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August, peak holiday season. For the August comp please combine the themes of holiday and sea. It could be from the point of view of a holidaymaker or a person who works in the tourist industry or someone who simply observes.
500 words max, deadline midnight 31st August.
Annual Holiday by the Sea
(Immediately inspired by July’s theme)
When I was a little girl the high point of the school Summer break was our family holiday by the sea. It was only for a week and very often to Goodrington near Paignton in Devon.
Just writing that paragraph has immediately brought back so many memories of carefree, happy times with my two sisters and our parents. Wait! Is that a tiny tear forming in my eye, for my dear parents are long gone? I guess I shall be digging out old photo albums later, trying to find one I recall of a very small me being carried aloft on my tall father’s shoulders while we were on a promenade. I once wrote a poem with that image included, as he carried me metaphorically too into the world of independence by he and my mother giving me roots and wings.
Is memory deceiving me or was it always sunny and warm during those precious weeks by the sea? A sea which was warm enough to paddle in or practice first tentative swimming strokes under my parents’ watchful eyes?
A luxury they managed was renting a beach hut and so there was shelter from the sun if it blazed too hot and privacy for changing also. The boarding house we stayed in was not posh, but comfortable and the food served in the dining room was plain, but tasty. I’m sure there must have been the aroma of boiled cabbage at times! Full English breakfasts…
One memory of the boarding house – or perhaps the memory is of a later anecdote we laughed about – was of me being found upside down in the bed of the room I shared with my sisters. I must have been having a restless night or perhaps dreaming of the undulating rhythms of that magical sea.
The sea was definitely magical then, especially as we lived in the Midlands and the only time we saw it was when the steam train ferried us to the coast once a year. We would stand in the corridor and eagerly await the first glimpse of it as the powerful engine pulled the carriages on the rails adjacent to the coast at Dawlish Warren. Oh! the excitement and anticipation of what was to come during our holiday.
But the sea has many moods and I only became aware of how dangerous it could be as I grew towards youth. Shipwrecks after an angry sea raged; brave lifeboat men risking their lives to rescue people from boats in trouble; lifeguards trying to save swimmers in difficulty because of riptides – the dangers abound. Terrible tsunamis encroaching, engulfing, destroying, killing…
A kindly sea brings beauty to the eye and music to the ear in the crashing or lapping of waves on a sandy shore. It endows life; sustenance. A kindly sea is a source of quiet contemplation.
This is the sea I treasure now and in my memories from those far off days of childhood.
497 words excluding title
We’re half way through August. The heat isn’t a great supporter of creativity. On the other hand it could be a prompt. Here’s a reminder of this month’s competition.
August, peak holiday season. For the August comp please combine the themes of holiday and sea. It could be from the point of view of a holidaymaker or a person who works in the tourist industry or someone who simply observes.
500 words max, deadline midnight 31st August.
Orientation
In July 1953 we – Dad, mum. brother and me, left our now-echoing and curtainless home on the edge of Dovercourt Bay – an Essex seaside town dominated by a pair of cast iron lighthouses whose clean, and well-protected sands were sectioned by sea-slimy black wooden groynes within which squatted large black crabs. There was also a boating lake; a promenade and at the point where Dovercourt merged into Harwich -”Gateway to the Continent” – the Cliff Pavilion. In the other direction, out of town was a Holiday Camp whose visitors rode green painted bench- seated cycles through the town As a family we cycled to the secret beach called Irlams known only to locals – nothing but small sand dunes to picnic in, sharp-edged marram grass and shallow water to paddle and splash in. We were leaving all that for a new-built bungalow in a rural, two-shop Hertfordshire village, whose Hunsdon House had once been lived in by Elizabeth and half dozen farms, we gradually, we discovered , contained a cast of characters a very different to the oh so familiar of what we’d left behind.
At the start of the Autumn term, in the school opposite our bungalow, my class was asked to write about their summer holidays;. I heard mention of places such as Jaywick, Sheppey , Southwold and Canvey Island, talk of coach journeys but failed to understand the concept of ‘holidays’ (only very belatedly coming to realise my family simply didn’t ‘do’ holidays, because every summer thereafter we just went back to Dovercourt to visit family. Similarly I also realised in seven years of living within walking distance of the sea, Dovercourt’s sea-filled, straight horizon, held secure by being enclosed at one end by Felixstowe and Walton on the Naze at the other, set my personal geographical ‘compass’ had been well and truly set: I’ve long known I thrive; breathe more easily when I am not too far from the east coast and the North Sea and have a horizon in sight . [340 words]
A quick reminder that the end of the month is growing near for anyone who’d like to enter the monthly competition.
August, peak holiday season. For the August comp please combine the themes of holiday and sea. It could be from the point of view of a holidaymaker or a person who works in the tourist industry or someone who simply observes.
500 words max, deadline midnight 31st August.
The Space Between the Notes (334 words inc title)
It was more than a holiday; it was a ritual, starting with the drive north. The choice of music; what the kids called my soppy stuff – Savage Garden, Beautiful South and sshhh, don’t say it out loud, Barry Manilow – and the way I always packed the car with a hundred and one things I wouldn’t need – extra blankets in case the weather took a turn; proper teabags in case the accommodation supplied those cheap ones that made tea like gnat’s piss, and toilet roll. God knows, I like toilet tissue that doesn’t disintegrate when you threaten it with a deft dab.
By Inverness, and following a passionate rendition of Delilah (much to the amusement of the men in the bin lorry at the Kessock Bridge roundabout), the barbed wire knots in my shoulders began to untangle in preparation for their transformation into muscle fibres like cashmere yarn. Or maybe not. No charge for wishful thinking, is there?
I parked the car in Ullapool for coffee and a comfort stop, and wandered down to the shore to watch the silver and gold ripples across the surface of the water. Mostly, though, I simply breathed, slowly, deeply, eyes closed and face tilted up to the sun, as anticipation, lightweight as silk, spun itself around me.
I stayed longer than I ought to have done; I always did, impatient to reach my destination but reluctant to stir my soul from the water’s edge and the salt-tinged air that teased my hearing with whispers from the Summer Isles and beyond.
Enough. I had an hour’s drive ahead of me, on sinuous roads bordered by gneiss grey and the muted mauve of woody heather, with beauty in the bleakness and timelessness in the silence.
Belonging. My heart understands that no matter where I go or how long the absence, Assynt holds the other end of the rope tethered to me and tugs when there is a want.
There will always be a want.
John on holiday
John.
This is the strangest holiday ever. Chris should have been here. She even did all the bookings for us, and now I have to explain to everybody why it’s only me. The weather is perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. She’d have loved it—walking along the coast, looking down on the seabird colonies. Salt, warm seaweed on the narrow beach, that smell of the sea that tells you you’re home. There’s a stairway by the hotel that leads down to the sand. It’s fabulous but you can’t go far because cliffs jut out into the sea at either side. So I’m walking the coastal path.
People have said that it feels as though their loved ones are still around. They see them everywhere. I don’t. When I try to think of Chris, all I get is that sound, like a car door slamming only a hundred times louder as the van smashed into us. And the image of her held still by the airbag. When it deflated she looked so well, as though nothing was wrong. But she was dead.
So, no, I don’t see Chris. They told me that nobody would mind if I didn’t go, but I said that I needed a few days away, alone. Really I would have felt guilty to waste the effort she put into this holiday. Like a betrayal.
Who’s this?
Kevin.
Blimey, this old git won’t have a light. Bet I get his life story about how he used to smoke but gave up. If I’m really unlucky it’ll be all about how hard it was and how I shouldn’t smoke either. Looks the miserable sort. All gloomy-faced on a perfect day like this. Still, I’m gasping for a smoke. Nothing ventured and all that.
‘Got a light, mate?’
‘Oh,’ he says, and fumbles in his pocket. Would you Adam and Eve it? Only a box of Swan Vestas.
‘Here you go,’ he says. Well, don’t judge a book as the proverb puts it. ‘Look,’ he goes, ‘take a few. You don’t need the box; you can strike them on a stone or anything hard.’
‘Thanks mate.’
‘I’d give you the box, but I need them for the candle.’
Well, I don’t know what that means but any port as they say.
There’s somebody up at the chapel.
Father Mitchel.
Ah, there’s John, down on the path. I didn’t think he’d come. It’s a strange thing that his visit will double this chapel’s congregation, and him an atheist. Lighting a candle for Christine. So sad.
Such a beautiful woman. When she was a child, she lit up the Sunday School. That’s when we had decent numbers of course. I don’t suppose we’ll ever have them again. This place will go. It’s worth a great deal of money to the church—a house for some wealthy soul.
Poor John. He’ll miss her dreadfully. I wonder when, or if, he’ll realise that he was driving the van that hit her car.
500 words excluding title
As befits pieces about holidays and sea, all this month’s entries evoked a sense of place and, in their different ways, the rituals of leaving home for time away.
A lovely interweaving of different memories focused on the annual seaside holiday. Your depictions are very atmospheric, such as, “We would stand in the corridor and eagerly await the first glimpse of [the sea] as the powerful engine pulled the carriages…” Then the piece widens out to consider different kinds of seas before resettling with “a kindly sea … source of quiet contemplation.” There’s an appealing sense of a wider world. I’d never heard of Goodrington. It looks lovely!
I enjoyed hearing the viewpoint of someone who’d grown up by the sea. It’s a piece about a sense of home as much as of holiday, and ‘Orientation’ is a good title. You include the interesting thought that the concept of ‘holiday’ isn’t the fixed thing so many of us think it is, but is something to be set against whatever else is happening in life. It gave me things to think about.
An intriguing, atmospheric northbound journey that captures the emotional pull ‘the north’ can have, whatever part of the world that represents. For this character the travel is not just a holiday but a personal necessity. The changing geography is shown very effectively and I liked the mix of the practical and psychological needs, the sense that the character will, we hope, keep doing this journey well into the future. And I smiled a thumbs up for including Barry Manilow.
This polyphonic story uses its three characterful voices very effectively to propel the narrative. As the baton is handed on, we learn more about poor John. There’s also a small but strong extra layer in hints of the priest’s bereavement over the declining worshippers. I liked how the opening and end tie together to give not just a twist but a deeper depiction of John’s mental state and a question of how he will cope if he realises what really happened.
As usual it’s hard to pick a winner. Seagreen, the September competition is in your care.
I realised after I pressed send that the POVs of your three characters responded to the three possible POVs I’d put in my comp task. Neat!
Thanks Libby for the prompt and your kind words. Only as I finished writing my entry did I recall the only holiday spent with my parents was in 1973 , after chld#3 born. It was NOT a success (and Dovercourt still feels like home)
Congratulations, Seagreen ~ as Libby says it is an intriguing story. Wonder what intriguing challenge you will be setting us for September…
As usual, I loved all the very different and well written entries which embraced the theme so well. So virtual medals to all!
Thanks for the prompt Libby. It seems to have been an age since I tested the writerly muscles…
And I second Jill’s call for virtual medals all round! 🙂
Yes! I did mean to say the medals included Libby who prompted us so well in the heat of 2026 August! Encouragement…
For me, these monthly competitions have been ensuring those writerly muscles are kept in peak condition and other writing has emerged too, so thank you to whoever dreamt up the idea!The original idea came from Harry Bingham on the WordCloud, who presented a bottle of something similar to Champagne as a prize each month. When it began to fall apart it was taken up by Wrathnar the Unreasonable (sans Champagne) and then by the winner of the competition each month.
It was adopted by the Den when the Cloud finally closed
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