Chapter Six

Holidays

There wasn't much money around when I was small, although by the standards of the day we weren't poor. My dad always ran a car and we always had a week's holiday every year in a caravan; mum and dad, me and my sister. How the four of us fitted into that tiny caravan, I shall never know. Caravans were quite primitive then too. There was no running water, it was fetched in a large container from a tap in the field. The lights were gas fed from a cannister and lit by a match. That felt very primitive as we had electricity at home.

During the month of July, we usually went to Brean for our holidays, which was then a very desolate place, just a few caravans in a field near the sand dunes. I expect it looks very different now. There is a photograph of a naked Patricia sitting on the caravan step in her sisters 'snowy white' knickers, held together somewhere with a safety pin, as there was five years between us. (I had wet my own too often. I must say here, that I was under two years old. Ha, ha). In my hand is a lovely ice cream, which by the looks of it, I was really enjoying. It was a very hot day if I remember rightly. We always came back from those holidays really tanned and healthy looking. I can't remember us using sun tan lotion at all. We had olive coloured skin and didn't usually burn.

We had lovely summers back then. June was called 'Flaming June' as it was generally a heat wave month with temperatures much hotter than any other month of the year. My mother suffered from asthma caused by hay fever and spent a lot of June confined to her bed, struggling for breath. I thought she would die and it really scared me. This happened every summer. It was awful to watch her suffer. There were no inhalers in those days to help people breathe and it felt as if she was suffering unnecessarily to me. She used to make up a grey looking thing which she called a 'poultice' which was wet and hot to help give her some relief. She placed this awful thing on her chest. I can't imagine anyone doing that now. We've come a long way since then I am happy to say. However, my mother came through it all and lived until she was 84 years old, which was really surprising and she outlived my dad by three years.

When I was about eight years old, may be earlier, we started to take our holidays at West Bay which is a small seaside resort just outside of Bridport near Weymouth in Dorset. We stayed in a caravan park and often took holidays with our Aunt Betty, Uncle Ken and my cousin Neil. We all stayed in different caravans. Mum and Dad's friends, Alf and Glad, also came with their children, Margaret and Mervyn. We had a good time and it brings back very happy memories when I look through the many photographs we have of that time.

I can vividly remember being on the beach at West Bay playing with my sister and cousins in the sea. We were all in our bathing suits sitting on the edge, I was with them for a short while, but I felt so cold I started to shiver violently and mum had to take me back and dress me. I nearly turned blue with cold. My sister and the others carried on playing! I have always felt the cold and I think I will die from it! Ha, ha. 

Around that time, colour films were made for cameras so the black and white became obsolete. It was a great improvement.

Dad was always a bit clumsy and he always hit his head on the caravan door as he was quite tall and kept forgetting to lower his head as he went in or out. By the end of the week he had a small gash on his head from the many knocks. This happened every holiday! We used to laugh at him, how unkind we were! Ha, ha!  Mum was heard to say to him, very often, 'Oh, Kenneth!' in exasperation.  He was so funny!