Owlstretching time was right. Butlins was the most striking part of my vacation. It was like an episode of “the Prisoner”, if Marillion had done the soundtrack. You could tell the place was once a WWII POW camp, but now with new improved water slide and country disco. It was hard to find a way out of Butlins once you were in it.
We watched line-dancing lessons, and I had to physically restrain my husband, who kept tyring to shout “Stop! Turn back from the Abyss!” It was very surreal to hear English accents coming out from under cowboy hats. We kept going to the skyline pavilion and trying to figure out what was fun about it. I could facepaint circles around the Butlins facepainter
Butlins is actually a nice place for a music festival. Three thousand people disappear into it with room to spare, and it is nice to have little cabins instead of a tent in a field. Also, Butlins has its own pubs, which resulted in drawing the party crowds away from the sleeping crowd.
We had a half-board cabin. Everything anyone has ever said about British food came true. I tried everything. Carrots were boiled into pastiness. The fish could not be distinguished from the chips. The roast beef was like week 10 in cadaver lab. I failed to understand the yorkshire pudding, but I did use it to beat things with. The broccolli soup and chicken soup apppeared chemically identical. The Thai curry was bland and insipid. I did like the idea of hot custard on cake. If I hadn’t found a Tesco’s we would never have survived. There were no fruits, veggies (other than carrots) or even fiber at most meals. At breakfast they fried the bread and boiled the bacon. We almost set fire to the place trying to operate the toasters, but that was probably our fault. Everyone else did it, too.
We had no electric outlets in our cabin. We brought our own towels. We had no volume control on our TV, so to turn down the sound, we packed our towels around the speakers.
The Laundry was a money-munching horror. We eventually had to dry our clothes by spreading them over every flat surface in our room. This was okay because our mattresses were sealed in plastic. If you put 2 suitcases in our cabin, there was no room on the floor and you had to stand on a bed, or in the bathroom.
If you ever leave your husband’s side at a music festival, guys will try to pick you up. Usually it seems to go: “Himyname’sPeteandIworkoncomputersnaddoyouwanttogetadrink…!?”, but this is probably because I go to prog fests. The British guys were way more smooth, using geographical and historical anecdotes, or leading with “Are you here with your parents? Oh, you don’t look old enough to be married” (Extra points for saying this sincerely. I would recommend Marillion festivals for single prog girls).
The thing that amazed us the most was the fact that half of the people at Butlins were not there for the music festival. They were there for a Holiday by the Seashore. It did not matter that it was the middle of March and stingingly cold when the harsh wind whipped the salt spray on your frozen cheeks. They were enjoying it. British holiday-goers may be the toughest people in the world.