Family Holidays
Anne Lord
Holidays! I have seen photographic evidence of my first seaside holiday, a few days in a caravan at Porthcawl with my mother and my Aunty Eiry, my father’s sister. But as I was approximately two years old I have no recollection of this happy interlude. Apparently I defecated on the beach, which they hurriedly buried in the sand, and quickly moved away. A few years later my Uncle Spencer and his wife, Auntie Edie, decided to treat his mother, (my grandmother), his sister, Auntie Eiry, my little brother and myself to a week in Happy Valley, (not that Happy Valley!), Porthcawl. How and where we all slept in a tiny four-bed caravan is beyond me, but somehow we did, despite my grandmother’s earth shattering snores. I was excited by all the greenery and there was a donkey or some such animal beyond a fence but within feeding distance nearby.
Then one morning the elders decided to take a walk down to the beach. ‘It’s just the other side of the dunes,’ said one of the adults cheerily. Armed with picnic, deck chairs, beach balls, and sundry other paraphernalia, we set off across the dunes. It might have been a pleasant stroll for them but for me aged about seven and very small it was as torturous as a stroll across the Sahara, rough grass scratching my bare legs, and brushing against my face, up hill and down dale, for what seemed like miles. I remember nothing about the beach itself.
The next day they announced a trip to Ogmore-by-the-Sea. An offence against the trade description act, the tide was so far out as to be invisible, cows on the beach, and a strong wind whistling around our ears. That night the incessant crying of my three-year-old brother joined in the chorus of Mam’s loud snores. Gareth could not be comforted, or silenced, they, the grown-ups, came to the conclusion that he was suffering with ear-ache, and should be taken home to his parents. And leave me on my own with these torturers! I decided that I had ear-ache, too, and wanted to go home as well. Amidst much tutting and murmurs of ‘home-sickness’ Gareth and I were bundled into the back of the car and driven home through the night.
When I was ten, Uncle Garnon and cousin Arwyn, company for Garnon on the way back, drove my family to Poppit Sands, Pembs. Followed by my mother’s sister’s family in Uncle Des’ little green Austin. We were booked into two caravans side by side in a field of identical caravans all painted the same shade of what my mother called ‘battleship grey’. But wow, what a holiday that was! Memories of doing the hokey-cokey in a caravan that rocked so much we thought that it might tumble over, of my lovely Aunty Beryl, sitting on the rocks, waving a hanky in the air, ‘Put the flags out,’ she called, ‘Hywel’s in the sea!’ The sea really was just across the dunes, which were just across the road from the caravans. The beach was clean and flat, not a cow in sight, the sea blue and calm, it was beautiful. So beautiful that we came back year after year.
My father re-acquainted himself with his distant cousin Mary who lived in nearby St Dogmaels, she and her family became great friends of ours and we spent many hours out on her husband Danny’s boat fishing, legally, for salmon. There was also one unforgettable occasion of fishing illegally for salmon, through the dark night, no lights allowed. Holidays for me have changed so much over the years. Theatre weekends in London, cruising round the Mediterranean, a week visiting my brother in Ohio, USA. I attended a funeral in Mizoram, North East India, and I’ve been to Madagascar twice. But nothing really compares to those wonderful days in West Wales, usually in wellies and raincoat, then coming home, recounting our adventures to my grandmother, reliving it all again.