We only got lost once, and only for a little bit, and Laureen said, quietly, “Are we in Zone Six?” We were in Barking, it turned out, and where, in my mind, Barking is a picturesque canine town with a greyhound tailor and a dachshund librarian, Barking was in fact characterised by a distinct lack of dogs, sausage or otherwise. In Barking, the sky was a dirty white, though the sun’d been out when we’d left the Spence Bakery with waxed-paper bags of road trip treats, and in Barking the promise of a seaside holiday seemed to float off into the smudgy wind.

“I like to call it ‘freestyle navigation’,” Marc said. “Turn right here.” At the corner of nowhere and nothing, the unmarked street veered ninety degrees into the future. Emily – she was dressed in blue and white like the promise of a seaside holiday – put the car into drive and kept going straight.

I don’t know how they did it, those two up front by the iPod plugged in, but what with the combined powers of freestyle navigation and the UK road atlas (£1.99 on special), in no time the dirty streets of the city had been replaced by shades of green and gold stretching out left and right. “The countryside!” I said. “This is great!” “I hadn’t heard that in a while,” Marc said. The signs started to count down the miles to Whitstable, then, and on the horizon the sky was blue and bluer.



Down a slope and straight ahead, Whitstable was nestled in between the sea and the Sunday sky. We rolled down the windows to smell the salt on the air. We cruised past the Chinese restaurant and the chip shop. From the harbour the fishy pong; we kept going. The beach was at the bottom of a grassy knoll: we parked and picked our way down, blankets and towels and picnics in hand. In Whitstable, brightly painted wooden huts stand like boiled-sweet houses in a row by the water. We set up shop in front of the candy cane one in red and white, the one with the wooden seagull next door.



We have a knack for picnics, is what we have, and it is as good a knack as any, especially because it brings with it the footloose and the fancy-free. Back in February, packing her bags to move to London, Laureen’d e-mailed, “Do you think we will picnic much? Should I bring a small cooler?” “Just wondering,” she’d e-mailed. This is one reason we have been friends this long, I think, because Laureen wonders important things. Sunday the cooler was full of cheese and prosecco. From our various bags we unpacked tomatoes and avocados and cheese-stuffed olives, we revealed blackberries and papayas and chocolate-covered strawberries, we disclosed homemade hunks of banana cake and heavy, sugar-dusted brownies. Marc surveyed the spread in front of us and said: “There is no meat.” “What?” Olive said, and there seemed to be an edge to his voice. “There is no meat.” They were solemn for a moment, these boys, before they tucked in, probably realising the fancy French bread wouldn’t last if they didn’t make their claims upon it soonest.



Afterwards we stretched out, because that is step two in the process of picnics, and an old-timey plane revved and rattled steadily in the sky. My arms were very warm, and my shoulders even more so. Marc and Olive were skipping stones on the water.

Olive and I took a walk to the right later, just before the laziness threatened to immobilise me. The walk to the right took us past the little girls in the Hawaiian skirts, past the motorised horse with ribbons in his hair, past the food van selling only jelly candies and licorice rope. A kid walked away with candy string trailing from her arms. Her smile was a candy smile. We passed huts orange and peach; striped in blue and white; trimmed, as if in icing, with a painted lacy border. We passed a set-up of shells like a missive from a mermaid.

All the way to the right, before the path turned to a rough stroke of sand through the high grass, the boys in skull-and-crossbones prints and crudely cut-off trousers hunched in the sun. Their skateboards were stuck with stickers that said “Hate” in scratchy letters. Their hair fell into their eyes. They swooped and flew in a concrete skate park. They chewed on candy and they left a cloud of skunk in their wake. There was this one girl, in black, with black hair and black eyes, and her black T-shirt had been rolled up to just under her breasts. The boys liked her.

We passed the ice cream van on the way back. Apparently the proprietor’s name, and it must have been clear to him when he was but a wee lad what he was going to do with his life, is Mr Ices.



Two thumbs up for a seaside holiday!, what with the smell of grilled fish from makeshift barbecues on the pebble beach, and the sailboats leaning into the breeze. We began to make enquiries into a beach hut, Laureen and I did, accosting a man and a woman as they headed for their door. “How do you get one of these?” the man said, and he was jovial because he knew. “You get lucky!” he said, chuckling at his own joke. “You know how much they cost?” the man said, and he smiled wide. “Fifteen to seventeen thousand pounds!” In his eyes danced the rest of his retirement days, and you could almost see the gentle waves that lap-lap-lapped at the edges of his dreams. “Best thing we ever did,” he said, and he was genuinely pleased. “Well,” he said, turning to his wife behind him, “we have to go and cook a three-course meal now.” “Oh!” Laureen said. “We’ll join you!” He was smiling still when he said, “No.”



We lolled about till we could loll no more – truly there can be too much lolling about – and then we tripped up the grassy knoll and collapsed into the car. Right and right again took us into town, where the multicoloured pennants hung in the air like a parade day. “If I were mayor of a town,” I said, “I’d have bunting up all the time.” “Would each flag,” Marc said from the front seat, “say ‘This is great!’?” “Why, yes,” I said, and I leaned back and was proud.

We strolled past the fish place – “Fish Luncheons and Suppers,” the sign read, because the word luncheon is great – and the shop called Sundae Sundae, and the streets were named Harbour Street and Sea Wall and Beach Alley. We wandered by the harbour, where 50 p bought an oyster wet and shiny as an eyeball. Emily bought a single prawn. The Sunday market was out, with handmade cushions on sale, and trinkets, and knick-knacks, and baubles, and gewgaws. There were rainbow-coloured kites and a giant plastic ice cream cone. One man sat at an electric keyboard and hollered “A Groovy Kind of Love” into his mic. It was great.



We shared a jug of Pimm’s at the brewery, and still the sun was hot and glarey, though we could see it was sinking slowly. We shared a bag of crisps, and then another, and we’d been noshing all day and I was ravenous. “There’s this place,” Marc said, “that looks like the kind of place where you could get your head kicked in. But apparently the food is very good.” There was no question, you know, you win some, you lose some. We drove into neighbouring Seasalter, past the sheep grazing in the fields, in the direction of a good head-kicking.

Just around the bend from the telephone pole standing askew in the weeds, the Sportsman was closed for Sunday dinner (there was no mention of head-kickings). The good people at the bar pointed us in the direction of Whistable.



Upstairs at Pearsons Crab and Oyster House, they put us at a large wooden table in the glow of the setting sun. There was chard and roasted garlic soup on the Specials menu. I sat with my back to the sea, on the other side of the table from Marc and Emily. Emily in the light at that time of day was a poster child for a seaside holiday. She had her sunglasses on, and a fringe, and there was a sunflower on the table. She was looking out the window at that very point the sun hits the water. She looked like a champion diver dreaming about taking the plunge.