¡¡¡¡Once a year most English families take an extended holiday. Until air travel became more common these family holidays were almost always spent in one of the coastal seaside resorts. Shops in the seaside towns sold buckets, spades, postcards, candyfloss1, toffeeª²apples2, sticks of rock3, and fish and chips.

¡¡¡¡Pitching4 their camps of brightly coloured canvas windª²breaks on the beach, English families spent days on end appearing to enjoy melting ice creams, leaking thermos flasks5 and sand in everything.

¡¡¡¡Nowadays the English start their holidays at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Manchester, Birmingham or Heathrow airports and fly over those winding English lanes, bound for6 Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Florida or anywhere sunny where they can still be guaranteed amusement arcades7, postcards to send home, and the reassuring smell of fried food.

¡¡¡¡There many carry on just as if they were still in Bognor, Blackpool or Brighton. They stick together, ignoring the existence of the natives, and spend most of the day lying in the sun. At night they drink, dance, and throw up8 in discotheques9 thoughtfully provided for the purpose by the locals.