I PUSH My Good Lady, as quickly as I can, through the pouring rain and the icy wind, towards the Tourist Information Office.
We’re here to try and locate some possible accommodation for the time we’ve got the kitchen fitters in.
And as we go in, I see a family – parents pushing a pram and holding a toddler by the hand – walking miserably along, resigned to the rotten weather and their even more rotten surroundings – an out-of-season English seaside town.
A little later, we meet up with Fran and Den at the Pub – they’re just back from a few days’ holiday in Torquay.
These two events suddenly bring back to me memories of family holidays when I was a lad.
Holidays in places just like Morecambe, orBlackpool , or indeed, Torquay.
Holidays when we had to trudge around in the rain between the hours of breakfast and teatime – landladies wouldn’t permit you into their boarding houses during the day, at least not at the cheaper boarding houses which was all we could afford in those days.
Less miserable, perhaps, were the caravans we stayed in, in Rhyl and Scarborough – at least we were allowed to stay indoors if the weather turned inclement.
Eventually, we graduated to full board at a guest house – a posher institution altogether. This was slightly more comfortable, and even the weather, for once, was a bit better: I think I even got a touch of sunburn here.
All of this, of course, was suffered in the name of what my father proudly called “holiday-making”, and it was bound up, part and parcel, with working-class snobbery.
It was all so he could boast about it to his mates at work – who of course were just as bad as he was.
Where you went, where you stayed, what you did – it all counted for much in the prestige stakes of a worker’s life.
To be gossiped about as a family who went, say, to posh Southport rather than common Blackpool, was a source of much satisfaction in my father’s world.
Certainly, holiday-making had little to do with enjoyment back then.
And thinking of that family, today, I wonder if things have really changed so much.
We’re here to try and locate some possible accommodation for the time we’ve got the kitchen fitters in.
And as we go in, I see a family – parents pushing a pram and holding a toddler by the hand – walking miserably along, resigned to the rotten weather and their even more rotten surroundings – an out-of-season English seaside town.
A little later, we meet up with Fran and Den at the Pub – they’re just back from a few days’ holiday in Torquay.
These two events suddenly bring back to me memories of family holidays when I was a lad.
Holidays in places just like Morecambe, or
Holidays when we had to trudge around in the rain between the hours of breakfast and teatime – landladies wouldn’t permit you into their boarding houses during the day, at least not at the cheaper boarding houses which was all we could afford in those days.
Less miserable, perhaps, were the caravans we stayed in, in Rhyl and Scarborough – at least we were allowed to stay indoors if the weather turned inclement.
Eventually, we graduated to full board at a guest house – a posher institution altogether. This was slightly more comfortable, and even the weather, for once, was a bit better: I think I even got a touch of sunburn here.
All of this, of course, was suffered in the name of what my father proudly called “holiday-making”, and it was bound up, part and parcel, with working-class snobbery.
It was all so he could boast about it to his mates at work – who of course were just as bad as he was.
Where you went, where you stayed, what you did – it all counted for much in the prestige stakes of a worker’s life.
To be gossiped about as a family who went, say, to posh Southport rather than common Blackpool, was a source of much satisfaction in my father’s world.
Certainly, holiday-making had little to do with enjoyment back then.
And thinking of that family, today, I wonder if things have really changed so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment