Memories of the early sixties – holidays

These days people jet off to some warm exotic place for holidays. Back in the sixties only the rich knew the joys of air travel and working class familes like mine spent their holidays far closer to home. My first holiday memories were of a caravan park in Dorset when I was about two or three.  Our little caravan was permanently pitched on a grassy hill in Swanage, saving the need for towing it back and forth.  These days there are lots of caravan parks in Swanage and I have no idea which one it was but we spent many happy weekends there.

Of course, one of the downsides to an English caravan park is rain and one of my most vivid memories is of sitting in Aunty Gwyn and Uncle Len’s caravan a few rows up from ours drawing and watching raindrops race down the windows. Another thing we did to occupy ourselves when the weather was wet or during the evening was play Beetle Drive. Whether this game still exists and exactly what the rules are I don’t know but it involved dice and winning parts of coloured plastic beetles you had to then put together. As I was so young I imagine I needed some help with this but I always thought it was great fun and loved the colourful beetles.

It didn’t always rain and Dad bought me a kite to fly, although it think it was him that did most of the flying while I watched. The kite was black with a white skull and crossbones so, even then, I was a trendsetter living on the edge of high fashion. Aleander Macqueen eat your heart out! It seemed there was a lot more running about trying to get it up into the air than there was actual flying but Dad appeared to enjoy it and I loved to watch it soaring in the blue sky.

Sometimes we’d go out for the day and one of my favourite outings was Corfe Castle. Back then I had no idea about history and the fact that this castle had stood on the Purbeck Hills since the eleventh century meant nothing to me. It may have been one of the earliest stone castles in England but I loved it because I could imagine princesses and dragons as I held Dad’s hand and wandered amnongst the ruins. It has been many, many years since I last visited and I’d like to go back but I’m afraid the illusion might be shattered if I did. Coincidentally Commando Senior and April had a caravan in Swanage and Commando has similar childhood memories of holidays there. Maybe we passed each other on those grassy hills or at Corfe Castle, who knows?

Being very young I was supposed to have a daytime nap and I remember being tucked in bed with the light streaming through the thin curtains and Mother wagging her finger and telling me to go to sleep. Of course, as soon as the door was shut my eyes would open and I’d play with whatever toy I’d managed to hide with one ear on the door for her coming back to check. Most times I fell asleep anyway. It’s hard to imagine how our family fitted into a small caravan with Mother, Dad, Pappy, Alex and I but we spent many happy times there. When Alex got married the carvan was moved to a site closer to home, possibly in Colden Common, and became her first home so our Dorset holidays ended.

After that we did what so many families did in the sixties and went to Butlins, the chain of holiday camps started in the mid 1930’s by entrepreneur Billy Butlin. For me this was a double edged sword. Butlins had masses of things to do for a little girl of three or four but it also had the Butlins Beaver Club which I hated. For Mother, Dad, Alex and Pappy, the club was undoubtedly a godsend because they could pack me off with all the other children and go off to enjoy adult things like Bingo and shows.

It felt like being abandoned, much like when Mother would leave me in the pushchair outside Sainsbury’s and go to do her shopping. As soon as she disappeared at the end of the first aisle I’d start to cry and she’d invariably come back to find me surrounded by strangers cooing and pulling faces to stop me. Once she left me outside the pub in my pram and Dad came past. He was so cross he took me home without going inside to tell her and a huge row followed. Of course, no one leaves children outside the supermarket or the pub these days but it was fairly normal in the sixties. Either that or she was hoping someone would take me.

So, in the morning, after we’d been woken by Oh What a beautiful Morning over the camp tannoy and had our breakfast in the huge dining hall, I’d be packed off the the Butlins Beaver club. The children would all have to line up and follow the Butlins Bever Red Coat clapping and singing a song. There is even a photo somewhere of me walking in the line, clapping and crying my eyes out. What we did there and whether I ever stopped crying is a mystery to me as I don’t remember a thing about it except that I hated it. The badges we got every year were a different story though, I loved those.

When I wasn’t being a reluctant member of the Beaver Club I was much happier and most of my memories involve Pappy. Perhaps I cried so much he came and got me but, whatever the reason, I spent a lot of time with him. Mostly we went to the Butlins camp at Bognor Regis and they had a paddling pool with an attractive waterfall style fountain in the centre. One sunny day I remember paddling in the pool while Pappy stood by watching. The wall of water falling from the circular shelves of the fountain fascinated me and I put my hand through and pulled it out again in wonder. After a while I decided to put my whole self through the wall. This didn’t work out quite so well and I came back out coughing and spluttering with water in my eyes. The choc ice that followed soon had me smiling again though.

There were train rides and roundabouts where Pappy would lift me onto the rides and stand to watch me going round and round. He must have been bored out of his mind but I don’t remember him complaining. Of course I did spend some time with Mother and Dad and one of my favourite childhood photos is of me on the bumper cars with Dad. for some reason the bumper cars frightened me a little but with Dad’s arm around me I felt safe.

Something else I wasn’t too keen on was Mother’s love of all the competitions they had at Butlins. Every year she entered something called Miss Chi Chi (chubby, charming and cheerful) and, even at such a tender age, watching Mother up on the stage joking and messing around with the Red Coats was highly embarrassing. Worse still, she wanted to get me involved. This wasn’t too bad when it was confined to beautiful baby competitions where all I had to  do was sit on her knee.

One afternoon when we were in the cinema another mother approached us. She’d seen me sitting on mother’s lap sucking my thumb and almost drifting off to sleep and had a plan.  She had a daughter of about my age, maybe four or so, and wanted me to enter a competition with her. Half asleep I was dragged out side and, before I knew it I’d been dressed in a costume to look exactly like this other little girl and shoved onto a stage in front of lots of people. The poor woman probably wished she hadn’t bothered because I cried at the sight of all the people and Mother had to come and get me. She wasn’t best pleased. Being such a shy, quiet child I was probably a constant disappointment to my loud, outgoing mother.

Times have moved on since the days of the annual Butlins holiday, although some of the camps still exist, and I, for one, am pretty glad about that. Then again, maybe I’m just the wrong kind of person to appreciate them.