Dude, where's my trustfund?

School’s out, beers are in and the creme de la creme get clotted at Rock in Cornwall, destination du jour for toff on hols. All aboard the Land Rover for lust, lager and laughs, ya!?

Hello! from Rock in Cornwall! Lots and lots and lots of jolly things happened at Rock last summer, but the best was when Camilla Anderton got off with Will Tunstal-Chambers, while Jessica Ring-Binder and Miles Grouse-Twitstock walked into the bedroom to find Esmeralda Von Bismarck III reaching into the wetsuit of Benedict de Squanderington-Trustfund, third Earl of Preposterous behind the ottoman as...

   OK! So all that's made up - but no matter. Lots of jolly things will also be happening here this year, because Rock - a scattering of guest houses and cottages, one pub and a modest beach all tumbling into the peaceful waters of the Camel Estuary on the North Cornish cost - is the destination for a breed of privately-educated, independently wealthy and floppily-haired teens who wear collars at a perpendicular to the horizon and pronounces the word 'bloke' as 'blake' and okay as 'AK'. And this being the part of the years where torturous GCSE and A-Level exam sitting are a fading memory, it means the immediate future is a vortex just waiting to be filled with beer and snogging all the way to September. Unfortunately for the permanent residents of Rock, several hundred or so blue-bloods choose to celebrate the fact by getting as Cornish pastied as possible in this corner of England, and no matter how much breeding and decorum is thrown into the equation, there's going to be trouble. AK?

Once upon a time, Rock was just a nice place in the heart of Betjeman country, an area so named for its capacity to induce adjectival diahorrea among those who gaze upon its lush, magnificent, enchanting, verdant, pastoral splendour. From the tables on the terrace of the Mariners, Rock's only pub, you can stare across the Camel estuary where speedboats zip between moored dinghies, over the sands and up to where the wind farms scythe the skyline above Padstow, a picturesque small town that's a ten-minute bob across the estuary.

And then your gaze swings back to the road outside the pub where the sun glints on a road sign notifying the ban on public drinking - enforceable by a £500 fine - underneath which is a crushed Stella can. For several months each summer, this area of outstanding natural beauty becomes an area of outstandingly pissed posh people.

Last year, Rock made 'news' when the papers followed primo poshoes kids Wills and Harry Windsor down to this Posh Kid Paradise, and stumbled across their contemporaries getting DRUNK, having POSH SEX, possibly doing STREET DRUGS and indulging in exactly the kind of GOOD TIME that is the birthright of every 14-18-year-old and the excruciating nightmare of every right-thinking Telegraph and Daily Mail reader in the land.

But just now, as he sips on a coke in the afternoon sun, 18-year-old A-Level finisher Harry really can't see what the fuss is all about.

'I don't know the papers bother really,' he murmurs. 'There's nothing going on here. I mean look at it,' he gestures, 'there's one pub which has really strict alcohol rules, a two-mile walk to a beach which is normally cold and wet and there's police kicking sand on the fires. Rock is just like a circuit; It's like, 'I'm' going because you're going because he's going... And people are paying thousands of pounds to stay here.'

Correction: it's Harry's mater and pater who paying in the region of A Lot Of Money per week to stay at their the rented house behind the Mariner's. Conveniently, they keep disappearing round to their friends’, allowing a modest 13 or so of his mates to crash.

Harry has been coming here with his family since he was small, as have most of the 400 or so people locals refer to as 'emmets', the Cornish slang for ants. By way of an illustration of Rock's popularity, take what happened to Harry last year. Short by 50p for a round last year, he asked the mate sitting to his left to sub him - one Harry Windsor - and the Men In Black descended. Choppers appeared in the sky, blacked-out vans squealed to a halt. 'I was like... shit!' he quakes. You don't, it seems, ask heir to the throne to chip in for your next Breezer.

Things like that don't happen often in Rock. But on the average Saturday night, were a chasm to open up in the ground beneath this Cornish Village, it would do for 50 years' hence of MPs, captains of industry, supermodels and pioneers in the fields of technology, arts and culture. And depending on which side of the class divide you're inhabit, that might not be such a bad thing.

Harry is Rock Chap incarnate. He and his 17-year-old chum Simon wear sandy Timberlands and sailing tops by Crew, a local company whose jolly pastel seafaring clothes are the mark of Rock's summer deputation. With their plummy diction and an umblemished radiance of impeccably-bred health that would melt clotted cream at a hundred paces, it's not exactly difficult to spot Rock's summer contingent among what few locals remain.

Harry has just finished his A-Levels and will be going for Bournemouth to pursue his interested in product design and, more importantly, to chase girls and drink beer. Toothsome Simon - currently A-levelling his way to a better life through economics, Law, Media and business - has spent his hols so far alternately floating about in Harry's dinghy and tearing up the beach (it's legal) in the Land Rover his dad bought him for his 17th birthday.

In case you're wondering why everyone comes here, there's a simple answer: because everyone comes here. So far this year, Simon and Harry have clocked India and Coco Banks, daughters of famous fashion bloke Jeff; someone whose dad owns Homebase; at least one earl; and someone called Alice Rothschild, who's as posh as nails. Prince Harry is apparently in the vicinity too.

'You get very, very specific groups, and they all stick very close together. The Radleigh boys, the Eton boys, Stowe people...

 '...Cheltenham Ladies College,' continues Simon. 'I walked home with someone from Cheltenham Ladies last night. She was wasted. See, all the girls here,' he's pointing out, 'are all thin with blonde hair and wear Tight polo shirts, bandanas, collars up. They all look really the same.'

   Harry: 'but that's a good thing - because they all look fit!'

   Simon: 'There's group of girls who look absolutely stunning!'

   Simon: 'And there's a group of girls down here that you know are absolutely minted.'

   Have you got a girlfriend, Harry?

   Harry: not down here [grins]. I heard a really sly saying: if they're out of sight they're out of mind! There's loads of getting off...'

Simon : that's why people are here. For the pull. Tonight's the night. Tonight will be a very heavy night.'

What ho! From the driveway adjacent to the pub, a Porsche Carrera pulls off, containing the man who recently bought the Mariners, and his daughter. If you were to cruise along behind it down the twisted lanes around Rock, you'd need a very big abacus indeed to count the numbers of flash Audi S3s, Land Rover Freelanders and pearlescent black Golf GTIs that zip past. When Simon says', 'there's lot of money down here' it only take a 100-yard spin down to the road to see what he means.

At sunny Polzeath, a surfing beach a few miles down the beach where it become patently clear that 'the season' at Rock is doing for harmonious class relations in the west Country what Garry Bushell is doing for gay rights. Pull up onto the beach car park, avoiding the sandcastle, step round families in matching wetsuits and notice the way the local lads manning the surf hire stall are appraising four well-sunned girls who have 'public school' running through them like, erg, Rock. 'Girls like that are only good for one thing,' one of the lads generously observes. No prized for guessing what he means.

When society mag Tatler ran a fashion story pages of fashion shot on the beach hereabouts, it made a star of one of its models: 16-year-old Shrimpy Balfour, a schoolgirl whose lustrous skin, teeth in braces, unmistakeably upper-crust provenance and rather daft name probably epitomise everything the locals love to loathe about Rock's high rollers. However, Caroline, Andrea, Zara and Sophie are most adamant that Shrimpy is 'simply lovely'. The foursome have just finished GCSEs, and can't decide whether they came here for the boys, the sand and just because everyone else did. Either way, they know Harry Winsdor. In fact, they know loads of people here.

'Ya - a *lot*,' says Caroline. 'Ex-boyfriends everywhere! But everyone is say nice.'

'Everyone know everyone here,' Sophie jubilantly trills. 'But you're not known by your name: it's Kenneth's sister or Jasper's ex-bird. You network and meet so many people. It's so different to the city. You can just got up to someone and say 'Hi!' or whatever.'

Not that the cheery 'Hi!' is likely to be extended to the surf hire fella. When it comes to interaction between visitors and locals, a punch-up between your boyfriend's nose and a Padstow lad's resentful fist is about as far as it goes.

HELLO! From the Mariners, epicentre of the vibrant Rock social scene. It's Saturday night, and all rational behaviour ceases as soon as the next Moscow Mule is emptied. What's the time? It's beer o'clock, stupid! Time to get orf one's head...

By 9pm, the exterior of the Rock's only pub looks like the start the london Marathon, with an exclusively young, bronzed, substantially blonde, generally tall and comprehensively thoroughbred constituency. By 9.15 the Mariners is rammed; by 9.30 it's heaving. By 9.31 it's posh person paté at the bar. Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' get its ninth selection on the jukebox. Boys guffaw, girls squeal, the road outside the pub fills to capacity, and the presence nearby of younger siblings who look like they should be on Ribena instead Heineken us duly noted by a copper who's parked up. Oh dear - someone else's parents will be footing as £500 fine for drinking in the street this week.

Rock is fun, there's no doubt. But there are rules, and in The Man's struggle to stop The Kids - particularly those in the proximity of royalty - having fun, in Rock, the odds are stacking in his favour.

With no shortage of notices commanding 'No ___ing", 'Anyone found with ______' and 'Do not _____', it's abundantly clear the Mariners licensee knows his pub is host to the full-tilt post-exam alcoblivion impulse of people who are convinced of their right to get plastered. There remains an underage drinking issue at Rock, which the he has been at pains to deal since he bought and partially refurbished the pub several months ago. Last year, it's said, there would have been no age barrier whatsoever to getting as shitfaced as possible. 'You couldn't get through the road,' Simon notes. 'People were absolutely fucked. Now... it's different. They want to calm it down a bit. They strip-search some people and were like, 'are you smokings drugs?'.

'And there are drugs about,' adds Harry, which is because of 'all the money here.'

The other rule, meanwhile, is that the most popular question in Rock is, somewhat unsurprisingly, 'which school did you got to?'. The upper crust's capacity to re-establish its communities wherever its alights depends on a system of accreditation in which the merest of social link provides ringing endorsement of your dynastic rah-rah cred. You went to XYZ school with Lucinda's brother's dealer's roommate's sister's personal shopper's ex-boyfriend's fencing partner? Well met, fellow!

However, the 'Does Not Compute' alarm urgently sirens in Rock when your initial pitch doesn't namecheck the toffiest of educational establishments. Scan the bar, and the fellow with his massive back to you, you read, rows for Eton. Harrow, Stowe, Ambleforth and Latymer are fully represented. If you fancy a really good laugh, try introducing yourself with something along the plebian lines of 'Hi, I'm Kev! From Croeswylan school!! In, like, Oswestry!!?!' and try to keep a straight face as the deathly incomprehension turns to terror and then naked disdain.

But it has to be said that life viewed through the impenetrable lens of pair of reflective Oakleys - standard issue for maturing PSBs - can hardly be sniffed at these days, and with its sailing holidays, birthday Land Rovers and surfeit of bred-for-looks Lucys and Chloes on tap, and there's little impteus to change it. But as British society's class barrier continues to dissolves, the genetic equation of Public School Boy - combining in assorted measures Stiff Upper Lip, Essence Of Chap, Tract of Land and Big Floppy Hair - increasingly include tincture of Geezer, as pre-eminent PSBs like Freddie Windsor, Ben Elliot and Dan McMillan co-opt the manner of a social class rungs below their own. Lord Mountbatten may be their antecedent, but Guy Ritchie is most definitely their main man. As Wills Windsor embraces hip, 'cutting edge' club culture it's surely only time before every PSB subscribes to the programme of reinventing this immensely uncool heritage as some kind of public schoolio 'bwoy'.

To some, it's true, privilege will always be a burden. As the volume of the Mariners' throng approaches somewhere near to the deafening mark, 17-year-old Morgan decides he would like to have his say. A rangy lad in denim, baseball cap and fat Nikes, against the pink Crew shirts, Timberland docksiders and chinos of his mates, Morgan looks more street than a ton of tarmac. He's halfway through his A-level and speaks in a clipped mockney that instantly marks him out as a Etonian who's trying hard not to be an Etonian.

Morgan: 'Basically, I was thinkin', why do people come down here?' he tuts. 'The pubs are shit, the weather is shit, the beach isn't that special, the clubs are nil. People come down here basically to meet people they know. They're all sloaney fuckers, blond and fit, innit? So basically what I'm thinking is... punani. Most people in public school are just fucking idiots. If you compare it to Ibiza, yeah? Ibiza's got wicked clubs, yeah? It's got infinite amount of pubs? And it's *for* the people. People only come here because you meet loads of people you know and fit birds, yeah?...

Morgan's mate Ed: '...and so what's wrong with that?'

Morgan [momentarily stumped]: '...'

Morgan clubs at Movement, Fabric and The End in London, but schools at Eton. 'I *do* go to Eton, yeah,' he bristles, 'and the fact is I'm not some sort of rudeboy. Just because I got dress sense, doesn't mean I can't got to Eton.' Added to his individualist style, he's also practised a junglist MC.

'I need a beat,'. he says.

Ed beatboxes a beat for him.

Morgan:  'Blowingituplikedynamiteaaii-gimmnearhymegimmesomeflow...' etc.

   Aiii... But here we have to leave Morgan and his complicated personal issues. Because now, as the clock ticks, or rather tears past 11 pm, Mariner's descends into near-chaos: bottles fly, an ambulance arrives, someone has an asthma attack, another gets punched, several angry boys in tracksuits - reckoned to be Padstow toughs - saunter off down the road. A typical Saturday night out, then, only with the kind of juicy class angle docusoap producers love. Oh look, here's the E4 camera crew again...

HELLO! finally, from Daymer bay where, after a 30-minute stumble along the dunes, past a deputation of parents making for their own private nocturnal beach session, to where the days end and love among the dunes starts with another can of Foster's, Marlborough Lights and a scattering of roman candles (fires have been banned this year). They come here every night, set down in knots and slowly collapse into each other's arms and laps.

But in the darkness just out of sight, someone keep chucking over handfuls of wet sand and disappearing. There's not a lot the patroling rozzer can do about it. In unison, Amelia and Katie groan deeply. Both 19, they're relative veterans of the post-pub Daymer 'scene' - where a grope in the dunes, a surreptitious toke and a bottle of Vodka is about as hardcore as it comes. Physically they're here; but as the techicolour riot of sarongs, bangles, beads and factor-zero tans attests, spiritually they're still in, like, Thailand, from where they've just returned holidaying.

'The locals get angry and I can see why, but if none of us came down, none of the houses would be rented, there'd be no business at all,' says Katie. 'The authorities will shoot themselves in the foot they carry on like this. Loads of families weren't going to come down because of all that. At the Osystercatcher in Polzeath it's even, like, driving licence and passport to be allowed into the front door!'

Still, it's a safe bet that as time sharpens their gap years colours into the safe blue chambray shirts and white sailing trousers of the more mature Ladies Who Rock, they'll keep coming back, braving the unpredictable weather and the sand-lobbing attentions of Padstow geezers. As the hottest of social scenes, where only the most sizzlingly bright and beautiful of DNA mixes, Rock is as mild as soapstone, a scene sanctioned and observed at close range by parents, patrolled by the police, kept just in check by local hardknocks. You may not be welcome to the Rock VIP lounge, but chances are you'll be pleased to know they're probably not having as much fun as you are. Glance back down estuary to where the parents party give of a faint glow in the dark and the occasional squeal, you can't help wondering if the same is true for them.

© Kevin Braddock 2003