Dear Miss L

I’m sorry I didn’t have much time to talk today, I was busy packing for holidays.  You said it didn’t matter as tomorrow you would help me put the tent up.  You asked me again about holidays when I was little.

I remember, in no particular order

• Standing under the shadow of Harlech castle, staring at a blue and yellow plastic watch I’d got with a copy of a magazine, probably Buttons.  Dawdling just as you do, behind the rest of the family, to admire my new treasure in the sunlight.
• Staying in a cottage on a farm, which had a slide, and lambs to feed.
• Eating eggs and soldiers in a green caravan in Harlech, feeling excited about our new little holiday home.
• Collapsing with laughter and having to be ushered out of a supermarket in Denmark when me and your Uncle A discovered biscuits called Bums. Losing the plot completely over motorway signs that said Farts.
• Folk festivals. Stitching granny squares for Oxfam in our big orange canvas tent at Chester Folk Festival. Ceilidhs, storytelling, singers who sang with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ear, dancing, late nights and sharing a tent with my family. Making a scarecrow and playing my harmonica.
• Sleeping in Dad’s red Vauxhall estate, on top of a pile of camping gear, waiting for a ferry to Spain.
• The continental breakfast on the ferry, eyes like dinner plates at all the food you could choose from.
• Dad eating mussels, by a canal in the Netherlands and dancing at the hotel disco in Germany. I didn’t know Dads could dance like that.
• Bouncing on giant inflatable pillows at Farup Somerland in Denmark
• Driving on the wrong side of the road aged 7 at Legoland, Denmark. Just like you did at Silverstone in the mini AA jeeps last weekend.
• Mum getting caught speeding on the way home from the ferry, in the middle of the night.
• Cooking bread on a giant bonfire at a campsite in Sweden, swimming in the lake. Playing on the shore.  Losing hours making sandcastles with my brother, forts, roads, woodlands, fences, bridges…
• Damming a stream somewhere in the UK with my cousins.  It was a losing battle, but the most important battle of our Summer.
• Flying on my own, for the very first time, to Munich when I was 13 to see a family friend.  Mum and Dad waving me off, crying a little bit, then feeling very grown up indeed.

The last Thursday of the month is the Memory Book linky. July’s theme is holidays. You could post a single photo, write about your memories, interview a relative, get a relative to guest post, write it as a letter to your child, include a bit of a diary entry, write a list, make some bullet points, whatever you like. When we’ve collected a few, if you want to join me, we can self publish them into a Memory Book.

Which holidays meant the most to you as a child? Was there a disastrous holiday? What funny/special/random moments stick in your mind. Or, if you want to go further back…where did your children’s grandparents holiday when they were little?

Next month the theme is School days.