The Caravette, The Ditch Full of Nettles, and Us

I'm reading 'The Tent, The Bucket and Me', which is the TV actor Emma Kennedy's memoir of the disastrous family holidays that marked her provincial 1970s and 80s childhood and adolescence.  I'm only half-way through, but already the Kennedys have narrowly escaped death by various imaginative means, including their caravan being blown off the top of a cliffside during a force 10 gale, a bolt of lightning felling an oak tree ten yards from their tent, and the nine-year-old narrator falling feet first into a pitch-dark open sewer masquerading as a public toilet.  There are also various experiences which, while not necessarily life-threatening, are certainly mortifying, such as the week in France when the father spends most of the holiday hiding behind bushes from their neighbour in the next apartment who is intent on feeding him raw shellfish by the kilo, freshly caught from the Atlantic.  Another cross-channel sojourn is marred by a linguistic/ cultural misunderstanding, which causes the family to become convinced that the local supermarket is refusing out of pure spite to sell them pre-roast chickens (when what the checkout girl is actually trying to tell them is that these delicacies need to be ordered a day in advance).

'The Tent, The Bucket and Me' came as a birthday present from my mam, who I think is trying to demonstrate that the catalogue of summertime disasters we endured from 1973 onwards were absolute standard fare for British holidaymakers of the era, and not (as me and my sister have always maintained) down to a host of tragic genetic shortcomings particular to our family.  I'm still not entirely sure she has a case- but I am at least persuaded to present the evidence to the Crinklybee jury.  So- let's start at the start....

1973- The Ambitious Cross-European Caravette Adventure

'Do you remember that time we drove all the way to Spain for a holiday?' I asked sometime in the 80s.  'What do you mean, holiday- that was when we emigrated!' came the rather alarming reply.  As my mam says now, she's really not sure what they were thinking of, but the facts are that my dad gave up a safe-but-boring office job with the Ministry of Agriculture, and the family home- a sixties semi-detached in suburban Kendal- was sold to finance the purchase of a brand-spanking new green and white VW camper van.  My own memories of what happened next are hazy (I was just four at the time), but they include my sister (three years younger) becoming spectacularly distressed at the sight of an apricot, and the two of us gazing out of the campervan windows at what looked like broken matchbox cars, strewn far down below us against a sun-drenched rocky backdrop.

My mam remembers these things too, but provides some context.  The apricots would have come in a giant sack , as, linguistically challenged and confused by the Metric system, she tended to order 5 kilograms of everthing and hope for the best.  The outcome tended to be an empty purse, and a larder in which a three month supply of perishable produce competed for space with the two hundred tins of corned beef that had come with us from Kendal, on the recommendation of some bloke from the Ministry who was the only person my parents knew who had been on holiday in the Mediterranean, and who had gravely assured them the food was 'inedible'.

As for the matchbox cars, well of course they were real ones- real ones smashed into several pieces.  The reason they were at the bottom of the cliffs is that, failing to negotiate the stretch of narrow hair-pin bends dotted along the primitive mountain track linking France to Spain, they had tumbled over the edge and bounced all the way to the bottom, where the civil authorities had chosen to leave them, presumably as a warning to people like us to keep our wits about us (and also because it was cheaper and more macho than installing anything so fancy-dan and cosmopolitan as railings).  Thankfully, my dad's nerve held and we lived to see the Catalan coast, although notably his hair, which is brown in photographs of us departing the Lake District, is turning white by the time we reach Barcelona.

Our eventual  destination was (I think) Benidorm, where there was some kind of business venture- an aspect of the trip that was presumably of pivotal importance to our parents, but which went completely unnoticed by me and Abby who were too busy trying to come to terms with the constant diet of sun and apricots.  I don't know exactly what happened to the business venture, but I suspect it fell victim one of the several global economic crises that blighted Europe in the early seventies.  All I can say with certainty was that come the winter we were living in a flat in Fenham, Newcastle, where our enjoyment of 'Z' cars was interrupted at intervals by power cuts brought about by a mysterious phenomenon which my mam referred to as 'this bloody three-day-week'.

 

C 1974- 1978 The Caravan Holidays to Whitley Bay

Until a ferry trip to Boulogne in 1982, the Spanish campervan adventure was the last of our forays into continental Europe.  In fact, as far as summer holidays were concerned, it was more or less the end of our forays beyond the borders of Tyneside, as for several years we contented ourselves with a week in a hired caravan at the Feathers Holiday Camp, Whitley Bay, where we would hook up with my mam's sister (our Aunty Mary) and her children.  This arrangement seemed to suit all parties; the women got to go out to the on-site bingo while the children got to race around on chopper bikes and marvel at the exotic accents of our Glaswegian contemporaries (who during this pre-mass-package-trip era would colonise the North East coast between June and September).  As for the men, I don't recall seeing much of them apart from when we were arriving and packing up; my dad and Uncle Mike, it seems, viewed their offsprings' yearly excursions to the nearby coastline as an opportunity for some rare peace and quiet.

I don't blame them either, given that even these unadventurous trips were routinely marked by bizarre emergencies.  Most of these came courtesy of my slightly elder cousin Simon, who was forging a promising career as an accident-waiting-to-happen which would see him in adult life become a glazer specialising in near-death encounters with plate glass windows.  My chief memories of our weeks in Whitley Bay have him suddenly dissappearing from view before emerging bloodied and wailing in agony.  On one occasion a fall from his chopper resulted in a deep gash to the shin which played havoc with the grown-ups' plans to take in an episode of Dallas before heading out to the bingo, while on another a walk along the side of a country road was delayed for half-an-hour while we fished Simon out of a ten-foot deep ditch full of nettles.

C 1979- the camping holiday somewhere in Northumberland

Presumably the sight of Simon (who seemed to have nine lives, like a cat) emerging relatively unscathed from his series of death-defying stunts had persuaded the grown-ups that they could manage something more adventurous- like a week's camping holiday.  Well at least it had persuaded my mam and Aunty Mary; their respective spouses, maintaining that discretion was the better part of valour, limited their involvement to driving us there (wherever there was, all I remember is that it was the middle of nowhere) and overseeing the erection of the tent.  The fun started as soon as they left, as the five-strong group of cousins, accompanied by two large and boisterous retrievers one belonging to each household, took the departure of half of the officer core to embark on a week-long campaign of pandemonium which brought terror to our rather sedate tented neighbourhood.  The nadir came at the end of something like Day Three, when in an effort to keep us out of trouble (me and Simon had laid waste to three tents during an energetic penalty shootout in which I played the part of Joe Corrigan and him Ray Clemence), a plan was hatched to get out early and embark on a hike into the unknown.  For reasons best known to the grown-ups, the dogs were left behind- tethered by their leads to the most immovable-looking object available, which happened to be the communal metal wastebin serving the entire site.

Of course, as my mam and auntie discovered on their return, it wasn't immovable at all- a fact that the boisterous (for which, read borderline feral) animals had taken approximately seven seconds to work out for themselves.  They had spent the rest of the morning careering in circles over and around the campsite, gradually emptying the bin behind them and leaving a trail of detritus- tin cans, nappies, and half-eaten pork chops.  As may be imagined, this state of affairs did not go down well with the neighbours, and my dad and uncle Mike found their scheduled week of peace curtailed by an emegency trip into the wilds of Northumberland to head off a furious lynchmob.

1980- the Nice Quiet Week In Berwick

My dad and uncle Mike had come along on this one- presumably having received signed affidavids from their respective spouses stating that under no circumstances would tents be erected, country walks be embarked upon, or dogs left more than six yards from view. Such assurances in hand, they would have been quietly confident that the week - holed up in a carefully-selected Guesthouse in a sleepy residential area of this handsome border town replete with pubs serving Newcastle Exhibition- would pass off without incident.

What they had reckoned without was the wanderlust instincts of my sister Abby and her near-contemporary, Simon's younger sister Rachel.  As my mam recalls it, one minute they were right alongside us in the country park, the next they had completely dissappeared.  Curiosity gave way, in rapid succession, to concern, then outright panic.  Bushes were searched, and frantic calls made for all hands to join an emergency search party.  As night approached, the assistance of the Police was requested , as well as that of an emergency consignment of extra uncles, each of them emerging from speeding Ford Cortinas and chain-smoking Embassy Regal.  After three hours (or as the grown ups experienced it, an eternity) the errant pre-teens showed up, carrying a bag of chips each and failing entirely to understand what all the fuss was about.  Traumatised beyond endurance, my mam and Auntie Mary begged to be driven back to the Metropolis in the first available Ford Cortina, and yet another family holiday came to a premature end.

So there you have it- our family's rather checquered 1973-1980 holidaying record- at least as I remember it, although I suspect several of the key characters may wish to offer their own recollections by way of the comment box.  As for you, the Crinklybee jury, the question we started with- was this kind of thing Absolutely Standard during the pre-Thatcher era, or Was It Just Us?  I really would like to know. 

 

Comments

[Isabelle Baker]

Well, let me be the first to admit that it was a miracle we all survived the Seventies given our sheer fecklessness, our disregard for convention and our total ignorance of anything to do with Health and Safety.
Looking back, I can’t believe that we thought it was a good idea to give up a secure job with the Ministry and venture forth into the unknown with two young children (actually, it was 1973 and you and Abby were six and three respectively.) At the time it seemed a reasonable thing to do and I think we had vague notions of making a fortune in the tourist trade whilst lazing in the sun, becoming impressively bilingual and raising two naturally gifted and talented children who would somehow become educated informally and brilliantly without any state intervention………Hmmmm, didn’t seem to work out like that.
Back in England and yes, it was the Three Day Week and people were using candles some of the time as electricity was rationed. It was all to do with Ted Heath, the Tory Prime Minister whose conflict with the Trade Unions led to a miners’ work to rule resulting in regular power cuts. We’d missed the worst of it by swanning around Spain in reckless abandon and to be honest we felt a bit cheated that we’d missed the fun.
Anyway, we never learned from our mistakes as you so rightly point out. Our attempts at returning to nature were always a failure, mainly I think, because we had no grounding in survival skills. We were never in the Girl Guides or the Boy Scouts. We’d never put up a tent or cooked in the open. We’d never sat round a camp fire singing stirring songs. We didn’t even know how to light a camp fire. But it sounded romantic and fun and cheap and achievable. The reality was so different. Why did Aunty Mary and me think it was a good idea to take five city kids and two badly behaved dogs to sleep, all 9 of us if you include the dogs, in an old fashioned orange coloured tent that was made for a family of three?
The caravan at Whitley Bay was a definite improvement even though the ablutions were at the other end of the site. It was decidedly posh by comparison with the orange tent and we could get dressed up in our finery to go to the Bingo in the evenings. Very sophisticated.
In our defence let me say that we were creatures of our time. We never thought too far ahead and we dealt with each crisis as it arose. In these days of informed behaviour it’s hard to imagine that we set out on our adventures so ill-prepared. No internet to research our destination. No mobile phones for instant help when in trouble. No bank cards when we ran out of cash. Just blind optimism and enough self belief to get by.
Well, I'm off to book a holiday on the internet complete with full health insurance cover and a tour guide in attendance at all times.....Only kidding!!!!!

[joella]

No, it wasn't just you... you have awoken all my 1970s family holiday memories! We never went camping but we did have some pretty disastrous experiences. But disastrous experiences make just as good memories as great ones, especially if you were a kid at the time. Anyway, I wrote a post, there was too much to say in a comment :-)
PS Brilliant to hear your mum's perspective, I might ask mine for hers too!

[Tim Hall]

We went camping as a family many, many times during my teenage years, and the only real disaster was when the tent collapsed in a gale near Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands. It twisted the frame but fortunately didn't tear the canvas; we somehow managed to unmangle the frame, put the tent back up, and complete the holiday.

We did have a couple of disappointing wet holidays - Camping is never so much fun when it rains, and in Britain you're always taking a gamble with the weather. I remember camping 'within sight of Snowdon' and never seeing it all week, and a fortnight in Exmoor when it rained Every. Single. Day. That was the one and only holiday when we bailed a day early because we'd all had enough.

The only other tent disaster wasn't a camping holiday, but the 1983 Reading Festival, when some numpty dropped an aerosol can into the embers of a campfire, it went boom and showered the surrounding tents with glowing coals - my nylon tent looked like a Swiss cheese. Lucky I wasn't in it at the time.

[Abby]

Eeeee, what a fantastic read, wor Jonathan.

I thought I must have been three and not one because I do have quite a vivid memory of seeing some oranges on a tree in Seville. I realise now that I may have been longing for a change from the apricots and this might have been why they made such as lifelong impression.

I also remember putting together some Camberwick Green jigsaw people in the back of the Caravette on some Euro-motorway, but strangely the pile of crushed vehicles in the abyss hasn't left any mark on my memory.

I wouldn't mind adding one bit to the Berwick story, which is where I tried putting a large fork into a plugged in toaster to try to get the toast out, and was saved in the nick of time from a certain 240 Volts. It may have been that I was trying to be more like cousin Simon, after seeing all the attention he got for his death-defying stunts.

Anyway, well done for writing all this down -- I think you may be getting a call from Emma Kennedy's publisher!

[jonathan]

So it seems maybe it wasn't just us and that the standard 1970s holiday was fuelled by nothing more than what my mam sums up as 'blind optimism and just enough self-belief to get by'. And since we children of the 1970s seem to have emerged in one piece (and with a stock of the sort of memories that will last a lifetime), who are we to argue?

Abby- I remember those Camberwick Green jigsaw people as well, although im my memory they are made of fuzzy felt. I think we both remember them as they were one of the few toys from home that could be squeezed into the caravette alongside all the tins of corned beef...

Finally may I recommend everyone reads Joella's holiday memories- which amazingly also feature regular trips to Whitley Bay (which is especially noteworthy as Joella is not even Scottish so strictly speaking shouldn't even have been allowed in...)

[aud]

I have to say that this is one of the few blogs I read where I actually do laugh out loud!

just brilliant - I love the image of the emergency consignment of uncles.

[jonathan]

Thank you very much Audrey and welcome...