Entry for April 8, 2007

I am on my holidays, happily ensconced in a static caravan beside the beach at Nairn. The wind is gusting outside but I am warm and content with a mug of coffee and an unnecessary Crème Egg. (I’m not sure that a Creme Egg is ever truly necessary, except perhaps to the lesser spotted Crème Chicken).
Holidays by the seaside; can there be anything more comforting for the Brit? Bacon and eggs for breakfast then windy walks on the beach, watching some hapless father trying to untangle a kite from a string. Wet Sundays in Woolworth buying tiny plastic Wellington boots – in yellow or red, the only colours for any self-respecting toddler.
I sometimes imagine myself to be here only out of a sense of middle-class irony. I tell myself that I am here in the holiday park in some experimental trip to observe how the masses spend their holidays. But for my sociological research (I tell myself) I would be dancing naked at midnight on the beach in Goa, or re-building a drystone wall in Yorkshire with some hairy women from Lambeth. But then, I look at the little bucket and spade at the door of my caravan, and my Vauxhall Vectra with the child seat, and I recognise that the simple truth is that I like the seaside. And caravans, and the sound of children kicking footballs about on the beach. I couldn’t be happier anywhere else.
It is nice to be on holiday with my little family. I wonder how much those kites are?