The time is coming when I shall once again step into the sea. A week in St. Leonards beckons, with the granddaughter. This will be our fourth seaside holiday, the first being in Worthing in 2023, a break for Caitlin, as her mum was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. My daughter could rest at home knowing that Caitlin was being looked after and having a good time. I wasn't sure how much of a break it would be for Bob and me. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, and my energy is limited. Most days, I sleep and rest for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We booked only four days to see how it how it went, and it went well, Caitlin adapting to our slower pace of life.
It wasn't great weather while we were in Worthing, so we didn't go into the sea, and on the one hot and sunny day, we ventured to The Weald and Downland Museum rather than the beach. The outdoor living museum was a great success, especially looking across to the barn, the location of The Repair Shop, which was being filmed that day. The only two problems were extracting Caitlin after five hours, as she'd have happily stayed another two, and discovering that she had nits in her long thick hair, which led to a meltdown. I guess the tears and panic were more to do with watching her mother go through cancer treatment. She had been so strong until then; too strong for a 9 year old. Back at the holiday home, she allowed me to apply the lotion and comb through her hair. It took over an hour, while she watched Matilda for the umpteenth time.
2024 saw the three of us in Lowestoft, for a week this time. The sandy beach was a five minute walk away from the Airbnb, and we had to go every day. Caitlin is not a great swimmer, so I went in with her, splashing about and holding her up while she kicked her legs. It was the first time I had been in the sea in years. Likewise, in Weymouth last summer, the sea had to be swum in every day. There was a slight panic on a trip to Lyme Regis when Caitlin encountered hermit crabs, and ran out. She said it would be okay to swim in Weymouth the next day, as ‘it's a different sea’.
I've never been a great one for sea swimming, and sitting on a beach bores me after a short while. I do, though, love being by the sea, by water. Family holidays, when I
was young, were to my mother's hometown, Ennistymon, in County Clare. The seaside town of Lahinch is just a couple of miles away, but I have no memory at all of going into the sea. I suppose I must have done, but it was often windswept, chilly, and uninviting, plus Ireland holidays consisted mainly of visiting our many relatives. You could not leave anyone out, for fear of offence. My dear friend Jim Parker, my dad’s old schoolfriend, described it as ‘Doing the Stations of the Cross.’
Dad rarely came on holiday with us, but he did one year, when I was 14, I think. A photo of me and my dad at Lahinch shows him in a suit, his only concession being going without a tie, and me in tights and platform sandals. I had no intention of removing any items of clothing. On returning to Lahinch, in May 2022, the wind was blowing a hooley, and the complex with the small cinema, dancehall, indoor swimming pool and cafeteria, in the background of the photo, is now a surfing centre.
My first memory of the sea is a trip with Uncle Bill and Auntie Chris, which may well have been to Worthing, as they took many day trips there in later years, with my siblings and cousins crammed into the back of Uncle Bill’s van. But for this trip, it was just me. It was rare to have a solo outing, without my siblings, and as small as I was, it did make me feel special. Auntie Chris told me that the sea was salty, as my mum had been there and poured a big bag of salt into it. Which I believed.
Every summer, when I was a little older, we had an outing to Littlehampton with my dad's working men's club. We would stop at Arundel on the way (I've never been to any other part of Arundel, only the coach park). The mums and dads would have a cup of tea, and the children were all told to use the toilets. It was there that we were all given a goodie bag with an apple, an orange, a bag of crisps, and a fifty-pence piece, ten bob before decimalisation. Mum would bring food in a shopping trolley to the beach, and a damp flannel in a plastic bag for wiping hands and faces.
I did go in the sea on those outings, and loved it. Sitting on the beach was never boring with loads of children to play with, and then there was the funfair. I wrote, the other week, of my reunion with friends from primary school, Friends Reunited: 55 Years On, and I'd quite forgotten that both Sharon and Sue appear in my book, Learning to Be Irish. Sharon is in my memoir piece ‘Club Outing’ about a trip to Littlehampton, written in a child's voice. Sue is in my story ‘A Tea Party’, again written from a child's point of view.
From ‘Club Outing’:
You get back on the coach. It’s the first day of the football season, and you listen to the results on the radio to see how Chelsea has done. They won the cup this year and you skipped round the playground, arm in arm with Karan Regan and Sharon Corr, singing, “Chelsea 2, Leeds 1, alleluia.”
From ‘A Tea Party’. This extract follows a passage where the narrator’s baby sister has been baptised, by pouring water on the baby’s head:
Babies can’t swim, so they only have the water on their head. I can nearly swim. I’ve been going to Epsom Baths with the school. We walk there in a crocodile, two by two, holding hands, and I’m always paired with Susan Saunders. There are four Susans in my class and five Catherines, but they are all called something different: two Cathys, One Kate, one Katie and a Catherine.
I'm not sure when my aversion to going in the sea began. I think it may have stemmed from body consciousness, a belief that I was fat, when photos of the time prove otherwise. Many of us at school were eating Ryvita crispbreads, with Outline slimming spread on the smooth side, without dimples, so as to spare us the calories. My stepdaughter has talked of diet culture in the era of Bridget Jones Diary, which she won't watch for that reason. Diet culture began a long time began before that. Oh, the deprivations we girls in the seventies endured. One of us ending up hospitalised with anorexia nervosa by the end of the decade.
I do remember swimming with my daughters when they were small, on holidays in France, and in Denmark, when we found ourselves on a near-deserted beach with a small group of nudists. I felt overdressed in my bikini, so I went topless. One of my daughters told my mother-in-law a while afterwards; she was appalled. I doubt that she ever went on the beach in less than a full costume, and would not have understood that it felt weird to be wearing a top.
So, Saint Leonards and nearby Hastings await. I have a new tankini, and have treated Caitlin to a new swimsuit, her mum having done so at the same time, so she will have a choice of cossies. She is twelve now. In a few years time she may not want to have a slow-paced seaside holiday with Grandma and Bob. Until then, we shall enjoy every moment, and hopefully there will be no nits.
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