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Heacham Beach
The sea is opaque and muddy like cocoa, but salty, not sweet on our lips. Ripples of brown sand lie exposed by the out-going tide; the sea a silver streak on the distant horizon.
Happiness is bucket, spade and shrimping net in hand; spiteful crabs nipping our toes; and blustery gusts tangling our hair. Our legs are chapped by the biting East wind but tanned by the eternal sunshine of memory. Endless days spent digging channels in the wet sands, draining the Fens my mother would say, as we build Canute-like sea defences.
My sisters and I, in seersucker swimsuits, emerge goose-bump blue from Whitson waves and are rubbed dry with rough towels; the salt feels like sandpaper on our red-raw skin. In my memory the long, drawn-out days are as infinite as the sands.
As the sun sinks beneath the waves, the twinkling lights of the fairground in distant Hunstanton hold tomorrow’s promise of helter-skelter delights, twirly-twip ice-creams and penny slot machines.
Then a hot chocolate before bedtime, and, with the sound of rain drumming on the caravan roof, we snuggle into sleeping bags, exhausted but happy.
Carrie Armstrong
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What I Did On My Holiday
Ask me the colour of my memories and I will tell you: it is the whole palette of Polaroid, all those beiges, muted browns, reds, and yellows. Because that is how the days were then, soft and faded around the edges. And that is how we keep them now, little squares of instant film to hold all those bobbed haircut, blue denim images of a sunny youth now left mouldering in an old shoe box.
They remind me of the heat of brown vinyl and the way it clung hungrily to exposed flesh on those interminable summer trips in my father’s beige Volvo estate. I remember how the sun seared through the windows onto that back seat where my brother and I fought, how we sweated in summer shorts while our crayons melted into the footwell carpet.
In front of us, my mother’s black hair would shake slightly with each unseen barbed comment while the deep brown nape of my father’s neck bristled with each criticism. Behind us, the caravan swayed lazily like some labouring elephant, waiting to swallow us all at the going down of the sun, the time of baked bean, grilled spam, squabbling suppers; the time for meting out sarcasm and insult while planning the next day of sullen visits to disappointing ruins.
It was the worst of times. But travel, they told me, broadened your horizons which, ironically, was exactly what I needed: that little glimpse of a bigger picture, a more hopeful future where I would one day breathe free from the choke hold of the family. As we were dragged solemnly around the country, counting its ancient stones and its ancient ice cream vans, I felt myself become increasingly detached from this travelling circus. Each day, I became more like some minor satellite around a dying sun, trapped in an orbit not of my making. But I learned from the experience. Take the visit to the Dinorwig hydroelectric power station in Snowdonia. Did you know that it produces up to one thousand eight hundred megawatts of clean electricity or that they had to excavate twelve million tons of rock to build it? No, I’ll bet you didn’t. But that’s where science gets us. That afternoon, where it got me was a hot dry hike down the path from the camp site at the edge of the old quarry in Llanberis, my brother kicking up the dust with his new sandals while being admonished by my mother who tottered among the rocks in high heels. There were birds somewhere, calling brightly but I couldn’t see them. My skin was burning but these were the days before sunscreen, so I put on the wide brimmed cotton sun hat that had been bought for me before we left home in far off Wembley, in order to give my brother something to mock. The rest of it was a dark day, spent deep inside a mountain, where a yellow jacketed, droning voiced representative of the Central Electricity Generating Board lectured us on the workings of the cavernous main hall. Something about peak demand, gallons per minute; Olympic swimming pools were mentioned. Then I was asked if I wanted the full colour souvenir brochure at one pound seventy five pence and I said no, which was not a satisfactory response, apparently. My gurning brother called me a moronic little troll, which was unusually eloquent for him, so I kicked him, which was also not a satisfactory response. That was when my mother’s look of contempt and rage, all one thousand eight hundred megawatts of it, spurred my father to grab me by the arm and march me out into the sunshine.
It felt good for a second, not to be in the dark of the power station, to breathe a little fresh air before the dark cloud of familial animosity enveloped us all again and we began the long, bitter, and resentful climb back up the path to the caravan. That night, after my mother’s painstaking and detailed explanation of my ingratitude and obvious lack of potential, plus her thoughtful enumeration of all the things she had given up for my benefit and how I clearly lacked the basic intelligence to achieve the career in law that she had picked out for me, we ate a Vesta curry. It was quite nice.
Then came the ritual of putting down the bed. This time, since it had turned out that I was completely useless and just taking up space, I was to go outside this minute and think about my attitude until I had learned some manners and respect, which I figured might take a bit longer than anticipated. So that was how I found myself leaning back against the aluminium flank of the caravan and gazing at the twilight sky. It was clear and stars were coming out. Perhaps there were constellations out there where people lived happily. Meanwhile, I could hear the muffled dialogues of dissatisfaction and irritability coming from inside, while I could feel the little seismic thumps of the plywood beds being lowered into place. And I said to myself, what a wonderful world.
Then I wandered over to the edge and gazed into the abyss, three hundred feet of Welsh rock and slate falling away at my feet. I hope you don’t blame me for what happened next: it was, after all, for the best. I honestly thought it over for a minute as I walked slowly back to that four-berth hell on wheels that was by now lit by little hissing propane gas mantles. It almost looked homely in the half light. I stroked its cold metal side and forgave it. As I passed the net curtained window, my mother had reached that part of her regular narrative as to why she should never have married my father, so that my absence was not and never would be noticed. At the front of the caravan, behind the jockey wheel and gas canisters, lay the crank handle. I picked it up and went carefully to the jacks at the rear corners and began to wind, silently and smoothly, just a little. When each was a couple of inches off the ground, I crept round to the jockey wheel and let the brake off. It was time for it all to end, so I leaned back against the van and rested, breathing softly as I felt the vibrations of hope being crushed within. Then, very gently, I pushed. Surprisingly, the van moved more easily than I expected, trundling swiftly over the stoney ground until it reached the precipice, then suddenly it lurched over and was gone. I may have heard my mother scream but then again, it may just have been twisting metal; it was so hard to tell. Then there was sound of the impact, followed immediately by the gas canisters exploding. The light of the flames lit the sky like a little aurora, which went very nicely with the stars.
Yes, I know what you must be thinking: how lucky I am to be a survivor of such an awful accident, but I promise you it has only spurred me on to become the sort of person my parents always thought I would be. You won’t have read this account during my lifetime, unless I’m very unlucky, of course. But you will, I feel sure, remember me as someone who made their mark, who stamped their personality and their values on this country and our way of life. And as I write this now, I have every intention to continue in my position as Home Secretary of the United Kingdom. Thank you.
Felix Downs
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