Getting deliberately and totally drunk in Watchet

Next morning, Sunday, up early. I must have been the only person at the Butlins music festival minus a hangover. Day three, and I was yet to hear a live musical note or get myself an altered consciousness. I walked into town along the promenade feeling ever so noble. Perhaps I might go to church, I thought, and underline my great goodness. I savoured an image of my new pals, hands on hips, indignantly saying to me, ‘So where were you last night?’ And my answering, ‘I had an early night.’ And them saying, ‘And today? Where were you today?’ And me saying simply, ‘Church.’

The sea was flat and grey. Other festival-goers, cold and crapulent, were slouching grimly into town, as though on a forced march. The promenade ran out near a quaint old railway station. I was surprised to see one. I’d imagined that the hills of Exmoor were a barrier to every line of communication except the unbelievably stoney, winding road that had brought me here.

I crossed the road to see if it was still functioning. The booking office was a homely, pre-Beeching affair, smelling of fresh paint and coal smoke. A loud whistle. A train was about to leave. A steam train. ‘Don’t worry about a ticket,’ said a man in a peaked cap with an unguarded, unhurried, perhaps pre-Beeching air. ‘Buy one on the train. No need to hurry!’ he called after me, as I broke into an anxious trot past the second-hand bookstall.

I climbed aboard and passed through the train as far as the buffet. The carriages smelled of dust and smoke. The few passengers on either side seemed to be of a type: mild, elderly, quietly ecstatic. The buffet was a fully stocked bar, with upside-down gin, vodka and whisky bottles, big ones, on prominently displayed optics.