D I Y CANCER.

Hi and everyone else,

If it is nostalgia you are after...

From before I was born until I was aged 7 (1968) my family always used to go to Filey in Yorkshire for our summer holiday.  ( later made infamous in the Viz comic for being the most boring place in England).  We did not live far away but with few motorways and not many cars it was not uncommon to holiday more locally.  My dad and grandad bought a min van between them and used to share it and we travelled there with the three of us loose in the back sitting on cushions and hanging onto the luggage.

For as long as I can remember we stayed at the home of a lovely lady Mrs Joan Pearson.  I believe that her husband had been the manager of a hotel but died quite young and Mrs Pearson started a b and b to get an income,.  By the time I arrived she was well past retirement age and the house was in need of modernising and I think we were the only people that stayed as she had stopped running the b and b officially some years before.  Over the years our family had built up a friendship and my dad, an electrician by trade but very good at basic tasks would always undertake a few jobs for her whilst he was there.

She had a tiny kitchen / sitting room with a coal fire where the seats had crocheted blankets over them to pull over your knees if you got cold.  This was her "private" space where she would sit and chat with her friend and neighbour Maud, but as the house still had no indoor toilet we had to go through that room to get to the outside loo.    The rooms had old fashioned chamber pots under the bed, big Victorian porcelain ones and every room had a washstand with a large jug of water and a washing bowl, again big Victorian and made from porcelain.  Her sitting room was cluttered with souvenirs including lots of small figurines with the names of the venue or resort on them including some from continental Europe.  I can also remember three glass rolling pins in increasing size displayed in a macramé sling on her wall.

We had the use of the front parlour for those days when the weather was not it's usual balmy summer although to be honest as kids rain did not stop us stripping to our swimming costumes and going onto the beach to play.  Sea or rain, wet is wet.  There was no tv and my parents had fond memories of watching the 1966 world cup final through a shop window in a Filey street with a crowd of others during our holiday that year.

There are very few fishing boats left fishing out of Filey now but the few left still launch from a trailer on the back of a tractor on the beach.  The boats are called cobles (pronounced like cobble as in cobbled street) and when they landed (on the Coble Landing) we would rush up to see what they had caught and were busy unloading.  Filey council was strict with it's planning permission so there was only the one amusement arcade which may be why Viz called it boring.  It had a cinema which if the rain was too much for my mum and dad we would be taken away from the beach to go watch a film.  My sister used to save her pocket money so that she could go on a pony ride on the beach.  Filey beach is several miles long so this was not like a ten yard there and back donkey ride but I think took her about two hours.

For those of you interested in geology the cliffs at Filey are the terminal moraine from the end of the ice age and are a red clay.  We used to climb on the cliffs which were also a favourite of small blue butterflies but when it was damp the clay was sticky and stained your clothes so our mum was always trying to stop us climbing on them.  There were some massive rock pools on Filey Brigg which I could spend hours exploring and of course Fish and Chips and a daily ice cream.

I think that we stopped going to stay as Mrs Pearson could no longer maintain the whole house but we would always call in to say hello when we went for the day as a group or individually and I know that my father occasionally popped over to spend a bit of time fixing things at her house.

When Filey museum was setting up they were looking for exhibits and Mrs Pearson got in touch with them and invited them to her loft where she had stored all her parents possessions including her mothers clothing complete with dresses with whalebone stays in the corsets, I believe that quite a bit of the original display came from her home.

She is long gone and even the short row of houses where she and Maud lived has been knocked down but I still visit Filey fairly regularly and always with fond memories.

All the best,

Gragon xx

I enjoyed reading that, Gragon. I think some things have changed for the better.

We only had soft southern holidays, no living in a shoebox at the side of a motorway for us! I remember going to the Isle of Wight every year in the late 50s. Mrs Mersil ran the B&B, of course us kids used to call her Mrs Persil, you had to be there to get it. Sick on the ferry every time even though it was only a few hours journey.

Went to holiday camps when they were the next big thing, I do remember having fun.

Then my Dad got the camping bug so down to Devon and Cornwall for us 5 kids, course it rained and blew a gale every time as far as I can recall.

He then got a caravan by which time I was old enough to refuse to go with the rest of the family.

Now for the continuing badger story. I dont like to discuss badgers and Waitrose eggs as it causes gragon to find grammatical inaccuracies and mock me.

The peanuts and egg go out at 10pm. I was a bit tired a couple of days ago and put everything out at 9pm.

Two seconds later Mrs Norberry shrieked with displeasure. A baby fox crept out of the flower bed like a cartoon character and grabbed the egg. It was bigger than its head but off it went well pleased with itself. Back to 10pm egg time, hopefully past the baby foxes bed time, the little bugger.

Have any of you read 'The Tent, the Bucket and Me', by Emma Kennedy - it's very funny and she tells stories of her holidays to Wales - your descriptions reminded me of it - she tells of her dad driving slowly along the road whilst trying to pick up Gran - needing to throw her from the street into the back seat of their moving car as if it stops, it'll never start again... A good read if you need a lighthearted chuckle. 

No eggs and baby foxes though as I remember. 

Thanks Gobaith, I will get it for my kindle, just looked it up, it does seem to be my cup of tea. Looks like my family too!

hi ,

In my defence I did not realise it was a gramatical error.  As I was born the grim north I have only been in a Waitrose store once when I was visiting London and I soon left as the security staff were looking at me strangely.  For all I know they could sell bagers eggs.

Gragon

This just proves my point gragon, there are serious matters being discussed here but as always you go for the cheap shot.

You have also interrupted my evenings designated reading concerning early feminist literature. You can take the man out of the North etc.

 You must wonder if I have had a bang on the head gragon. The last bit of my post would have been vaguely amusing if you had seen my previous posting on another thread, alluding to it. Its somewhere but I don't think worth your time hunting for it. Anyway, back to my reading, daloni is questioning me on the authors meanings when she has time, this type of literature is a passion of both of ours, what a coincidence, especially as I appear so shallow on here!

You are a daft beggar, . I enjoyed your sinclair joke but I couldn’t repeat it

xx