In a total contrast to the last post, we spent a week over the summer in a beach hut in Mudeford, Dorset. These huts are generally the size of a large garden shed, tend to be painted in pastel blues and creams, and evoke a kind of fantasy lost childhood feeling. Two rows of huts, back to back, stretch out along a narrow peninsular for about half a mile. One side looks out onto Christchurch Harbour, the other onto the beach and faces the Channel and the Isle of Wight. There’s no traffic allowed; to reach the huts you have to travel by passenger ferry from Mudeford Quay, and carry all your belongings with you. It’s only a 5 minute trip, and the distance from the Quay to the nearest point of the peninsular is no more than 100 metres or so, but it all adds the the sense of adventure, and the sensation of being cut off from the rest of the mainland (despite the fact that actually you’re not). It’s like stepping back in time. Though I’m too young to know, what comes to mind is an impression of post-war communal optimism. A help-each-other-out spirit that may not have existed anywhere other than my recollections of old films, but despite, or probably because of, the rough and ready feel to the place (with or without the solar panels on most of the roofs), it’s an enormously comforting place to spend time. Children can run around free of the worry that they’ll be knocked down by a white van at any moment. Because there’s very little electricity there’s no television. No reality shows, no soaps and most important to me, no Disney Channel with it’s endless cycle of Hannah Montana and Zack & Cody. I think this is one of the things I like the most – the children just play the way they should – with their imaginations and their friends, and maybe this is why it evokes such nostalgia. Anyway – I know we’ll be back again next year.

Not a telly for miles

According to Wikipedia:
“The terms time warp, space warp and time-space warp are commonly used in science fiction. They sometimes refer to Einstein’s theory that time and space form a continuum which bends, folds or warps from the observer’s point of view, relative to such factors as movement or gravitation, but are also used in reference to more fantastic notions of discontinuities or other irregularities in spacetime not based on real-world science.”

Our trip to Ibiza last weekend certainly provided an experience along these lines, and real-world science was nowhere to be seen. It was such a marathon of hedonistic endurance, that I literally had no idea of what time or day it was at a couple of points. I wonder at what point does it become simply tacky, to be in my early forties, in a group of similar blokes, in what is generally considered to be the playground of the young. Then a gigantic bassline kicks in and we’re carried away again and really who cares?