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End of an era

William Cashmore

Wednesday, 16th April 2008

William Cashmore recalls his family’s annual trip to the Lincolnshire coast

We spent hours on the beach digging huge walls to ‘beat the tide’. No poncey sandcastles for us. Although the poncey factor went up when the Tansleys, egged on by my elder sister, arranged a beach wedding ceremony. I married Philippa Tansley 11 times one summer. At four o’clock we were called up from the beach for iced buns; bread rolls with a great dollop of icing sugar. My brother once got sent back for the spades and when he came back the buns had all gone. It was the last time I saw him cry.

Mind you, we strayed in 1975 when the Woodsends, a posher family, persuaded us to go to Robin Hood’s Bay. Exciting place, but not Sutton. Right at the end of those school summer holidays, my mother could bear it no longer and bundled us all into her Triumph Herald. We had milk shakes in the Corner Cafe, rented a council beach hut and paddled to our hearts’ content. The quintessence of absence making the heart grow fonder.

As we became grumpy teenagers we went less but my mother and father battled on, especially after 1983 when they bought a small terraced house near the beach front. I was up at Cambridge by then but, despite the allure of global escapades with more worldly-wise undergraduates, I usually gave Sutton the annual once-over.

But it was the beginning of the end. New in-laws couldn’t see Sutton’s attractions. Houses were being bought in France and grandchildren didn’t want ‘that sort of holiday’. My younger sister kept at it until a year or so ago but even she tired of her own daughter’s insistent, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

Last year I made a brief, probably final visit. I can always stay in the Bacchus in Sutton or the more upmarket Grange and Links in Sandilands if I want to go again. But I guess it’s best to leave it alone and let the memories do the work. Prince Philip, after those floods in 1953, said, ‘I can’t understand why anyone would want to go on holiday there anyway.’ My father never forgave him for that. But he would forgive my mother for selling up. After all, ‘How many months are we going for?’ Not so many these days.

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Pierre Evianne

August 22nd, 2008 10:27am

Cafes (or cayfes) and family holidays are inextricably entwined. I can picture every moment of Mr. Cashmore's article, not least because it reminds me of hours longing for one parent or other to go against the grain of their economy driven purses and dig out a few Francs to buy us the single most coveted meal of the entire trip - chicken in a basket (poulet en panier avec pommes de terre frites) in a small deserted beach town in Normandy.
I have never been to Lincolnshire, but it sounds rather nice. Nowadays I can't resist dropping into cafes wherever I go around the UK - it's a compulsive desperation to re-find that poulet, to taste the salt on its skin, to devour the frites which I reluctantly had to share with my sister the one time my father actually caved in and forked out.
I use a guide, mostly related to cafes in Birmingham for those who might share a similar obsession - though to be honest the better cafes, the ones which seem more likely to have the aforementioned exalted chicken dish, always feel like they're somewhere over my immediate horizon - in Brighton, or Pembrokeshire, or perhaps in Perranporth in Cornwall, another family destination.
Perhaps someone can tell me just where I might find it. Returning to Normandy seems a bit too far, and perhaps as it has done for Mr. Cashmore, stir up nostalgia. I suspect, a bit like his house, that my cafe is no longer there.