I went to Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, to attend the first SRNT conference on the illicit reanimation of the dead. I wonder if Transylvanians ever tire of those jokes. I bet they don't. I bet they're as fresh and welcome every day as the morning dew. The conference hotel was 1960s sci-fi on the outside and purple carpet and bossa nova on the inside; that's what's known in the hospitality industry as covering all the bases. The conference was fine. I gave a talk and no one threw any bottles.
From Cluj, I went to Weymouth in Dorset. I waited for an Uber at 4AM in a dark lobby where hotel staff lay invisible on the couches, suddenly sitting upright at intervals like startled vampires. At dawn, I was waiting in a little blue-and-yellow airport full of signs I couldn't read and thought might be anagrams. Passport control, standing on a crowded staircase waiting for the transporter to the plane, flight, Luton airport, queues, crowded shuttle to Paddington, train to Westbury, suitcase-towing sprint for connecting train, walk to a little hotel opposite the beach. Of all this, the flight was the worry, because it was at 6:15AM and it was with Wizz Air, the airline that spotted room between RyanAir and the bottom of the barrel and dove to fill it. (Not many airlines fly Cluj-London direct.)
Weymouth was a Victorian beach resort, and some of the attractions that drew the very first generation of mass tourists are still here: donkey rides, "amusement parlours", Merry-go-Rounds that play Rule Britannia, a Ferris wheel, and a Helter Skelter, which is a zanily-painted conical tower with a slide around the outside. In the summer, it must be thronged with children beguiled by the magic of Victoriana; but the September-weekend visitors fall broadly into three groups: elderly people on mobility scooters, people with hand tattoos, and families with the kind of kids whose idea of a good time is to sit on a cold beach breaking rocks with other rocks.
As beach resorts go, Weymouth is uniquely clean and wholesome. Queen Victoria looks down censoriously from plinths and towers and building facades, and there's nothing to displease her. If you want cheap cocktails in plastic cups or to visit a strip club or to commemorate your visit with a bad tattoo or by getting your tongue forked, you simply can't. Even its sillier shops have some character. The ska store, for example. Is it an appeal to nostalgia or the last surviving ska stronghold? It doesn't seem to serve a local market. On the music scene, I can only say that there was a busker singing Oasis songs in a warbling soprano and a man on a bus wearing an Elvis Lives sweatshirt.
Weymouth is joined to the "island" or Portland by a pebbly barrier beach, and the walk takes you through its beautiful harbour, where you can rent equipment for recreational crab fishing, past a cove where people are stripping down for a swim, a bird-watching spot where men in camo lie like snipers behind powerful telescopes, and on to Portland Castle, a gun fort built by Henry VIII. The man who sells tickets at the castle is in a jovial mood because the Disney cruise ship that was due to dock nearby had to stay away because of high winds.
To the west, the coastal trail runs along a beach where a metal detectorist works, dragging his spade noisily behind him, past a storm-damaged resort and on to crumbling clifftops; and the loop back takes you to a dozen bright and cheerful little attractions: Sand World, a miniature railway, a piracy-themed mini-golf course, a midway, and something called "Sea Life", which has penguins and is divided into zones offering different kinds of quasi-educational sea-themed fun.
On a rainy September Sunday, the amusements are wrapped in nets and tarps, the pedal boats are chained up, the beach "chalets" are empty, and hungry gulls contemplate the empty beach with the insane outrage with which gulls contemplate everything. The lean season is starting for employees of creaky waterfront hotels and dicey chipperies, just as it did for their forebears when the last consumptive urchin of the summer reeled away from the Helter Skelter.
Tomorrow I go to Dartmoor, where I expect to be sucked into a bog.
