While carrying out my usual in-depth research for my writing projects (!), I came across some boxes of old photographs. I was particularly interested in those which might show me on my holidays during my childhood. It’s hard to remember a thing about my childhood, something that’s not particularly helpful when you’re writing a memoir. Maybe the photos would help, bounce the old memory bank back to life? Fat chance.
I know that at least until 1970, my mum took us to Rotterdam for the entire school summer holidays, at least every other year but generally every year. We stayed in my grandmother’s apartment on Leopoldstraat, a place I visit for no obvious reason every time I visit Rotterdam. There are a few photos of these summers but not enough, almost certainly because we didn’t own a camera and the ones we did have were taken by my Dutch Uncle. And anyway, when I say we stayed in my grandmother’s apartment, that’s literally what we did for the best part of six weeks. Getting to the Netherlands alone bled our finances dry and there was nothing left to do anything unless my uncle took us somewhere, which he rarely did. Memories, like the corner of my mind? A very distant, very dark corner where the light never reaches, I’d say. So that was that. But what about holidays in England? We did them, right?
Those old photo boxes revealed very few photos of our summer holidays and have caused me to revise what really happened. For many years, I believed that we went to West Bay in Dorset for our summer holidays. My mum, my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother. (My paternal grandfather, Marinus Verburg, somewhat thoughtlessly, decided to die three years before I was born, so he couldn’t be there.) Note the use of the word holidays? Ploughing through a box of random photos – grandad had an old camera, so he would have taken them – I have come to the conclusion that certainly as a family, we only stayed there once.
Yet West Bay feels huge in my life. I feel like I know the place inside out, and that was long before the TV series Harbour Lights and Broadchurch were filmed there. I skimmed pebbles on the beach with my grandad, we watched the big waves crashing into the harbour walls, once we even took a rowing boat up the nearby river, we climbed the steep cliff up to the golf course at the top. Those memories, none of which are preserved on film, are still taking me back.
We stayed in a caravan, owned by some friends of my mum. It was a tiny little caravan for five people, four of whom were adults and here’s something you youngsters will barely believe. There was no toilet, no bathroom, no cooking facilities and no heating, the latter being particularly unfortunate given that it was cold and wet when we were there to the extent that we never, once, went to the beach, other than to skim pebbles. Well, what do you expect in August? So, here’s the thing. What and how did we eat? How did we go about using the loo and washing? The answers are sandwiches, communal shower and toilet buildings, as well as a launderette.
We never went out to eat. I might have a burger from one of the takeaway huts by the harbour, but otherwise we would have eaten in the caravan. With no cooking facilities, and no fridge, it will have been, as I said, sandwiches (and cakes). I don’t feel in any way hard done by – what you don’t have etc etc – and it was all pretty normal, just like being at home where also we didn’t have fridges.
What did we do evenings? Harbour walks must have been a big thing because I don’t remember doing anything else. There were no TVs nor radios in the caravans. We must have had to talk, which will have been fun for my Dutch grandma who could barely string two English words together.
Grandad’s Triumph Herald stayed put throughout the whole time we were there, which may have been for a long as two weeks. What I do have a clear memory of is my night terrors and panic attacks. I’d have been around 12 years old when I mislaid my marbles for the first time and night after night I would wake everyone up by waking up in terror, as everything around me became tiny and I had to get outside into the open air, heart pounding, with uncontrolled breathing. Everyone woke up, some more sympathetic than others. I remember on a few occasions neighbouring caravan lights coming on in what would have been the early hours. I’ll bet they were chuffed. My grandparents weren’t. That’s my biggest, most vivid memory of West Bay.
Somehow, I fell in love with the place. I had always spent a lot of time alone, initially out of necessity but as I got older increasingly by choice. I could never sit still for any length of time, always staying on the move, but if it was just me, alone with my thoughts and wild imaginations, I was happy enough. Yet, as I have suggested, the regular West Bay holidays never happened, apart from just the once. My feeling is that if it had been they, I’d have stronger memories rather than almost none at all.
West Bay holiday park wasn’t, I don’t think, a chain of sites as it is today, trading under the Parkdean name. The caravan we stayed in was independently owned, the other caravans were not all standard size and design as they are today. You signed in upon arrival by a gentleman with dwarfism, who was quite possibly part of a family that ran the site.
I don’t recall there being any site facilities beyond the shower and toilet blocks but again it had not occurred to me that there might be. Just across the river, off the harbour, was a fun fair with the obligatory dodgems (I have a photo of my grandad and me in one) and loud, almost demented sounding music wafting across West Bay until late in the evening. On Sundays, local men played water polo in the river which I joked was very cruel on the horses. No one found it funny but I’ve been using it ever since to similar ineffect, a word I may have just invented.)
Driving to and from anywhere saw grandad, the only driver in the family, used exactly the same route, whether it was the quickest or not. He just loved driving and adored place names, like Misterton and Mosterton. It is possible that we drove to West Bay on other occasions for day trips but not, I am reasonably sure now, on holiday. Holidays were Rotterdam, West Bay (once) or nowhere.
What I have learned about photographs is that they don’t necessarily remind me that I was actually there. Instead, they tell me about things and times that I don’t remember. That’s to say that they’re not memories at all. Just photos.
Apart from the night terrors and panic attacks, which later required psychiatric care and, in different ways the mental stuff has persisted ever since, but West Bay must have been a good time, or at worst not a bad one. I don’t remember if I was pleased to leave and pleased to be home again, whatever that is supposed to mean. If it wasn’t bad, it must have been at least okay, maybe better than okay.
I have returned to West Bay far more often since those days and for all the unwelcome but necessary changes to the harbour walls, there’s still some kind of pull for me. These days, I’ll be the one parking the car but I’ll still be wandering round the harbour and maybe slinging a few flat stones. There aren’t many memories but the ‘feel’ of the place is still there. When you back to the places of your youth, maybe that’s enough.
