She liked to ride some waves

'Touching you cause you're touching me.'

Our accommodation is a backpackers hostel on the road to Fistral Beach. Inside the walls are decorated with pages from surfing magazines and the model shoots from FHM. The shower room has a hole in the door at a height that -- should we want to -- me and a couple of the taller members of our party could watch people showering without too much difficulty. Our bedroom sleeps six in bunks that look like they were made by a blind carpenter with a serious dislike for backpackers, and they are so precarious that going to bed itself is an extreme sport. Amazingly I manage to sleep two nights on the top bunk without falling off. The best thing about the room is the view; we can see all of Fistral Beach if we just stick our heads out of the window. The worst thing about it is the ledge just underneath, which seems to be an early morning meeting place for the noisiest shitehawks in Newquay.

Down in the lounge the television appears to be stuck on the Extreme Sports channel. It later becomes clear that every television in Newquay is visited by a similar affliction. This pretty much sums up Newquay -- if it's not about surfing then you'd be better off going down the coast to another resort. Every other building is a surf shop, and the remainder is made up of places for the surfers to eat (all proud of their 'All Day Breakfasts!' and the 'Best Pasties in Cornwall') or places for the surfers to stay.

By night the town shifts its attentions from surfing to drinking. Anyone whoever watched Newquay Nights will be aware that there is a surprising number of pubs, bars and clubs in the town, although our party only visits about half a dozen of them. Even though it's late September the town is busy, and I shudder to think what it's like at the height of the season.

On our first night we end up in a deceptively large night club called Sailor's. My housemate is convinced we've walked into a gay bar, as the man-woman ratio is about 19. We begin to refer to it as Hello, Sailor's. It gets better though; by the end of the night the ratio is down to about 15 and we feel positively swamped in women.

The second night consists of much of the same; killer pool, cocktails, and drunken renditions of I believe in a Thing Called Love. We end up in a Walkabout Inn -- travelling 200 miles to end up in a chain pub -- catching the last few songs of a live band who in my drunken state appear pretty good.

I spend my days on the beach. I resist the temptation to get in the water myself, instead choosing to watch the others, check out the surfer girls walking up and down the beach, and throwing stones at the shitehawks with the two or three others who stayed on the sand.

Later . . .

She liked to defend her home town

'The crowd on a night out in Old Town are chiefly composed of wannabe yuppies, but no actual yuppies, as any young person with a university education has the sense to get far, far away as soon as humanly possible.'

Interesting article ripping into the place I currently reside in here. It is nice to know that someone else thinks it's 'a cultural void'.

Later . . .