Kate

Great monthly comp, Libby. And a well-deserved win for Seagreen.

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)

@athelstone

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!

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.

@jillsted

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 e…[Read more]

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 narro…[Read more]

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…[Read more]

Great blog as usual Richard. It’s a fascinating story. One of those that has so much promise of what might have been, yet also so typical of the often shambolic British way of going about things that one feels it could only ever have ended up this way. Look at the contemporary British aviation industry – much brilliance and yet so much avoidable c…[Read more]

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…[Read more]

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…[Read more]

Jill, the Den’s Activity Page posts extracts changes (replies, new topics etc) from the public sections of the Den. You replied directly to the Activity Page version of this thread – you can check by selecting “Activity” from the menu at the top of all the Den’s pages. It’s all still there, although you’ll need to scroll a *long* way as my…[Read more]

That was quick, Jill 🙂

Thank you, Ath! Thanks also for your comments and careful reading of my story – always helpful for an author. And thanks to Jill, Sandra and Terrie for such evocative, enjoyable pieces.

Thank TOY Ath foc comp and commentryand well done to all of us for so vividly  evoking childhoods now past, I  particularly enjoyed Ath’s reference to radio – ours was a brown 18″B Bakelite cube which was only allowed into our bedrooms when we were sick (and often. it seemed. Luxembourg sicker. Looking forward to Libby’s comp for August.

Jill’s entry grabbed my attention straight away, because although my own childhood was a few years later, so much was the same. And yes, all the shops shut. In fact, almost everything shut on a Sunday apart from Church and Sunday School. “Hear the pennies dropping” for those who remember it. So much centered on the home back then. A wonderful…[Read more]

Don’t mind at all; hope fulfilling demands not too onerous.

A brace of fabulous entries this month. Real life has struck at an awkward moment with silly demands on time. I hope you won’t mind too much If I pinch a day from the next comp. and post the results tomorrow evening. So sorry about that.

Thanks, Janette!