Orpington, 1972. As a family pack their car to go on holiday to Jaywick Sands in Essex, the mother and father argue and the son spits and swears in the street. His grandmother reads from the paper a story about a neighbour, Mrs Dixon, who was shot by a man with a tattoo of a spider on his neck.

The family sets off, still arguing about the holiday. The son swears and makes obscene gestures at other cars, and the father throws him out of the car and drives on. As he and his wife continue to argue, he crashes the car into the grass verge of the road.

Grandmother flags down a car containing three men. They stop, and begin to rummage through the family's luggage and boot. Grandmother recognises one of them, Smart Alek, by his spider tattoo, as the man who shot Mrs Dixon. As his henchmen take the father away, grandmother remonstrates with him, but they take mother and daughter away, and finally grandmother too, beating them all and leaving them in a field by the road.

Eventually the son, sobbing, comes across the family car and the wreckage of the planned family holiday.