The Seaside Town They Forgot To Bomb

In these days of austerity and environmental concerns, jetting off to far-flung and exotic destinations is less on the cards than perhaps it was a few years ago. Ash clouds, strikes, natural disasters and travel companies going bust all over the place are perhaps a sign that it's time to start exploring the delights on offer on our own, accessible, British doorstep.

Yes, delights. And Margate.

I've visited quite a few seaside towns over the past couple of years. I've been on a sort of accidental tour of them, in fact, sometimes intentionally, and at other times to watch football. Each visit has delivered its own little anecdotes and a not inconsiderable amount of rock for family and friends who fall on such multi-E-numbered candy not wholly with a sense of irony. I got engaged in Blackpool, then caught in a hailstorm the same day... in June. In Torquay I encountered a racist taxi-driver ("We have taxi drivers here from Bradford - they come down with monkeys still on their backs") who was a handy warm-up act for the racists who plagued the football match he was driving us to, but on the upside I won a meerkat playing darts. None of these, however, was a match for Margate.

I last visited Margate in January for a "team-building weekend". My five colleagues and I formed one of only two groups of guests in the guesthouse we were staying in, the other being two elderly sisters down for a funeral. Dinner was served at 7 every night by a stony-faced woman who thought catering for vegetarins meant taking the lump of meat off the plate, and gave us a choice of two desserts: lemon freeze cake (whatever that is) and fruit salad out of a tin. The "swimming pool" was no more than a large bath, but we couldn't use it anyway as it was closed for "maintenance", so we spent the nights driving up and down the seafront playing loud music and wrecking the suspension on our minibus.

So I was intrigued to see the "real" Margate. From the Visit Thanet website it looked potentially promising. The website gives no less than three pages of "attractions" one can visit, admittedly only two of which actually seem to be IN Margate, and many of which seem to involve Mini Golf, but we were only going for a day, so how many attractions would we need?

Bristling with excitement - well, OK, bristling with indifference, but let's suspend our disbelief for a while - we pulled into the first carpark we found, and consequently pulled into Dreamland. Now according to Wiki Dreamland actually closed in 2005, which would perhaps explain why what was effectively a piece of wasteland behind a bingo hall didn't look very inviting. What apparently used to house one of the world's oldest rollercoasters (the skeleton of it is still there and looked quite haunting) is now home to a very temporary and bleak-looking fairground complete with second-rate dodgems and poor-quality, unwinnable cuddly toys and one of those terrifying-looking things that whizzes you from side to side whist dangling precariously 60-odd feet above the ground. My nephew was successfully steered away from indluging in Dreamland's pleasures by his dad pointing to one of the ride hands, staring into the distance and smoking somewhat desolately next to his empty ride. "You see the man there? He's the man who's job it is to make the rides work. He's also in charge of putting them together." [Pause]. "Do you still want to go on anything?"

But there are plenty of other things to do in Margate...right? Right. If your idea of a good time is feeding 2p after 2p into a slot machine and winning 5 or 6 more 2ps for every 20 you feed in, then there are hours of fun in store for you in Margate. We counted no less than 3 arcades where you can while away the day participating in this very activity. And, not ones to leave a task unfinished, we diligently stayed there until every single coin had gone, though we did have two plastic keyrings to show for our efforts. From the cosy confines of the arcade we watched as people blew past us, swept along by the howling gale with their inside-out umbrellas in front of them. On the beach, a solitary intrepid child was trying - without much success, it must be said - to operate one of the swingboats alone. The bouncy castle lay deflated and sad-looking, like some unfortunate character in some children's film. A makeshift stage optimistically promising live music sat rain-lashed and abandoned next to a hot dog stall which seemed to be doing an inexplicably roaring trade.

Deciding that perhaps we had exhausted the delights Margate can offer on a typically wet and windswept bank holiday, we popped into the sweet shop on the way back to Dreamland to buy some proper English Seaside Rock for some friends. We found some immediately. Trouble is, it says "Made in Blackpool" on it.

The English Seaside. Once you've been, why would you ever choose to go abroad again?

Don't be a fool again / they're just a bunch of hooligans

Everyone's familiar (I assume) with the 3am paranoia associated with too much alcohol the evening before - the sudden realisation you're awake, you're alert....and what was it exactly you did last night again?

But you can't blame last night's drinking session with my dad for how I feel this morning. For yesterday was, on balance, a horrible day. On the one hand, I won a toy meercat playing darts at a fairground in Toquay. He is called Malcolm, and he will be coming home with me. It was a proper fairground, with dodgems and plastic ducks which for £2.50 you can hook to win small, underwhelming toys made in China, the kind of fairground that brings back floods of nostalgia first forged in the travelling fair in the Ribblesdale Baths carpark circa 1986. On the other hand, we found ourselves at the City away game yesterday mere metres away from a group that calls itself, inexplicably, Bradford Ointment, and which is, as far as we knew, banned from both home and away games. Too cowardly to go up to them in person and tell them to shut the **** up (probably just as well, as I discovered later) I'm going to go some small distance to making up for this by blogging about it now.

Middle class person that I am (and I realise I shatter this illusion slightly by pronouncing class was a hard "a"), I've always been mildly embarrassed by the behaviour of some City fans at away matches, but it's always been just on the right side of tolerable. Polite Barnet fans, announcing that they would like to welcome the visitors from Bradford, are probably a little dismayed when said visitors then sweep into a chorus of "What the fucking, what the fucking, what the fucking hell is that?" to the tune of "Guide me Oh Thou Great Redeemer" and directed at Barnet's mascot, the man-dressed-as-bee Mr Bumble, but this is in reality quite funny... right? Similarly, when a marginally rotund player for the opposing team is substituted for another and leaves the pitch, they're fair game to be on the receiving end of comments like "Nice one, we can see now." Aren't they? That's just banter. But yesterday a small cluster of "fans" took this to a whole new level, and it wasn't a level I liked one bit.

I've been to more Bradford matches than I can count. I've been to such salubrious locations as Aldershot and Accrington, and yet, apart from the somewhat over-exhuberant use of the f word on occasions and the odd bit of personal abuse, I've never been truly offended by anything, and never have I felt ashamed to wear a City shirt.

Yesterday, though, all that changed. As the announcer at Torqauy generously proclaimed the arrival of the "Visitors" from Bradford, to general jeering and chants about "Southern Pansies" from the assembled mass of which I was a part, a little bit of me though "Oh, heck", but the rest of me was mildly amused. There's no danger, I thought. Torquay haven't conceded a goal in the last 9 of their home matches; they're top of the league. If we're the first team to break their run, well, all I can say is: Nice one, City! If not, well, there's no shame in that. We're at the seaside; it's a bank holiday next weekend. Who cares what happens?

I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of the match because, frankly, I know you couldn't care less, but let's just say that being one goal and one man down ten minutes in is not the start we were hoping for, and this only served to fuel the passions of the group next to us. Bradford Ointment are, I discovered on reading up on them later, a "professional" rent-a-gang, a group of "committed football hooligans" who've proudly asserted on national television their intent to cause general disruption wherever they go, and a group many of whose members are currently banned from going anywhere within five miles of away games. On the evidence of yesterday, those who proudly associate themselves with it (they had displayed an enormous BNP-style England flag which was tied from the top to the bottom of the standing terrace in such a way that a whole exit route was blocked, much to the dismay of my health and safety-obsessed husband) are also, for want of a better word, racists.

Amidst the torrent of carefully constructed criticism that basically ran along the lines of "Taylor, you're ****ing shit!! Your players are ****ing shit!! You're a bunch of ****ing ****s! Are you happy with this shit you ****ing ****?" the ringleader managed to call Torquay player Chris Zebroski (who I'm pleased to say then scored the second goal, securing the home team a comfortable win) something I'm not even going to repeat on a blog for reporting purposes, a word which I've not heard since the 80s and for which I'm both appalled and amazed he wasn't carted off there and then. Later on, after an admittedly half-arsed display by the Bantams, he decided to target the players themselves, screaming at Zesh Rehman for being a "Paki", his tirade culminating in the outburst "You think you're so ****ing good for community ****ing relations!! Why don't you ****ing go home you P*** bastard!"

Nobody did anything. Nobody, including us, dared to, unless you can count me (and, I noted, a few others) talking to a steward, who shrugged his shoulders and said they were "onto him" but there was no police support and there was basically nothing they could do. They are probably right; the group, as they were (this might have been a new contingent altogether) are, as far as I understand it, well known for starting violent fracas both in and out of grounds, and such a fight on a terrace packed with families and with one exit route blocked could have been very dangerous indeed. At the same time, though, I type this with tears of anger and disappointment pricking in my eyes. What must the players have thought of us? And the home supporters? We have a reputation in Bradford as a city bristling with racial tension, but this is untrue; it is unfair. We are a warm, generous, vibrant city. We have faced more than our fair share of social and economic problems but we are bouncing back every day. Thugs like this only serve to enhance this bad and largely undeserved reputation, and at this I am both upset and ashamed. They have no place in football - the FA claim to be taking a hard line on racist abuse - and they have no right to associate themselves with Bradford City.

I didn't stand up to them, because frankly, as I have admitted, I am a coward. But I am doing the best I can to rectify this. I am, as the chant says, City til I Die, and so Bradford Ointment I say this to you: get the hell off my terrace. You are not welcome here. And to Torquay fans: my sincerest apologies.

Nth Degree

Well it's that time of year again. You know, the time of year when Admissions "accidentally" diverts their phone to my office, and everyone over 25 suddenly starts talking about "Our Day", as in "It was harder in our day. In our day nobody got As. In our day we had to take 12 3-hour exams in 4 days. In our day the exam papers were in code and you had to crack the code before you could answer the questions, and you had to memorise pi to 250 digits then write it on the exam paper in your own blood while Miss Whitham held a gun to our heads. Kids couldn't do that now."

Probably not. But in "your" day (I'm picking on the over-35s now) you didn't pay any fees, you got some free cash from the government that you wouldn't need to pay back and you could sign on in the holidays.

Which is not going to be a problem for a significant number of students this year, because apparently there aren't any places. Now this isn't strictly true. I know this, because I've had a look. There are a smattering of places available if you wanted to try your hand at any of the following:

- Sports Surface Management (er...mowing the grass at the Oval? Being one of the people who has to break it to a baying mob of Bradford fans that the match is off because the pitch is waterlogged AGAIN?)
- Alternative Theatre (Hamlet on Pogo Sticks)
- Animal Behaviour - (the study of the centre of any provincial town on a Saturday night
- Customer Service - (presumably 3 years of honing such phrases as "I understand what you're saying madam, but..." and "I'm not authorised to answer that question")
- Emergency Studies (I need a library book - and quickly!)
- Equestrian Psychology (And how does winning the Grand National make you feel?)
- Foot Health (Podiatry for people who don't like long words)
- Music with Outdoor Studies (Playing the violin on a hill?)
- Pilot Studies (at City they call it Air Transport Operations, which makes it sound less like you'll be reading about Biggles and more, well, Degreeish)
- Risk Studies (3 years looking at risk assessments and tutting at blocked fire exits. My husband would love this!)
- Sport History (that would be SO useful for pub quizzes...)
- Television Design (I assume this isn't actually designing the televisions?)
- Pretty much anything if you're prepared to go to Bolton.

So there you go. If you've got your results but don't have a place yet, check out UCAS. It kept me amused for, ooh, at least 15 minutes.

One Skinny Latte. And a Pie.

Greggs has gone all... up-market. Yes, that Greggs. Greggs the Bakers Greggs. Greggs "Patrick McGuinness Does Our Ads and We Think That Adds a Touch of Class" Greggs. Greggs "If You Scrunch Up A Slice of Our White Bread it Turns Back to Paste" Greggs.

You get the picture.

But now Greggs on the Strand has redecorated. A shop that in the past would not have looked out of place in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre (I believe they have two there, in fact) reopened with a shiny new sign designed to look like overly-varnished wood, and a sort of 1970s-style breakfast bar along one wall at which you can perch precariously on a trendy chrome bar stool as you eat your Steak Bake and flick through one of the women's magazines that has inexplicably appeared there. Doughnuts and other such produce which used to sit tantalisingly under a see-through plastic counter for generations of kids to gaze at and implore "Pleeeease, Mum? Pleeeease?" are now proudly displayed in huge wicker baskets - the sort of thing that would attract the term "rustic" were this Hamstead or Kew Green, and that, conversely, attract flies and a touch-before-you-buy attitude from the Strand's fastidious clientele. You then go to the counter and are asked if it's "eat in or takeaway". Eat in?! Are you kidding? What would possess you to want to eat in a Greggs? Even Patrick McGuinness doesn't eat in Greggs, he takes his pasty away and eats it in the privacy of his own car while it pisses it down outside. Eat in?

It seems that to an extent this sophisticated exterior masks the same old Greggs, though. You can still get a Meal Deal, and a Meal Deal still includes a Grab Bag bag of crisps so big that even Gary Linekar might save some of it for later, and you still get a reassuring choice of Coke, Sprite or Fanta when it comes to the drink "option". But even the food itself is edging into suspiciously high-class territory. For a start, they seem to be catering for the health-conscious, and frankly, my health is not something that's generally in the forefront of my mind when I go into a Greggs. I've never stood in a Greggs and thought, "Oh, I'm glad to see the the chicken salad sandwich is now on wholemeal bread and contains low-fat mayonnaise", but rather something along the lines of "I really fancy a pie". But, in case you're interested, low-fat mayonnaise is now on the menu along with other new products which include "cupcakes" (SMALL cakes, to you and I) Steak and Mushroom Lattice (steak and mushrooms in fancy pastry, aka a Crap Pie) and Maple and Pecan Swirl (which sounds altogether too American for me to even investigate further).

And that's all very nice and admirable, but there's a Pret a Manger two doors down from this particular Greggs, and if I want an overpriced bit of fancy pastry in a paper bag I'll go there (they do "swirls" too - they have cinnamon in them and I'm ashamed to admit they're rather good...) But I don't want that from Greggs. I want instant sugar-based gratification from the likes of Jammy Biscuits, which are exactly what they say they are: bisciuits with jam in them, or a bun with its fake icing and underwhelming yet nostalgic glace cherry on top. I want slathers of full fat mayonnaise on my shiny white bread and the comforting assurance that a coronary could be just around the corner. I'm not really into Grab Bags or Fanta, but I appreciate the thought and would be sad to see them go.

So true to these sentiments, I went for a breakfast meal deal (being as I was in urgent need of sustenance on a Friday morning, having yet again fallen foul of the mistaken belief that Thursday night is the new Friday) in the form of two rashers of bacon in a big white roll, and a strong coffee.

"What kind of coffee would you like?"

They have different KINDS of coffee in Greggs? Don't mess with my hangover this early in the morning!

"Um...."

"Cappucino, Latte, Skinny Latte, or filter."

I didn't ask what was in a Greggs skinny latte. One sugar instead of three, perhaps? Semi-skimmed instead of full-fat milk? I'm assuming it isn't soya milk, but who knows these days? I chose the take away option and multi-tasked by walking down the Strand whilst eating and listening to Blur (God bless ipod shuffle) and got bacon fat on my blouse in the process.

There are no less than 7 branches of Greggs in Bradford; there are 5 in Blackburn; there's even one in the Arse End of Nowhere that is Nelson; you can look these sort of scintillating statistics up on their website, and I'm sad to say that I did. There are also 2 just on Lower Marsh Street in SE1, though I've never worked out why. Greggs, which Stuart Maconie singled out as a shining example of Northern greatness, is putting down roots in the South faster than you can say "Accrington Stanley? Who are they?" but in doing so it's changing.

Or, as one of my friends incisively put it "Gentrification: the final frontier".