MORNING SERIAL

THEN our little convoy made its way across the causeway, the railway line running alongside us, and onto Barry Island proper.

We came to a halt in the car park near the railway sidings that smelled of dust and diesel, and we spilled out of the coach in a muddle of mothers, aunties, baggage, and rolled up towels. There was a brief confusion as families regrouped, and then we struck out for the seafront in a gabbling procession. The sun here shone brighter than at home, horizons being wider now we had left our hillsides behind. The smell of the sea grew stronger, fusing with the sharp odours of vinegar and frying chips and the fishy stink of cockles, whelks and winkles being sold from stalls along the seafront.

At last we stood on the sand-strewn promenade and took in the scene. There were striped canvas deckchairs for hire,

hundreds of them, stacked like plates on a draining board, alongside penny-in-the-slot telescopes for looking over to England, and a great big public toilet that smelled faintly of pee and strongly of disinfectant – a state of affairs which would reverse itself as the day wore on. Behind us were the amusement arcades, open to the street and already pumping out loud music that competed in volume with the dings and thuds of pinball machines and one-armed-bandits, and before us was the beach, its arc of sand already heaving with thousands of bodies. The tide was out, and a wide flat world awaited us, all the way down to the churning brown waters of the Bristol Channel.

The mothers and aunties each hired a deckchair and hauled them down onto the sandy beach to seek out a prime spot as near as possible to the esplanade wall, so as to be near the gift shops and ice cream stands. When they had found a free patch of sand a few yards square they installed the deckchairs in a circle, facing inward, like a wagon train settling for the night. This was our staked claim of sand, a little patch of Aberfan away from home, and our communal headquarters for the day.