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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
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