There was another report this week about the rise in the traditional British holiday. Part of this is down to economics – ever since the financial melt down of 2008 people have had less money to spend on overseas holidays – but, apparently, a larger part is down to nostalgia for our old childhood holiday haunts. We’ve done Europe. We’ve done the Far East. We’ve done the Caribbean. Now we want to re-create those magical childhood memories.
As someone who grew up in a British seaside resort in the 60s, this is a subject I know quite a bit about. Bournemouth was one of the Big Two holiday destinations for post-war Britain. As soon as the schools broke up in late July, the town would fill with holidaymakers. To get a good spot on the beach, you’d have to arrive before 8am – or be prepared to walk a mile or two down the beach away from the hotels and bus stops.
As I write this, I’m visiting my aunt. She has a respectable number of books, many of them paperbacks dating from the 1940s – 60s. I opened one up to look at it this morning and got a flush of memory. The smell of that book–the old, yellowing, not-acid-free, paper, took me back to my childhood, when I’d peek into my parents’ paperbacks (with the stunningly garish 1950s covers, or the designy-moderne 1960s covers) and that smell would rise up. It’s a smell I respond to pretty primally: it’s books, and story, and hours of being taken away to Another Place. One whiff and I’m on Trafalmadore or the deck of the Dawn Treader or in the Marches’ parlor reading a letter from the Front.
