A trip to Brid

We had two posh aunties, they were my fathers older sisters, several years older than him in fact, and while he never had a single air or grace about him, they both did, then again in the photos that I have of their mother and father its the same, the mother (my grandmother) looks rather posh in all of them while my grandfather is never without his working boots and flat cap, maybe its a women thing on that side of the family.

So my dads eldest sister was Phyllis, she married a painter, not an artist, a painter and decorator for the council, spent all his working days painting council houses and once a year painting the massive stone lions outside Leeds Town Hall, he wasn’t posh and neither was their house for their house was a council house on a council estate, but still , my Auntie Phyllis was the poshest person (in her mind) that I have ever met, apart from her sister, my other posh auntie, she is even posher, but this isn’t about her.

When we were very young we had our annual holiday at the coast but that was about it for family trips, our dad had snooker and billiard games to play at his club on the weekends, he’d work on a Saturday morning then spend the afternoon at his club playing billiards, he drove all through the week he would explain, he didn’t want to be driving us places on a weekend too – fair enough.

So one August our posh Auntie Phyllis took pity on us, we deserved to be taken out for the day she argued with our dad and if he wasn’t going to take us then she would, or rather she and our Uncle Tommy would, not that Tommy had any say in the matter, Tommy was not the sort of man who wanted to have a say in anything anyway, give him a stone lion to paint and he was as happy as a sandboy.

We were to go to Bridlington our posh Auntie Phyllis declared, me, Ned and our mother, “Suits me” our dad said and went to work leaving the three of us to squash into the back seat of Tommys Skoda, back in the day when the word Skoda was a short way of saying “Absolute pile of eastern european crap not built to any recognisable engineering standards at all”, it would be a miracle if the Skoda could go as far as Bridlington with five passengers, a fact that Tommy conveyed to us all when Phyllis told him where we were going, “I’m not sure it will get us that far” he declared, “Pfft, rubbish” she declared, “of course it will, come on what are we waiting for, christmas ?”

Even her choice of destination was posh, for of the two East Coast destinations of choice to West Yorkshire folk, Brid was ultimately posher than Scarborough in so many ways, Scarborough had Punch and Judy shows, raggy-arsed kids from council estates, fish and chips in newspaper and donkey rides – Bridlington had fish and chips too, but you had to sit in a restaurant to eat them, and it had no donkeys, a fact that Ned and I were at pains to point out.

” But there’s no donkeys in Brid” we chirped up from the back seat.

“And its all the better for that” our posh Auntie Phyllis declared, and that was the end of that.

After hour upon hour of travelling we finally arrived in Bridlington, 65 miles distance in case you were wondering, average speed of the Skoda was something like 20, not bad for a 1960s Skoda really.

“Right” declared our posh Auntie Phyllis staring straight at our mother “you go find a place on the beach for them and we’ll save you a place at the bingo”

There was a long pause, I could tell our mother was actually considering the option.

“I can’t leave them on the beach on their own” she finally said
“Why not ?”
“Well he’s only eight and our Ned is only six”

She had a point, albeit a slim one, all over the east coast children of eight and six were being left on the beach on their own, we’re talking the 1960s here, not the cotton-wool, health and safety 2000’s, but our mum had seen the newspaper headline inside her head “Mother leaves children on beach while playing bingo”, “I could see the beach from the bingo hall” the article would have continued, “how was I to know they’d dig up an old world war one mine ?”

And so our day treat to the coast consisted of me and Ned and our mother sitting on the beach with no donkeys for several hours until our posh Auntie Phyllis had finally tired of her bingo, and believe me, it was several hours, probably about seven hours, we were cold and fed up when finally she returned with a fed-up looking Tommy in tow, “Come on” she cried “lets not sit around here all day, we’ve got to be off home now”

And when we were sat in the car and leaving Bridlington she reached over into the back seat and gave me a small box, and early birthday present she said, I could either open it now or wait another few weeks to my birthday, I opened it of course, it was the smallest Lego kit you could buy, they cost five shillings at our local toy shop, it was a small black Lego taxi, I said “Thank you” and Ned whispered to me “She won it on the bingo” as indeed she did.

I have disliked Bridlington ever since.