An Unhappy Conclusion.

 We spent most of today walking around Scarborough, which is quite a big seaside town but probably my least favourite place of the whole holiday. To be fair, I think I still had a sour taste in my mouth from yesterday, so perhaps I wasn’t in the best mood to enjoy it.

I’d better start with yesterday then, even if I don’t much feel like going over it again. As I wrote before, I wasn’t impressed with Jack, though up until dinner I just about managed to keep my feelings in check. Then he started going on about how he was going to stable all these horses and make piles of money from them, dropping hints that he could show Mum how to run a yard properly. Everything was about money with him, and it was winding me up more and more.

It didn’t stop there. He turned the conversation to our wind turbines, half-joking that he and people like him were “paying Dad’s wages” through the subsidies, and that farmers like us would be sunk without them. The way he said it made it hard to challenge—said with a smile but meant to sting. Then, when Stephen started saying how he thought tidal flow was a better and more reliable energy source, Jack just cut across him mid-sentence and launched into something else altogether, bragging that he and Eva had been invited up to the hall for a cheese and wine evening. It was so obviously just another bout of one-upmanship.

I’d seen enough of that sort of behaviour in Scotland, always wondering why no one else spoke up. This time, seeing Mum and Dad talked down to in the same sly way, I’d had enough.

“Excuse me,” I said firmly. “I was listening to what Stephen was saying before you interrupted.”

Jack didn’t even look bothered. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he said.

“Well, I think it’s very rude to interrupt someone like that,” I answered, shrugging as if to say it was obvious.

“Katlyn!” Mum’s voice cut across from the far side of the table. One look at her face told me to stop there and then.

Later on in the van we talked it over. Dad backed me, saying he knew exactly how I felt and that he’d wanted to say plenty himself but managed to hold his tongue. Mum’s view was that, being guests in Jack’s house, we couldn’t go about answering back like that. But she did say she understood why I’d spoken up, and that I should just leave it now.

That was yesterday. Writing this a day later, I’m still not happy about it. I suppose I need to learn how to deal with people like him without letting them get to me so much.

Anyway, today was Scarborough. Along the seafront it reminded me a little of Whitby with its shops and arcades, though it didn’t have the same character. Behind the front, the streets were full of shops that could have been in any other town across the country.

We spent most of the day walking around before finally sitting down for fish and chips, then drove home and got back just after seven.