired that Dennis is used to someone else having the map as well and is, therefore, directionally female himself. Still better than me though, and an unexpected upside to this was that when we were later searching for the world’s most expensive toll road, Dennis suddenly stopped, announced: “it’ll be quicker if I ask someone” and then jumped out of the car to do just that, leaving me looking stunned and squeaking “Men don’t ask for directions!” Isn’t it great when they do though?
We drove some more. We looked at the schools were Dennis Badger went to school and houses were he had dwelt. Everyone who is currently 33 seems to have spent at least some of their early existence in a red-box 60’s semi in a cul-de-sac. I have. So has Dennis Badger. Near the cul-de-sac we saw a hill where Dennis had once fallen off his skateboard. No major injuries ensued, which was a little disappointing as usually childhoods are littered with unusual injuries. At eight, my front teeth got whipped out when I bit a metal tape measure my dad was pulling and my sister was once brutally savaged by a squirrel after she failed to quell an urge to caress its tail. After some thought Dennis said “I did used to get a lot of things stuck in my eye” What sort of things? More thought: “A piece of straw”. I am inclined to count that as unusual.
After lunch, there were deliberations. Realistically we had time to get back to Canterbury for evensong, or head to Deal for the knickerbocker glory Dennis had been mentioning since 9am. We pondered. The knickerbocker glory won. We headed Deal-wards.
Deal is a seaside town of such low-lying loveliness that it can be rather disheartening to discover that it has a Boots, a WH Smith and a Claire’s Accessories with a gang of teenagers stood outside it. How vulgar that people might actually want to do their shopping here! And what a pompous twit I am. Compensation does arrive, however, in the shape of a pier with grim-faced men fishing off it and a big statue of a man humping a shocked-looking fish. I love piers (“let’s demonstrate our dominance over the waves by constructing a thing that sticks out into the sea a bit. And then let’s put a café on the end of it. Yeah!”) and Dennis confessed to a love of the “manly camaraderie” that is fishing. This was a surprise: I always assumed fishing was the sporting equivalent of going into a library, and any attempts at manly camaraderie (like say, bear-hugs, back-slapping or shouting “Lend me some of your bait you cock!”) would result in furious chaps popping up all along the river bank going “Shhhhh!” Perhaps sea-fishing is different? Dennis bought some whelks for his brother, while I skittered around in the background not wanting to look too closely (if you cross offal with old chewing gum, whelks would be the end result. Leave them in their shells I say).
Now. Onto the knickerbocker glories. As a child, I used to be obsessed with the big bars of liqueur chocolates under the counter in the local newsagents. Pleeeeease I used to beg, and my mum would always say: “No, that’s adult chocolate.” I consequently wished away a whole childhood waiting for that magical moment when I could buy adult chocolate for myself. I think my first rum truffle was a a bit of an anticlimax, and while I’m partial to cherry brandy liqueurs, I wouldn’t eat a quarter of them for breakfast every day. So it was with Dennis Badger and the ice cream parlour. He doesn’t recall ever actually going there as a child, but he does recall pining to go there. After a build-up of some 25 years, could a knickerbocker glory deliver? Would it be like my first rum truffle? There was only one way to find out.
The parlour was all formica tables and greasy menus. The menus are utter delights: they open up as a double-page spread of pictures of ice creams: chocolate sundae, fruit sundae, banana split... we couldn’t actually tell the difference between a fruit sundae and a knickerbocker glory so Dennis, who is an interactive sort of chap, asked the waitress. The waitress looked about 14 and managed to convey in her emphatic "dunno" that people shouldn’t ever be saying anything to her other than “thank you” (this is a special tone of voice I am still struggling to perfect). The knickerbocker glories were quite the most improbable-looking desserts I have gazed upon since The Wife once attempted to make rice pudding and produced something that resembled a nut roast. These were glass-sided skyscrapers filled with insane swirls and strata of whipped cream, jelly, ice cream, tinned fruit, and sauces, topped with a cacophony of sprinkles, paper flowers and bear-shaped wafers of both genders. If ever you wish to sex a bear, remember, the girls wear ribbons...
Denis Badger enjoyed his knickerbocker glory. It was gone within minutes and he announced afterwards that it had made him quite hungry. I do seem to have a lot of friends with very fast metabolisms. We then went for a bracing walk along the shingles, our target being a car park where Dennis had spotted an ice cream van earlier in the day. As we walked, we tried to spot France on one side (this only works for me if I stare unblinkingly for three minutes and dark spots start dancing in front of my eyes) and, on the other side, the home of a luxuriantly bearded man who took pictures of Dennis Badger in his youth (for the local newspaper: please don’t be alarmed). Dennis wasn’t sure which this house was and, alas, it was to prove a triple disappointment as when we arrived the ice-cream van had departed. We had a sit down anyway. Shingle-walking is an exhausting business, especially on days when one is also suffering from Social Anxiety Buttock. The Social Anxiety Buttock was an unfortunate leftover of last night’s party: it strikes in the form of the fierce and involuntary clenching of the buttocks whenever an unknown person speaks to me and results in a dull ache the following day. I fully expect it to be joined by shingle thigh tomorrow…
Units dodged: Zero. Well, alright – maybe two. I did see some nice pubs and think hmmm... just one pint might be nice. But general walking, whether it’s of the gentle meandering variety or of the bracing shingle-crunching kind, does not seem synonymous with booze. And you’d have to have something very wrong with you to want anything other than fizzy pop with your knickerbocker glory…
Non-alcoholic beer of the day: Bavaria 0.0%. Not the beeriest of non-alcoholic beers. Perfectly pleasant and rather sweet… a bit like a very lemonady shandy.
Special thanks to: Dennis Badger for all the driving and the knickerbocker glory and a very entertaining day of such variety that I could only cram about a quarter of it in here!
The Unit Dodger
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