Whilst browsing our very own Yorkshire Post Online yesterday I came across a report that mentions that our Yorkshire resorts are on the verge of a huge boom-time due to folk like me deciding that they didn’t like being treated like Ronnie Biggs at a Metropolitan Police “Class of 63″ Reunion Evening whilst journeying through airports, and are heading for the Yorkshire coast instead.
OK, the cost of holidaying abroad my have something to do with it too.
Anyway, the report is here
But it was this quote that made me sit up and take notice,
Alan Studholme, of Bridlington Hotel and Guest House Association, said: “The season has suddenly burst into life. We usually get a lot of pensioners in May but had very few bookings. So it looked as though they decided to stay at home because they were feeling the squeeze.
“But we are now getting a lot of requests for family rooms – far more than usual. The town is not geared up for a young invasion at the moment but we are getting there with developments such as the marina. The days of the grannies coming here to play bingo are well gone.”
Many, many years ago when my famous barking mad Auntie Phyllis, my fathers oldest sister, was still alive and not at all barking mad (that came in later years), she and her husband, the timid Uncle Tommy, invited my mother, Ned and I to go with them to Bridlington for “a nice day out”.
It was the school summer holidays, in fact it was the school summer holidays around the time of our Neds birthday, so mid-August then, and in the school summer holidays we didn’t get to go on many “nice days out” because our dad worked all the time and he always refused to take us out in the car for “nice days out” anyway because his job entailed him driving all week and he wanted to spend his weekends playing snooker at his club.
So it was a novelty for Ned and I as we climbed into the timid Uncle Tommy’s plastic Skoda car, the one that he called ” a lovely runner” whilst everyone else simply pointed and laughed at Johnny Foreigners attempt to emulate the likes of great British car builders such as…
…ok I can’t think of any at the moment, suffice to say that in the 1960’s everyone laughed at Johnny Foreigners attempts to emulate anything that could be made better in this country, the xenophobic “I’m Backing Britain” campaign financed by a Government desperate to restore the toppling balance of trade figures, made it perfectly acceptable to point and laugh at foreigners.
So we squashed into the back of the timid Uncle Tommy’s plastic Skoda – our mother was a big woman, our Ned and me only small, its a wonder we did not suffocate – and we journeyed for several hours towards Bridlington in search of “a nice day out”.
Our barking mad Auntie Phyllis was the eldest of my fathers family and so expected to be domineering, she did not disappoint and for the whole of the journey she spouted forth on why Bridlington was so much better than Scarborough, how it was more genteel and had a better class of clientele than the place that we always holidayed in every year, the implication was obvious, we were just very common people whilst she and the timid Uncle Tommy were more knowlegable and far harder to please – our mother just bit her tongue and said nothing.
Talk on the journey was of how this “nice day out” would be a “nice day out ” for our Neds birthday, “it”l be nice for little Ned” the barking mad Auntie Phyllis explained, “he’s never been to Bridlington before has he ?” she asked leaning over the back of her front passenger seat into Neds face.
“Yes we have” I spoke up, “We didn’t like it” and my mother hissed at me to shut up while the barking mad Auntie Phyllis’s face suddenly resembled a thunder cloud, “…it has no donkeys” I offered by means of explanation for my outburst.
“Bridlington has lots of donkeys” she scornfully retorted, “but they are much nicer than Scarborough donkeys”, so that was me told.
We eventually arrived in a cloud of blue smoke, a perfectly normal state of affairs for a plastic Skoda in the 1960’s and set about enjoying our “nice day out for Neds birthday” in the far better class Bridlington.
Theres no doubt that Bridlington was posher than Scarborough, smaller and more perfectly formed, it had lawns and gardens with real flowers in them, old people strolled the promenade and there was only one amusement arcade on the “front”…
…to which our barking mad Auntie Phyllis made a bee-line, “you go take the kids on the beach Joyce” she shouted over her shoulder as she and the timid Uncle Tommy took their stools at the bingo counter, “Me and Tommy will be here when you’re ready to go home”
We didn’t know up until that point that our barking mad Auntie Phyllis was a bingo-maniac, the timid Uncle Tommy probably wasn’t but he would not have dared to disagree with her so he took a stool at the bingo counter too and offered two sixpences to the girl for the first of many games, even as young boys we were disgusted to watch our timid Uncle Tommy play bingo for bingo was a game for women and our poor timid, bald Uncle Tommy had become so emancipated that we doubted whether we should call him “Uncle” anymore.
We sat on the beach all day, bored.
There were no donkeys at Brid, none that day anyway, there was a boat that sailed in and out of the harbour on a fairly regular basis taking holidaymakers on “Trips around the Brigg”, and that was as exciting as the day got, later, much later that day we ventured back to the bingo counter to find our barking mad Auntie Phyllis and timid Uncle Tommy still playing bingo from the same stools that we’d left them several hours earlier.
“Here you are Ned” said the barking mad Auntie Phyllis thrusting a small lego “build a very small car out of four bricks” kit at him, “heres your birthday present” and we couldn’t help but notice that it still had a small label attached to it declaring that you only had to win two games to gain this prize.
They’d taken us to Bridlington to win our Ned a birthday present.
Later on in life our barking mad Auntie Phyllis went barking mad and was contained in a home for the bewildered for her own safety, coincidentally this home for the bewildered just happened to be in the red light district of Bradford and she was often found late at night wandering the streets in the company of young prostitutes in her nightie and dressing gown, from whence the police would take her back to the home, I only found out she’d died several months after she actually died which was a shame as I’d have enjoyed the bingo at her funeral service.
You should read your stars in the Weekly Mash!!