Early Days
Memories of holidays
1.
The impression of memory is that when I was a child we went on holiday every year to Bridlington during Whit week. We were taken there, the six of us—Mum and Dad, Nanny and Grandad Cooper, Steven and I—in a big black taxi driven by Mr. Armstrong, who lived at Anchorsholme near Cleveleys, to a boarding house run by Mr. and Mrs. Yeaman, who had a black Labrador retriever called Monty. Mr. Yeaman would go to the newsagent’s every morning for the newspaper, and Monty would carry it back in his mouth. Mrs. Yeaman cooked the food that we provided for ourselves, so one of my memories is of traipsing round the shops during our time there.
But against there being holidays in Bridlington in every year of my childhood, I remember that we went to Scarborough instead of Bridlington—twice: once early on after we had moved from Preston to Thornton, and once later when I was about to enter my teen years. And there were three holidays at Butlin’s holiday camps, too.
And against holidays taking place during Whit week (which falls in May or June), there are a number of photos from the earlier holiday in Scarborough, with the date “July 1956” written in Mum’s hand on the back.
Whit or summer 1954
2.
There are holiday photos of our Steve, with “Bridlington 1954” printed at the bottom.[i]
- [i] So said The Cooper Diaries, Sun.
9 Jun. 1996, during a visit to my Mum and Dad's, but on a later visit I
could not find them. I seem to remember one of Steve in a little boat
propelled by means of hand cranks. Because it had a printed caption, I
assume it was taken by a photographer in the park where the boating lake was
situated, and later bought from him, perhaps selected from a display of
several photos he had taken.
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