Dear tourists …

Do you leave your brains at home when you go on holiday? That’s the only explanation I can offer for the idiocy I have witnessed from tourists this weekend. Either that, or those I have encountered are just imbeciles.

I have ridden on the beach twice this weekend. It has been windy on both days and people have decided it would be marvellous fun to fly kites. Fine; just don’t swoop them down so they frighten the horses, and don’t stand in the middle of the beach so I don’t know which side you’ll chose when you bring them horse-scaringly down to earth. In addition, if you have a yappy, rat-like terrier that enjoys chasing things, keep it on a lead when there are horses cantering by. I don’t enjoy being chased.

I also would advise fathers with toddlers to look where they are going and not stare at the sand when they decide to walk up the beach from the sea. Then you will avoid being ploughed into said sand by a galloping horse. That’s what nearly happened to one poor dear today. He awoke from a dream when I yelled: “Watch out!” as he ambled across my path. There is no way I, or the two riders behind me, would’ve been able to stop in time.

Climbing down the main access route to the beach through the dunes, must, it would seem, be arduous work. I can come up with no other explanation why a family would set up their seats, yellow inflatable boat and child’s buggy across the main thoroughfare like an Everest expedition’s base camp. Such behaviour is tantamount to sitting down in the middle of the pavement. And don’t look at me like I’m an idiot when I ask you to move it. It’s not me that’s blocking the only horse-friendly route off the beach.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I am no fan of caravans. My hatred is ratcheted up another notch when caravette drivers with white hair and indecipherable gender decide to reverse without bothering to look what’s behind them. I offer no apology for going into full shouting, arm-waving Basil Fawlty mode when they narrowly avoid hitting a pony.

And it’s only the second weekend of the holidays …

School's out

At this time of year, I wish I were a primary school teacher. How I would adore six weeks free from the daily grind … then I remember that I’m not particularly fond of children (I wish some of my teachers had had the decency to consider that fact when choosing their careers) and that actually, primary school teachers work damn hard. Probably.

In truth, I haven’t had the freedom of a six-week stretch of summer holidays since I was 13. The holidays between leaving middle school and going up to the scary high school were bookended by a week at an aunt’s and a week with a friend at her grandparents’. In the middle was the heaven of other people’s horses, sea and sand; days of fresh-air tiredness, of appetites sharpened by salty air and satisfied by guilt-free fish and chips.

After that, my summer holidays were spent working. I worked in a green grocer’s, where I learned to count the correct change into people’s hands; I worked in shop, where I learned it was politic to wait until the foul-smelling person left before blasting the air freshener; I worked in a chippy, where I learned to tell the difference between haddock and cod; I worked in an hotel, where I learned chefs enjoy a pint and making a mess, but are far too important to clear up after themselves.

Overall, I learned that, like children, I’m not overly keen on tourists and the service industry was not for me. I learned that if wanted something more out of life, I’d better get me an education. Then one day, pallid, indoor teenagers may be waiting on me as I enjoyed my moment in the sun.

The boys of summer

The Boys’ Brigade has arrived. Each year, the appearance of rows of old-fashioned green and white tents and the accompanying larger communal marquees encamped in a field along the coast road seems to sound the starting gun for summer. The boys are different every year but the pattern of their two-week visit doesn’t change: football on the school field, marching with trumpets and drums down the main street on Sunday, and gaggles of teenage girls tracking their movements in the hope of bagging themselves a Scottish summer love.

That’s one of the beauties of growing up in a coastal village that gathers more that its fair share of tourists: the boys of summer. Girls, eagerly awaiting the fresh talent that will arrive in holiday cottages and bed and breakfasts, head off to summer jobs in cafes and shops beneath extra coats of mascara and lip-gloss. Some blush when they have to serve the object of their desire, others flirt brazenly. Later, they meet up in the amusement arcades, then walk hand-in-hand along the beach.

I never had a fancy for a Boys’ Brigader but I shared the anticipation of romance as the school year died and the six-week holiday beckoned. It is more than half a lifetime ago, but one fortnight-long affair remains vivid. I wore pink eyeshadow and a yellow Frankie Says Relax T-shirt. He cut a deep hole into the arm of a wooden bench with a penknife while he waited for me one evening. For years, I would remember him and smile when I walked by that seat. He wrote me a ‘I really do like you’ note on a postcard and passed it surreptitiously across the counter of the shop where I worked. When he returned home to Kent, we wrote and he would ring each fortnight on a Friday. My mum thought he was “nice”.

But when you’re 15 and mobile phones haven’t been invented, distances are insurmountable and affairs fizzle out; boys at school suddenly start to grow up and become more interesting. Summer loves are packed into memory boxes, to be taken out occasionally and smiled over, like sepia photographs. Wistfully, you wonder where they are now….

A house, a house, my kingdom for a house...

I had been ‘lucky’ to get the flat of the phantom, floods and pestilence - or so everybody kept telling me. I suppose I was, because affordable, rented accommodation isn’t that easy to come by where I live.

When I rang the local council to say I was being made homeless in three months and to ask whether they would help, I could almost hear the suppressed laughter humming down the wires. As I was not pregnant, did not have a drug or alcohol problem, or a child, I was not considered a priority.

When I was put through to the housing officer, he fairly snorted with mirth. “Ms M&M,” he said, “we don’t let houses where you live, we sell them.” “So what do you expect me to do?” I asked. “Pitch a tent in the garden?” His advice? Change the locks, then the landlord would require a court order to remove me and that would buy me a further six months. It was not a route I was prepared to follow.

Let’s face it, lots of local people can’t afford to get on that hallowed property ladder in a rural community that’s full of ‘desirable’ (at least in the summer) houses. If you’re not in a position to buy, you need to rent. But finding somewhere to rent can be equally competitive and ultimately heartbreaking.

I can quite understand why someone would prefer to let out a house to tourists for £350 a week in the summer instead of £350 a month all year round. It makes perfect economic sense. But it also makes me want to stamp my feet with frustration and do my Violet Elizabeth impression.

When plans were put forward for housing association, affordable property for rent, the NIMBYs circulated a petition. They didn’t want rented houses near them; heaven forbid, it would bring down the value of their homes. The council ignored them, the houses were built and filled in a flash. The waiting list is now so long, the housing association is refusing to add any more names to it.

Vacant council houses are as rare as rocking horse poo. As the housing officer says, they’ve mainly been sold. Quite a few are with their second generation of owners …as second homes for affluent folk who fancy a weekend on the coast.