A seat next to the pretty girl

November has arrived and with it the cold wind and today for the first time this year I felt cold. Admittedly I had wandered out in a short sleeved shirt, walking a hundred yards up the road before noticing that Summer was off and Winter had arrived. Being the good boyscout (?), Saturday was spent pressure washing the trailer-caravan on the driveway, a constant reminder to hook up and set off somewhere but it somehow  never materialised and we went nowhere. This could be a trend, through inertia and procrastination one puts off everything until tomorrow which, as we all know,never comes.
I'm off to Filey in Yorkshire on Thursday hopefully to reunite with a cousin I haven't seen for 50 years. I had tried a couple of years ago to find out what had happened to her but had drawn a blank and it was only through a conversation I had with a friend in the pub, that his wife offered to have a try at tracing her. Within a few days she had traced Valerie and her daughter Heather and Heathers daughters, Debra and Shelley so when I went to Bradford a couple of weeks later I managed to locate Debra and the rest is history.
Filey, Bridlington, Scarborough, and Whitby were the seaside resorts we used to visit when I was young.

Butlins at Filey was famous for its holiday camp. Inexpensive chalet type accommodation regimented in identical rows all leading to the central entertainment block and an Olympic sized pool. Dancing, bars, the Butlins Red Coats the variety shows and the "wakey wakey campers" blasting out through the tannoy.
A far cry from today's individualistic holiday pursuit, in those far off days the working class had simple, collective pleasures. Groups, sometimes whole villages used to board the charabanc (the coach in its distinctive livery) and set off for a days outing to the sea side, Blackpool was a favourite with its Tower, ballroom and a multiplicity of fun and frolics to take part in. But in reality the major ingredient was that the bus was a community, the people drawn from similar backgrounds, uncomplicated, with little regard for de rigueur. They were out to enjoy themselves, their camaraderie was part of their knowledge of each other and their ease in each others company. There was no hierarchy and little competition, other than a seat next to the prettiest girl on the way home.