After the recent bout of overcast weather that we’ve been unfortunate enough to call summer, last Friday saw a sudden burst of sunshine in the Platform office. We decided to rip up the hygiene rulebook and risk our precarious health by taking a trip to the scruffy stretch of ‘beach’ (dirty sand and pebbles) at Southbank. We even took our tops off – hold on to your quivering heartbeats, girls!!
WORDS AND PICTURES: CHRIS O’NEILL AND ROBERT FOSTER.
First the preparation - trying to find beach games in Central London is a bummer. Newsagents don’t stock scatch, or lilo’s, or even that cheap bat and ball game. We had to go to Hamley’s and buy real games. They’d sold out of cricket sets because the Ashes was and on everyone had gone ‘cricket-crazy’ (their words not mine). They suggested we go for an X-Stream Frisbee, which we bought like suckers for £5.
Getting the Tube to the Beach was a new experience and not a nice one. It was already hot and sticky, but because we didn’t want to change into our shorts in public we wore them under our trousers. This made us both really uncomfortable and tetchy. Bob took this photo to fill the silence; we only spoke when we lost our patience. I’m putting a brave face on the situation.
To perk us up into the summer spirit we bought a McDonalds Summer BBQ Special thinking it was the sophisticated, urbane thing to do.
This Ice Cream Man is just, like, soooooo typical of London. See, he’s way more creative than the provincial folk you find elsewhere in Britain. He had made a van out of what looks like a Toyota Hi-Ace and it really blended into the kooky arty stuff on Southbank – good work, friend.
Right next to Waterloo Bridge we found a good spot to get on to the sand and eat our ‘picnic’.
Putting out towels was a nerve wracking experience as we realized the sand was probably polluted with 600 years of raw sewage.
Still, didn’t put us off tucking into the grub. The burger was horrible.
We came to the conclusion that anything making a ‘guest appearance’ at McDonald’s is always going to be rubbish because it hasn’t had the chance to be criticized into perfection like the staples of the Value Meal menu.
Bob took his shirt off to eat. He said it felt liberating.
The environment made me want to wash my hands. There were loads of beer cans all over the place and plenty of broken glass. You definitely couldn’t walk on the sand in bare feet.
So when we stripped down we kept our shoes on.
I committed the first sin of beach etiquette by keeping my socks on; sophisticated city-folk on the beach or not, Skate Hi’s are just too uncomfy to rock without socks.
It was soon time to take out the X-Stream Frisbee. The fun snowballed from there.
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