SPECIAL SUMMERS

Five writers look back on exceptional holidays from their youth

MY FATHER

IRUSSELL LEADBETTER BIZA, the summer of 1977. A warm, sunny, Balearic day. A family from central Scotland, new suitcases in hand, walk into the blessedly cool foyer of a recently built hotel, the Arenal. Their eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark of the interior: outside, the glare of sunlight has been particularly harsh.

Everything about the trip so far has been pleasurable: the novelty of the flight from Glasgow, the furnace-blast that caused them to wilt as they made their way down the aircraft steps; the sight of so many sleek aircraft, shining in the sun, waiting patiently on the aeropuerto tarmac; the glimpses from the taxi of unfamiliar street signs and shopfront names in an unfamiliar tongue. Even the air – perfumed with a scent the source of which they will never discover – smells different. The boy, an unsophisticated 17-year-old, had been transfixed by a conversation in what seemed to him to be impossibly quick Spanish between the taxi driver and a motorcyclist.

The family – mother, father and son (the teenage daughter is on a school trip to Germany) – are giddily happy as they wander around the hotel. The pool looks lovely. Nice restaurant, too. Lots of shops nearby. An inviting beach. The family relaxes into its holiday. At one point, they might have thought, “This is the life. We should do this more often.”

At one point, too, the son takes a photograph of his father. He’s sitting on the terrace of the hotel, hands clasped behind his head. He looks tanned. His eyes are closed. He rests one foot on a small, circular table. He’s wearing a shirt and – slightly oddly, perhaps, given the weather – trousers rather than shorts. Maybe he’d just been into the hotel restaurant, and the place has a no-shorts-please dress code.

I can’t remember. It’s a nice photograph of him, anyway. It means a lot to me.

It’s hard now, almost 40 years later, to see that Ibiza holiday in anything other than a melancholy frame. Dad died just a few weeks after we came home. He hadn’t long marked his 44th birthday. His death hit us hard, as death tends to do.

I’m so glad the three of us at least had that holiday. I wish dad could have had more like it. I wish the four of us could have had a fortnight in the Balearic sun, splashing each other in the pool then, laughing, clambering out to dry on the sun-loungers. But it wasn’t to be.

The Arenal is still around. I remember my dad and I talking to a waiter there, towards the end of our holiday: father and son together, sharing a beer, probably. Then, in the early 1980s, sadder and wiser, I went back to Ibiza. Some impulse I could only guess at drew me back to the Arenal. My eyes filled with tears as I stood on the sun-baked terrace amid strangers.

I was about to leave when I caught a waiter’s eye. It was the same man we’d spoken to in 1977. We got talking. He remembered my dad, and nodded sympathetically when I told him what had happened. I asked for a beer: something to drink in memory of my dad.

SWIMMING

ISUSAN SWARBRICK T was 1980-something in a caravan park near Blackpool. I fidgeted awkwardly with the straps on my new swimming costume as a curious scene unfolded across the pool. A small crowd had gathered, necks craned to get a closer look. There were the pops of a couple of camera flashes, bursts of nicotine yellow against the slate grey skies.

From the eye of the storm emerged a moustachioed man. After a few cursory waves, he stripped off his tracksuit to reveal a pair of trunks before briskly snapping his goggles into place and diving into the frigid water.

He swam a few lengths, gliding up and down the pool with ease. I wasn’t born when David Wilkie won gold at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, but on that unseasonably cold June day I knew instantly I was watching someone special.

I was seven and late to learning how to swim. I’d had a couple of lessons but lacked confidence as was evidenced by me rocking up that afternoon with armbands and a rubber ring: the only sensible belt-andbraces approach to aquatics, I reckoned.

A couple of other kids jumped into the water and began splashing around like playful dolphins. I took a little bit more coaxing and initially clung to the side, teeth chattering, as my knuckles turned white.

I’m not sure how long I was there – probably minutes, although it certainly felt like hours – but having bobbed around aimlessly like a cork for a bit, I slowly began to doggy paddle in my own inimitable style up and down the pool. It wasn’t pretty but it was progress.

Suddenly emboldened I decided it was time to relinquish my rubber ring. My mum and dad gave me the thumbs-up. Losing the armbands would take a bit longer, but something had clicked. I no longer felt the overwhelming sense of panic and enveloping fear around water.

Nor was I done yet. Since the start of the holiday, the yellow helter skelter flume had seemed as forbidding as scaling Rapunzel’s Tower. But I was on a roll. Ignoring my thudding heart and knocking knees, I ascended the steps. I could see my parents and Wilkie down below looking upwards. Moments later I was hurtling down the slide and into the water like a frog launched from a cannon: all flailing legs and wide-eyed joy.

Back home in West Lothian I soon graduated from the little pool to the big pool. A few months later I got my 10m badge. The 25m, 50m, 100m, 200m and 400m followed until my mum ran out of space to sew them all on my costume. I joined a club and even swam competitively for a few years.

Three decades would pass before I crossed paths with Wilkie again. Hotfooting it into the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh to cover live swimming, I was attempting (woefully) to juggle my laptop, coffee, notebook and rucksack when someone stepped forward to hold open the door.

There was a few more lines on his face, the famed moustache notably more salt and pepper, but it was unmistakably Wilkie. I would love to say I managed a clever remark, but instead I blushed to the roots of my hair and mumbled thanks. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes. I would beg to differ.

FAMILY

IANN FOTHERINGHAM T was the summer of oystercatcher eggs and noisy sheep; of Mr Men books and secret safes; of still loch waters and The Bridge Escapade of Which We Must Never Speak. It was a summer of firsts and lasts – the first time we would holiday as a four; the last time we could book a trip without worrying about school term times.

Harry was four months old, a smiley bundle of endless energy, Archie was fourand-a-half and already a patient big brother, devoted to this new little person in his life and only slightly put off by the nappy changing (constant) and crying (occasional).

We booked Ferryboat Cottage because it looked peaceful. Whatever else we wanted from our first holiday as a family of four together, after four exhausting months of

sleepless nights and breastfeeding and pesky work and endless visitors, peace was right at the top of the list.

We found it at Ferryboat, an old Galloway cottage at Boat o’ Rhone on the shores of Loch Ken, and for seven glorious sunny days we had the perfect time.

Our temporary home had been the ferrymaster’s cottage and Archie, who is now 12, still recalls the thrill of finding the old safe where the takings were kept, hidden away in the dining room.

We watched oystercatchers in the garden – one laid eggs in the garden wall and Hilda, who runs the cottage, sent us pictures of the chicks when they hatched. We lazed on the grass reading Mr Men books to Archie and Harry and I can still recite Mr Tickle with my eyes shut. We kept the windows open at night because it was so hot, which meant we were woken early by the neighbouring sheep. And one morning, having watched the cottage owners do it a few days before, we decided to drive over to the other side of the loch via the old railway bridge.

Unfortunately, the gate at the other end of the bridge was locked, which meant a choice between precarious reversing on wooden boards that shoogled terrifyingly whenever we moved, or awaiting rescue, red-faced, by a local resident who had the sole set of keys. It was far from our finest hour and we agreed it was probably best not to mention it to anyone, so we didn’t.

And later, while the boys slept, we chatted in the cool evening air, looking out over the loch, and I realised my family holiday meant something different now – an almost imperceptible shift from what I once had to what I have now.

I remember all of my childhood holidays, from sand in the sandwiches on the windy Prestwick seafront and kite-flying on the beach at beautiful Croy to lazing on the grass amid the stripey deckchairs of Hyde Park and having the tugs combed out of my hair after a trip on the Millport ferry.

We didn’t go far, and we didn’t go often, but that didn’t matter, because we eked out every second of precious time, away from the humdrum, happy on holiday, just us.

One day, I hope Archie and Harry will feel the same about our family holidays together, at Ferryboat and beyond.

SBRIAN BEACOM PARKY made a discovery that blew our minds open with possibility. For our first foreign holiday my chum and flatmate had found the Eurotrain, a rail ticket to ride that was as cheap as chips, or in our case French fries – Sparky reckoned that in the glorious summer of 1975 we should see the glorious beaches of the south of France.

But that wasn’t the only plan. Having recently joined the Common Market we were off in search of Eurolove, planning to trade on the affection our economic and political status now fostered, with a virtual assurance the young ladies of Europe would grant us free movement across all borders.

And so we slid some canvas holdalls over our shoulders (this was the era before backpacks) and set off, like two Jack Kerouacs from Johnstone. The reality

however wasn’t quite so dreamlike. The train journey was hot and sweaty and our first night on the Cote d’Azur was spent sleeping on top of a table tennis table on a quiet beach. On the second night we slept in a field. And for someone who doesn’t get bitten, the French ants were out to prove me wrong.

Monte Carlo, sadly, didn’t open up its arms to us in the way we’d hoped. Indeed, we were ejected for having rolled up the trouser legs of our baggy blue jeans too far, revealing too much baseball boot. (It was very hot.)

What we also learned was the franc didn’t go a long way, certainly not long enough to take us into a youth hostel. And most of our nights were spent sleeping on the beach at Frejus. Thankfully, the gendarmes would let us kip under the stars until 6am, at which time the beach was swept for debris (which included us, for an hour) and then we could return and finish the task of sleeping.

But then one day, as we lay on our sleeping bags with knotted hankies on our heads to fend off the midday sun, we squinted out through sore, burned eyelids to realise we were in fact in heaven. Two young ladies whom we soon learned were Norwegian had parked up alongside. And the blonde in particular was everything I had ever dreamed of.

After about five days we worked up the courage to speak to them. Not with actual words, more in sign language. Not rude Inbetweeners gestures, you understand. What we did was take out a camera and point to it, indicating we would like our pics taken with them. The implication was in capturing their image on my little Instamatic we would capture their souls and their hearts.

The girls were happy to pose and giggled a lot. And each day they arrived on the beach next to us. But being Scottish and pathetically inadequate, we simply smiled and adored them.

The passing years have eased the pain, comforted by the realisation that speaking to them would have been pointless. Norway hadn’t joined the single market, and as such any love trade initiatives would still have left us single.

NIGHTCLUBBING

MMARIANNE TAYLOR Y stomach was lurching as we approached the big wooden doors with burly bouncers outside. According to my companions this was the coolest club in town. What if I didn’t get in? What if the police took me away for trying to get in? In the end, the bouncers just looked me up and down and said nothing. The summer dress, blue eyeshadow, perm and hoop earrings had done their job: I looked like a grown-up. Phew.

It was Majorca, 1989, I had just turned 14 and this was our first ever foreign holiday. A couple of weeks earlier I had attended my Being among grown-ups dancing to 12-inch remixes of the pop hits of the day proved a formative experience for Marianne Taylor

At the school disco a fortnight earlier there were sausage rolls and

Vimto. Now I was in a proper disco that served alcohol with umbrellas in it

school’s end-of-term disco in the gym hall and there had been a buffet of crisps, sausage rolls, jelly and ice-cream and Vimto. Now I was in a proper disco that served alcohol – with umbrellas in it.

And since I was witnessing all this clandestinely, having sneaked out of our holiday apartment when my parents had gone to bed, it had the added allure of forbidden fruit. I’d become poolside pals with a young couple from Torquay; when they met my 17-year-old brother and I, they presumed we were a couple too, and, happy to appear older than I was, I didn’t bother to correct them. When they asked if we wanted to go to a club with them, I nonchalantly said yes and bribed my brother into keeping quiet in front of our mum and dad. He wanted to go too, of course, especially since it involved a spin in their hired Jeep.

The club itself was like something out of a dream. Sitting on a clifftop overlooking the sea, it was huge, with three levels of tables looking down on a massive dancefloor. Colourful disco lights were mounted like coconuts in real palm trees and – best of all – the place had no roof. The balmy Mediterranean air made things hot and then miraculously cooled you down.

As we entered the main area Soul II Soul’s Back to Life was playing at top volume and I saw a man in a white suit with sleeves rolled up throwing some shapes on the dancefloor. For a moment I genuinely thought it was Don Johnson from Miami Vice.

We got a round in – I ordered a pina colada, obviously – and since this was my first cocktail as well as my first nightclub, within 10 minutes I was feeling what I now recognise to be drunk. Domino Dancing by the Pet Shop Boys came on and we all made our way to the dancefloor. It was the 12-inch remix (remember those?) and the song built and built for what seemed like an age; for the first time in my life, I lost myself in a blissful reverie of music, lights and booze. It was how I’d always hoped it would be.

Half an hour later I was throwing up all that coconut cream in the toilets and feeling a bit teary, and the bouncers were arranging a taxi home for my brother and me. He’d admitted to our clubbing companions I was only 14 and they were understandably keen to be rid of us. But they gave us our taxi fare home, bless them.

Mum and Dad were still asleep as we sneaked back in – we got away with it. We’d actually only been away for two hours. Oh, but what a two hours.

Life would never be quite the same again. I’d glimpsed a sexy, grown-up world that seemed completely at odds with the drudgery of adult life in 1980s Fife. I’d experienced beats and a powerful bassline throbbing through my body – something I’d experience again many times over, at far greater intensity, in clubs in Glasgow and London in the years to come.

Every now and then I play the Balearic rhythms of Domino Dancing to remind me of that night in Majorca. But I’ve never had another pina colada.

Clockwise from above: Ann Fotheringham with sons Archie and Harry at Ferryboat Cottage; Brian Beacom on the Cote d’Azur with two young Norwegians who contributed to an unforgettable first foreign holiday; Russell Leadbetter’s father soaks up the heat...

PHOTOGRAPH: SHUTTERSTOCK As a 17-year-old in 1977 Russell Leadbetter visited Ibiza on holiday with his parents, an experience that would prove to be the last of its kind