Smile please…

Here they are my sixties dad and mum, all dressed up in their promenading gear. Blazer, tie, and well shined shoes, with mum in headscarf to keep away the breeze, and high heel shoes. She’s carrying the raffia beach basket that probably held our swimming gear and some sandwiches, cheese and cucumber or luncheon meat (Mick's meat named after my uncle Michael who loved it so much).

Everyone swam in the sea back then. The beaches packed with dads in rolled up flannels and vests. Mothers huddled in cardigans, trying to stop the sand from flying into the sandwiches, keeping the jug of tea safe from the tennis ball cricketers. Many an hour I’ve spent on the beach in a force eight gale without a ray of sun, blue with cold and shivering inside a wet towel.

I’m not sure where this. It could be Skegness, but more likely Morecambe. We went there for our summer holiday sometimes. Morcambe and a bunk-bed bedded room at Mrs Cheetham’s guest house - out all day and in by eight, a shilling in the meter for the electric.

That’s my sister Caroline, stripy blazered and pudding basin bobbed, casually observing the world from her collapsible plastic pushchair. My younger sister Della, wasn’t born yet, but may still be in this picture. I’m not quite sure.

So where am I? Again I’m not sure, but wherever I am it’s a pretty safe bet that I’m short-trousered, white sandaled, pullovered, shirt and tied and short-back-and-sided.

We’d walk along the prom trying to avoid the seaside photographers who pounced from nowhere, dropping sharp-toothed grinning monkeys tethered to too long leads, upon your neck. Rabid monkeys maybe, fleas at least. They terrified my with their manic chattering, and the photographers, all smiles and Brylcreem, would chase after you barracking: ‘It’s only two-and-six. You can pick up your picture from the booth tomorrow’. I don’t think we ever took them up on their offer.

I wonder where I am? Maybe I’m taking that picture.

‘Smile please.’