It’s gone midnight when I waken to find Mum asleep in the armchair with the big light on.  I gently waken her to suggest she’d be more comfortable in bed, and she starts shuffling and pottering, so I go back to bed.  At 2am, I waken again to discover she’s made it into bed but left the bedside lamp on.  I imagine her pension is spent mostly on beer and electricity.

Despite the 9-pinter the night before, Mum is remarkably chipper at 9am, and heading for the bathroom. She checks with me first to see if I want to use “the facilities” before her, but I say no, you go first, as it takes her a lot longer to get ready and the sooner she starts the better.

The bathroom door clicks closed, and I realise I’m actually bursting to go to the loo.  There is nothing for it, I pull on a jersey over my pj’s, shove my feet into slippers and nip downstairs to the public hotel loo.

The first thing I see inside the cubicle is the nappy pin from last night. When I return to the room, I take it with me, and when Mum appears from the bathroom I show her it and ask if it’s hers.  Yes, she says, matter of factly, as if I should regard finding nappy pins in public loos an everyday occurrence.  She tells me she uses them to keep her trousers up because the elastic has gone. She has another one at the other size, and shows me a kilt pin which I think actually came from the pageboy outfits that my two older brothers wore at my Aunt’s wedding in around 1973.

I am thankful that her trousers have a bit of staying power of their own or her return to the bar last night while the nappy pin was still spiked into the loo roll could have been interesting.

Down at breakfast Mum is not as fazed by the breakfast buffet today, opting for a bowl of cornflakes without any debate. I note with a certain degree of admiration how she manages to get the soup plate of milk and cereal back to the table without spilling it. I think I’d struggle, even without a hangover.

Mum doesn’t really get hangovers, although once in London (when she had been drinking wine the night) before she did ask me to turn the car around so she could go back to the house to use the bathroom, claiming she’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with her.

Mum is merely a little tired today, and is looking forward to going home. I remind her that we have to drive 40 minutes in the opposite direction first, in order to go visit Mary. Mary who? she asks. Mary, your cousin, I reply. Of course she denies all knowledge of having phoned Mary from the bar the night before on a mission to do some family visiting while we’re in the area. Do I think Mary will be upset with us if we don’t go? Yes, I say, we are going, like a parent instructing a child to go to church at Easter.

Back up in the room we pack up our things and before long we’ve checked out of the hotel and are on our way to Hunmanby, where Auntie Mary lives.

Hunmanby is a sleepy little village in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and we call in the Co-op so that Mum can pick up some flowers for Mary.  They don’t have any flowers, so she comes out armed with 3 packets of melon slices and a tub of Roses chocolates. I can understand the chocolates, I’m having a harder time with the melon. Mum thinks it makes perfect sense, everyone likes melon and this has three types. Three.

While we’re visiting, Mary admits that she had a hard time understanding Mum on the phone last night, while I mouth NINE PINTS to Mary behind Mum’s back. Mum once again says she doesn’t believe a word of it, and I determine to write about it, so that I don’t doubt my own memory when retelling the story in years to come.

(“So we’re on this Ukulele/Steam train weekend in Pickering and Mum ended up drinking like 9 pints, ….wait no, that can’t be right, she can’t possibly have drunk that much at 87, I must have that wrong….wow I wish I’d written about it at the time then I would remember”)

We chat about the family tree which Mum drew for me with her stories in the car, listen to Mary tell us about the trip she’s taking to the Bedgebury Arboretum the following day for an Armistice Day service, make our excuses and leave.  Mary is overwhelmed with the melon and insists Mum takes some home, Mum refuses, pleased that her choice of chopped fruit is being held in high regard.

So now we make one final detour over to Hunmanby Gap, where we used to holiday every year in a tiny chalet.   It’s difficult to describe how small, especially when you consider that routinely 7 of us used to stay in it, sometimes 9 of us.  There would be myself and my Nan who shared a room with bunk beds, big metal things which would creak as my Nan climbed up to the top bunk in her long cotton nightie. My three brothers who slept in three beds which acted as sofas around a square dining table, my Mum and Dad who had a room where the double bed touched three walls and a tiny kitchen. Sometimes we would be joined by my Auntie Mo and her husband Mike, who would occupy a small summerhouse down in the garden.

There was no bathroom, just an outside loo which you got to by going outside and down a set of steep concrete steps.   In the kitchen was a tiny water heater on the wall, the kind that was like a kettle with a very long thin pipe from which scalding hot water would splutter when you turned it on.

There was no gas, electricity which ran off a meter, no television, I don’t remember a fridge but it was yards from the beach where we spent at least 10 hours every single day. We played cards every night, watched ships with binoculars and slept soundly, our skin tingling from not enough sunscreen and too much sand.

It has since been rebuilt, the original we stayed in having been found to have been constructed of a building material not really very good for your health. Yes, for 16 yrs on the trot we had holidayed in an asbestos portacabin, and it was bloody bliss.

 

It’s November, but we still have to pay to park in the clifftop car park, and so hand over our £1.  We walk down the steep road to the last three remaining dwellings on the beach side of the gap. When we holidayed there in the 70’s, there were over half a dozen properties used as holiday homes, they have either fallen into the sea or been abandoned and pulled down.

The original red brick cafe where I would run and spend my holiday pocket money every day on shell animals, funny postcards and perhaps a pretty little purse has long since fallen into the sea. Coastal erosion on the east coast of England averages around 1.5mtrs a year, meaning that in 10 years time the current portacabin replacement cafe could easily be gone too.

Mum needs the loo, so I purchase a coffee from the cafe and obtain the key to the portacabin loo.  Mum wonders if it will be alright, as she hasn’t actually purchased anything and it says clearly it is for customers only.  I assure her it will be ok. I’m then astounded when she returns without the key, saying she had simply given it to someone else who wanted to use the facilities. Sudden concern seemingly out of the loo window.

We spend a few minutes at the chalet,  looking up at the windows from the garden down below, feeling slightly like trespassers. Then we return to the car and begin the journey homeward.

Two hours later, I’m in a chip shop queue wondering why I’m 52 and have never had a mushy pea fritter.

We have forgotten Mum’s leftover fish and chips at the White Swan.  No matter, I am starving, and as I have another 4 hour journey ahead of me, we have decided to stop and get more fish and chips at Salty’s in Wibsey.  I love them for being open on a Sunday evening at 4.30pm.

There is no better place in the world to buy fish and chips than West Yorkshire.  We take the skin off both sides of the fish, the normal fish is haddock, and it literally is, as cheap as chips.

I buy two haddock and one chips, a cake, a scallop, 2 bread cakes and some mushy peas and the total is £12.36. For those not in the know, a scallop is a slice of potato cut lengthwise down the potato, battered and fried. A scallop is a poor man’s cake. A cake is a thin sliver of fish, sandwiched in between 2 slices of potato, battered and fried.  A cake is a poor man’s fish.

Despite good intentions, I only manage half the fish, half the cake and a scallop butty. I leave Mum with enough food for the following week and depart for home.

It’s been a wonderful few days, we’ve laughed more than we ever have done, and fallen out less than we ever have done. I can’t remember a trip with Mum that I would happily repeat, but this is a first.   I’m either getting more tolerant (unlikely) or just more like her (very likely) but either way, it was a successful trip and I’m already planning our next one.

Thank you to everyone we met along the way, you made our day!

 

 

 

 

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