‘You’re lovely,’ said Fausto blearily, sidling a little nearer along the double bed.  ‘Really nice.  You’ve got really nice ears, d’you know that?’  There was a pause while he squinted at me, and through the chipboard walls seeped the sound of girlish shrieks and a steady, rhythmic banging.  ‘Here.  D’you want some more of this?’  He passed the bottle of Eclipse actoss, leaning over to give a lingering view of fading acne scars and a couple of unshaven corners of chin.  There was a strong whiff of lager, supermarket aftershave and lechery.  ‘My mates all got laid this afternoon with the girls next door,’ said Fausto suddenly.  A short pause.  ‘But I’m not bothered.  Really, I’m not.  Here, stop looking so tense.  Relax!’  He slid closer, grinned, and grabbed one of my hands, rubbing hard.

The night, for Fausto at least, was progressing nicely.  Outside, the wind and snow tapped and whirled around the Butlins prefabs, and girls in featherweight dresses skttered drunkenly up the fire escapes.  Down at the Showboat, 4,000 of Britain’s brightest teenagers were getting as close as they could to oblivion.  The Zoo Ibiza Skegness Reunion 1995 - ‘the best value package since Linford bought his first cycling shorts,’ according to Club 18-30’s own marketing - was settling down to business in traditional style.

As a travel company, Club 18-30 prides itself on giving you that little bit extra in your package.  Alongside the free condom with your airline tickets, so they say, you can pick up all the sex and drugs you want, frolic to the joys of the pole game, go down on each other in  black plastic bags, and come up again with a hangover to boast about for a year’s worth of club dates.  ‘Beaver Espana,’ ran the ad campaign.  When 450 complaints were received by the ITC, the ads were withdrawn.  Bookings rose by 36%. 

When you’re back home, you can - as the company brochure promises - ‘Treat yourself to a weekend that will not only bring all those memories crashing back into the front of your mind, but will also leave you hankering after the next Club 18-30 experience.’  But the management had sounded distinctly unenthusiastic when I’d asked to watch those memories return.  It wasn’t, they said, the kind of publicity they were looking for.  So, armed with fantasy name, rank and mini-skirt, I set off through the first sleet of winter to Britain’s Funcoast World. 

Skegness is probably as close as you can get to the end of the world without falling off.  The nearest town is Grimsby, the nearest comparison Whitley Bay on a wet weekend.  On the way through the planed Lincolnshire fens, you pass through one sort of England: huddled hamlets offering Best Kept Village 1986, signposts for Mabel Enderby, scone-selling windmills.  Outside the bus shelters, a few token teenagers sit and get wearily stoned, waiting for the bus that never comes. 

Skegness is a different kind of England.  Forty miles from anywhere, suddenly there are flickering neon lights around the pizzerias and the world is full of Fun.  By the sea, there is Skegness pier, several arcades and mile upon duplicate mile of caravan parks.  In midsummer, perhaps Butlin’s Fun Coast might look like a place you would want to visit.  Just now, however, even the club reps are having trouble pretending this is pleasure.  Through the darkness can be seen several dripping funfair rides, a couple of loudly painted warehouse sheds and an almost-landscaped roundabout.  Once past the bag-checks and suggestive frisking, you are bundled into the shivering gloom to find a room.  Several portakabins later, Caroline from Wolverhampton looks up from painting her nails and turns down the strong men on TV. 

Caroline came here with some friends, aiming, ‘to have a really good time, get drunk, get laid, that sort of thing.’  Just now, she looks anxious and a little miserable.  There is a knock on the door and the two boys from next door waver in, slopping something in a bottle which smells like a mix of ethanol and raw sewage. ‘Here,’ says the smaller one, waving his crutches at us, ‘if you see an ambulance outside tonight, it’s cause we’ve got alcohol poisoning.’  ‘Yeah,’ says his mate, ‘We’ve already finished three bottles of scrumpy and a couple of these.’  Caroline and I look properly awed.

Outside, girls wrapped in Christmas-present jerseys are cooming out to hoot and stamp along the main arcade.  Theere are a couple of games stalls, two souvenir stalls and a win-a-fluffy-parrot booth.  Amped-up gaggles of boys yell drunken greetings, and everyone drifts slowly towards the bars.  ‘Hi, Clare, great to see you,’ says a muffled figure on his way. ‘How’s about a shag sometime?’ Clare giggles and turns back to her mates.  ‘Stupid fat slag,’ the boy mutters as he walks on in search of faster satisfaction.

In the funfair arcade, the bar is piling through the Tennent’s Export cans, and one group is trying with the myopic concentration of the very, very drunk to construct a lager pyramid from their empties.  There is a shivering queue by the phones, and the occasional high-pitched wail from the front; ‘Aw, but Mum ...’  John Bon Jovi is giving it some ont he turntable, and the dancefloor is packed with nervy teenagers, prancing round their rucksacks and linking arms for an occasional Abba routine.  One guy dances alone, swinging his crutches and tapping his plaster out of time to the beat.  The girls have stripped off, revealing a standard-issue uniform of micro slip dresses, thigh-high lace-up boots and make-up thick as boiler cladding. 

Malcolm and Briain are up from London and are loitering, absorbing the warm, beery fumes.  Malcolm temporarily spoils his cool by taking a large pair of bottle-end glasses out of his pocket and slotting them onto his face.  ‘Can’t see a bloody thing,’ he mutters, ‘but I don’t suppose it matters much.  The effect’s just the same.’  They had both been to Ibiza the year before, but Malcolm said he didn’t remember that much of it and what he did remember he did not enjoy, since when he was not drunk he had sunstroke, and when he didn’t have sunstroke he was having his stomach pumped.  ‘But I think I’ll go back next year anyway, just to prove to myself that it really happened.’  He removed his glasses, grabbed my arm and hauled me onto the dancefloor, prancing enthusiastically to the Stereo MCs. 

Outside, a couple of boys were punching the joysticks of Mortal Kombat, and the small digital voice of the Jungle Book game repeated over and over, ‘Now I’m the King of the Swingers, the jungle VIP ...’ At the Showboat, ‘the UKs top jocks’ were just starting to warm up.  Boys in baggy things and Blurred haircuts stood clutching their cans, watching as the girls frisked and giggled in groups by the walls.  There seemed something practiced and cold in all this ritualised rebellion, coming to Butlin’s to drink like you would at home and shag a girl whose name and face you wouldn’t want to remember.  Nobody talked much, they just hunted and groped. 

The thudding beat and the strobe lights started up, and the wallflowers moved off the walls en masse like Chinese cheerleaders at a Mao rally, pushing forward towards the stage.  ‘Now,’ said DJ Chuck Nelson, a tight-hipped cross between the dull one from Abba and a suburban Lenny Kravitz, ‘I want you all to make some noise.  And if you don’t, then you’re either fucking queer, or you’re a lesbian.’  The audience, in an orderly fashion, made some noise.  In the ladies, there was a long queue and the occasional sound of scuffles and tittering from one of the cubicles.  ‘J’a get off with him?’ asked one girl.  ‘Yeah,’ said her friend, reapplying mascara. ‘Mouth smelt like the Ibiza toilets.’ 

Down in the Beach Club, wishful reps were filling in forms, pondering the £150-a-week staff salary and asking questions about what one did at the interview.  ‘That’s alright,’ said Tonya, swinging her badge and smiling to show a flash of metal braces.  ‘Mostly they just tell you to prepare for any eventuality.’  Was it hard work?’  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘But it ain’t really that hard, standing around talking to people and getting pissed every night.’

By midnight, both the bars and the girls were virtually bare.  Shaun, sitting in a shirt that was moving fast towards decolletage, was only halfway through his long, solitary mission.  ‘I started at 7am while we were still in Bristol,’ he said, indicating the pile of cans on the bar table.  ‘Had a couple of bottles of voddy on the way, got here at 2pm this afternoon, and been drinking ever since.  ‘Slike the song.’  He flapped an arm in the direction of the DJ, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough.’  It seemed a bit silly to ask why he was here.  ‘Get tanked, why else?’  Girls?  Sex?  Pleasure?  ‘Naaa.  Sod that,’ he said.  The only problem seemed to be the erratic supply of drugs.  Their van had been minutely examined by security at the gate, and he was still peeved at the full body search.

In Ibiza, he said nostalgically, ‘it was mental.  Pills, speed, grass, E, whatever you want; the place is rolling in the stuff.’  When he walked into the bar on the first night, four people offered him drugs before he’d even had time to get to the drinks. ‘Fucking fantastic,’ he said dreamily.  ‘I got so blasted all week.  I felt so ill by the end.  It was fucking great.’ 

I went to find a coffee.  On the way through the arcade, now splattered with patchworks of vomit, a figure disengaged itself froom a group of boys.  ‘Hey,’ it said, ‘Smile.  Why you look so sad?’  I didn’t explain that it was late, I was tired, I wasn’t drunk, stoned or high, I thought I had a bad case of tinnitus coming on, and it was beginning to snow.  ‘D’you want a drink?’ he said, shoving me towards the gloom of the Portakabins.  ‘Rum and coke?  Eclipse?’ 

Upstairs, Fausto - ‘They call me the Mancunion Italian Stallion’ - flicked the Sun out of the way, poured himself a generous measure of neat rum, and turned up the heating.  He was down here with his mates, he said, ‘just to get absolutely hangin’, you know?’  His girlfriend was absolutely fine about it, he said, blinking a little too rapidly.  ‘See, how I see it is, you got to play the field, experience life.  You’re still in test mode, you should be experimenting, see?’ 

He moved closer and made a grab for my shoulders.  There was a sudden disconcerting aerial view of pubescent chest hair and breathy libido.  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘You’re like, a really nice girl, you know that?’  He peered down at the bottle of rum.  ‘And, he said, not taking his eyes off the spirit level, ‘you’ve got really nice eyebrows.’  I bolted.  ‘I’m always here for you,’ cried Fausto as I walked away.  ‘Room 88, second floor.  Don’t you want to party?’