Joyland

I dreamed about a baby. So small that it must have been newly born. It was crying happily. I was in a big bed. I decided to offer it my milk, wondering if it might come back like that.

My daughter had been talking about Turkey that morning in the car. And how funny that a country should be named after meat. I decided to bring Cyprus into it, though I knew very little; about how it was a bit Turkish and a bit Greek and how both those countries were fighting about who owned it - like Ireland. You know, with the army there and everything. It suddenly occurred to me that no she didn't know and that I was all she had. And then it occurred to me that Ireland was an island. A bit like the turkey thing.

I started going on about how good Greek restaurants often had owners who came from Cyprus when my daughter asked if people in Turkey ate turkey. I wondered why I hadn't wondered that. Suddenly I realised my cod knowledge didn't matter (another phrase for another morning). She'd work it all out somehow.

That night you and I decided to go to Yarmouth. There was this row of places. The menus were all out on bits of card; some hand written, some done with plastic letters. I wondered how many ways it was possible to write steak and chips. All the interiors looked kind of similar. Dark and empty. We agreed that it was a particularly bad sign when the owner seemed to be hanging about outside. Suddenly I saw the words Vine Leaves and we decided.

I think it was Greek, the restaurant. Kind of dark brown. It had curtains you could close like a confessional between the booths. For extra privacy presumably. A row of raffia-bottomed bottles were waiting on the open glass fridge. I looked up and saw that the whole ceiling was criss-crossed with thick brown bamboo poles. They must be a bugger to dust.

The woman in charge of dusting (of everything, probably) looked a bit like me and a bit like Nana Mouskouri. It was difficult to see behind her thick black glass frames but I felt she rolled her eyes when I ordered the Moussaka.

I couldn't help it.

The man had been very polished with his cheerfulness. He must have found it so difficult to switch it off. There was a big sign on the door: open six days a week from 5.30 - midnight. It was closed one day a week but the felt tip had smudged on that bit so you couldn't see when it was. Maybe it was on purpose.

The restaurant faced what could have been a great view of the sea. Instead a newish looking bus stop half blocked the view. The other half was dominated by an enormous open air TV mounted on a concrete pillar. Wimbledon was playing in the half light as it half blocked us. You wondered why they hadn't provided seating on the green in front of it. I wondered who “they” were as usual. There was a single bench. With a wino. I wondered if the TV ever got switched off either.

We'd looked across the sands. Neither of us had ever set foot on Yarmouth beach before. Except that time I'd been mugged and was looking for the culprits who'd run from Joyland onto the crowded beach. But that had been years ago. And I hadn't been with you then had I.

As our feet had touched the sand I'd looked across and saw a single stripey hut. It could've been France. You saw a bar on the pier called Long John's - open every night. We decided to go there for pudding.

We shared a starter. It was interesting dating someone naturally thin. Who thought thin (like thinking in French if you spoke fluently).

You'd put on weight since you'd met me but it didn't matter. You'd never be fat to me.

Late Elvis was playing. That real showtime sound with lots of back up. Then the Carpenters came on. Then some seventies band you knew really well. And it felt like the perfect soundtrack and I got all excited about my childhood with imaginary cocktail parties and Val Doonican.

The food was rich but after two large glasses of cold white house wine I decided to have my birthday party which I didn't even know I was having in this very restaurant. Long John's was shut so we decided to go up some sticky stairs to a place with another huge TV showing loud football. There was a terrace for smoking. I glanced to my right. It looked like someone had thrown a whole bottle of Domestos over a group of giggling women. Obviously a good place to pull you said. I felt a bit jealous.

Sulking on the smoking terrace I launched drunkenly into an ill-thought out tirade about ordinary people. And you said that this was what most of the world was made of. I looked over to two couples smoking happily together on one of the tables under the biggest yellow umbrella providing shelter from the bright neon lights above.

There was a tower to our left. I thought it might be a revolving restaurant or some sort of lookout. It was pitch black so whatever it was it was closed. In fact the whole of Yarmouth had seemed pretty quiet. You suggested that perhaps it was only really open for four weeks of the year. I decided that you were really good at saying things like that.

I looked at the pictures I'd taken. The Art Nouveau palace, the scrap metal heap of cars and you, sticking your thumbs up in front of a sign saying "Wobbly World", with nothing behind you but the flat sands stretching out.

I'd gone a bit funny when we got home. I hadn't realised I'd left the radio on and I could half hear this sound of music. I lost a contact lens and, looking through my chest of drawers, found a piece of foil. Inexplicably assuming it was some sort of left over drugs I opened it dramatically. It was one of my children's teeth. Put there hastily after a swift tooth fairy money drop. You know, when the fairy's supposed to have taken it and you haven’t time to put it in the bin.

I found my lens. You switched the radio off.

I was too full of Moussaka to make love properly but we tried at least. Still at that stage.