Happy Holidays!
Talking to friends about holidays we had when we were young we all agreed that they were too short, that the sun always shone in the summer and there was masses of snow in the winter.
However that is just our memories and lovely though they are the reality is entirely different. Just as it is when you revisit a house you used to live in or a shop you used to frequent – they all seem so small!
Holidays away from home with all the family were overseen by our father who used to be in the army. This meant that he always planned our trips with military precision. Each summer we used to load up the car. This was a major effort as we were a family comprising of four children and our parents. It was a suitcase for each of us, buckets and spades, towels, rubber rings and windbreakers. Do you remember those?
We would then set off for the drive to Burnham On Sea. A long, and quite honestly a horrible trip. Playing I Spy was boring after 5 minutes and I can’t remember what else we played but each one was short lived and the cries of “Are we there yet?”went on and on.
Then came the game of who could see the sea first. How my parents put up with the noise, the breaks to go to the loo and the squabble over sandwiches I don’t know. They must have had the patience of saints.
We used to stay in a hotel although I think that it was really a B&B. I don’t think my father could afford to pay for his family in a proper hotel. All the same it was truly exciting when we arrived, unpacked and hurried down to the beach.
Well of course we couldn’t hurry as we had to find our swimming costumes, the bucket and spades, the towels and the wind breaker. Our swimming cosies were truly awful, we girls had ruched little numbers and the poor boys had trunks that would make Tom Daley fall off his diving board laughing out loud!
I seem to remember that the beach was all sand but speaking to my siblings we had to agree that it was mostly pebbles and a bit tricky to make a castle of any sort until the tide went out.
My mother used to sit in the wind breaker rubbing down her children as we returned soaking wet, only to watch us scamper back to the sea as soon as possible. However she remained as elegant as ever in her boned swim suit (which must have been a bit uncomfortable) and sunbathed as often as she could .We often ran back to her only to find her stretched out on a towel socking up the rays!
My father on the other hand was determined to teach us all to swim. We only found out many, many years later that in fact he couldn’t swim and never mastered this particular skill. But the lessons he gave us all were quite effective, there was a small pier with water underneath it. He would hold us so that our heads didn’t go under the water and then ever so gently let us go. We had to swim then. Doubtless he would have saved us if we seemed to be in any sort of trouble, luckily that wasn’t necessary.
Then when we went home there were a lot more days to fill and our Mother used to make jam sandwiches and wave goodbye as we mounted our bicycles and set off for the day. The only rule was that we had to be back by teatime.
I don’t think any of us remembering those days wouldn’t shudder just thinking about what might have happened to us. It is such a pity that children nowadays can’t enjoy the freedom that we had. We came to no harm apart from a couple of punctures and the wasps attacking our sandwiches. We always returned safely home glowing and fearsomely hungry.
At about the age of eight our parents thought it a good idea that we all had holidays on our own. My first one saw my flying to Paris to stay with some friends of my parents. The fact that they had no children didn’t seem to matter or even that they couldn’t speak English.
My French was terrible – it was a long week. I now have a terrible fear of heights after they took me to the Eiffle Tower and made me walk down the stairs. My knuckles were white with the effort of clinging onto the handrail. I don’t know how many steps there were but it seemed like thousands.
My sister went to Russia for a week with her school and really did not enjoy the trip at all! After that as we were both pony mad we were sent on riding holidays which were blissful for us. We used to have a week on our own. One of would arrive just as the other was leaving. Apart from the horses there were lots of other animals for us to play with, it was heavenly.
Unfortunately one year when we went to the railway station to collect my sister we saw her descent the steps with a large brown box containing six of the scruffiest chickens you ever saw. My brothers and I fell about laughing but one look at our mother’s grim face shut us up quickly. She was definitely not amused! I can’t remember exactly what happened to them but I am quite sure that we did not roast them for Sunday lunch, they were far too scrawny.
My brothers went to Ireland to stay with an aunt and once to Austria to visit another relative, but I don’t remember anything adventures they had on their holidays. I am sure they had some, but wouldn’t dare tell in case they were ticked off.
I don’t remember any more holidays, there must have been lots but it is amazing to me that nowadays parents are more likely take their children to Barbados than Bognor. But I bet the kids don’t have nearly as much fun as we did. They are missing out on the joy of a sand filled sandwich, donkey rides and sticks of rock.

Jane Buckle

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Does anyone remember steam radio and no TV, Saturday nights were the only time my parents did not have to make my stay at home. The was only one station which was the BBC.
After tea and the regulation bath in front of the "middle" room coal fire our family who at that time was myself and the two parents took our places facing the radio, why facing the radio I could never understand except that the tradition became handy when TV started! any way about 6 o/clock a programme called "In town tonight" about London and its visitors and to this day remember the introduction with voice over roaring traffic saying "Once again we stop the roar of London traffic to bring you In town tonight". My mental picture envisaged policemen lined up across the road stopping all the traffic.
I had no concept of the identity of the visitors and was not really interested but was more excited waiting for the famous Sexton Blake and his assistant Jock who single handed managed to lock up all the current rogues.
As children we had no concept of money or the lack of and all the children played, fought and argued as one excepting the children from the upper village, about a mile from the sea.
Even the fishermen from the beach village seemed to resent those from the "street" who used "their" beach.
Who remembers the tin baths used in those days, I could never understand the joke which said that where there were several children the bathwater used to get warmer as the number of users of the same water proceeded.
I will not go into what we lacked such as telephones, carpets, washing machines etc but I suppose we were not unique.
Did any of you make your own kites from bamboo canes and news papers using glue make from flour and water. The string was obtained from the harvest corn binders and the whole combination would have been quite lethal if it had crashed upon say a car and the beauty was there were no cars in the village.
It was strange that at ten years old I could not tell the time was not literate or numerate but in just over one year I had passed a scholarship to a Grammer school, not that it did any good because I was ignorant of the fact the they spoke "foreign" in France and my first lesson was French, I descended to the depths from that point and upon leaving school (which is another story) everything else was upwards.
I would appreciate feed back because while I get great pleasure from reminiscing I would hate to be greedy and become a bore