Holidays

For several years, our family holidays had been in Cornwall; usually staying near Looe. The kids loved it down there as we stayed in a large guest-house with its own mini-club, ballroom and lido. It was the ideal thing for a family with young children.
We generally had our holidays early June and late August. The only drawback there was parking in nearby towns and villages; it was a nightmare sometimes!
Naturally, in the summer of 1973, I had Iris to consider as well. A friend of mine solved the problem; his sister had an eight-berth caravan in Berwick-on Tweed. It was situated in a holiday village overlooking the sea. It was a modern caravan with plumbed-in water and toilet facilities and ran on mains electricity. I immediately realised that this was just the thing for us; no regular meal-times, no early morning breakfasts and all the time in the world to do what we wanted.
June came and Iris bade me a tearful goodbye before I went to Cornwall for a week. It was the first time I’d left her for so long before since my previous trips to Cornwall when I was working down there earlier in the year. Iris knew I had family commitments and accepted the fact. I promised her I would take her away later in the year. She was overjoyed.
No sooner had I returned from my holidays, Guess what? I had to go down to Falmouth again for a couple of days; this time, it was a working trip! Iris was due some time off from work so I took Iris down to Falmouth with me. She’d never been there before; in fact, she’d hardly been anywhere! She was delighted when she saw the place and although she had to be on her own during the daytime, we had some great times in the evenings with some of the staff from work.
The last two weeks in July were the official holiday weeks in our area. We decided to book the caravan in Berwick. We had already visited Berwick for a long weekend in May as I’ve already described. We were looking forward to two whole weeks of being together; uninterrupted and away from everything.