The greatest gift a granny can give? summers by the sea!
WHEN I get up each morning i n my new house, I’m greeted with a view so glorious that I never pull down the blinds at night. My house is perched on rocks above a beautiful bay, the sea is turquoise in the sunshine and often Sammy the seal comes to the small stone pier where boats moor, begging for treats from the people who fish there.
How could my heart fail to lift at such a sight?
But there is one thing that makes it even better, when a small pudgy hand slips into mine and one of my two beloved grandchildren, Harley, aged five, and Sienna, who is two-and-a-half, come to look through the window with me.
I’ll hold them up and point out the seal or the divers and windsurfers, sometimes telling them tall stories about the magical world beneath the sea.
The main reason I sold my previous cottage near Bath and bought this house close to Torquay was for moments such as this.
Of course, as the best-selling novelist of 23 books, there could be no better place for creative inspiration.
But more than that, I wanted my grandchildren to be able to enjoy the enchanting, traditional childhood holidays by the seaside that I so cherished growing up.
Harley and Sienna live in London with my daughter Jo, 34, who is a nurse. Her husband Otis works long hours, too, so however loving and caring they are to their children, they don’t have too much spare time.
So when my grandchildren are with me, I want them to enjoy every moment and savour the contrast from their city lives, from delving into rock pools to catch little fish or crabs, to building sandcastles and having picnics, as I did as a child.
I have always been a sea person. For years I had hankered to move to the coast. Then, on holiday, I saw this house, fell in love and bought it.
Everything you can think of was wrong with it, from the difficult access up a steep drive to the broken drains. a three-storey, moneypit challenge — especially crazy for someone of 70 living alone to tackle. But I had a dream when I saw that fantastic view from all the windows. It took six months of work to bring it to reality. I now have glamorous bathrooms, an orangery and a solid, distressed wood floor in the kitchen.
In my childhood back in the Fifties, holidays were spent with obliging relatives, not in fancy hotels.
We had aunt Norah in Kent and uncle Bert in Rye, who had two boys of similar ages to me, my brother and sister. at the bottom of their garden was the River Rother and beyond that the vast expanse of Romney Marsh.
Because of the size of our family, we stayed in an old coastguard’s cottage, a primitive place with a pump outside for water and a chemical loo.
Just arriving there by train, and seeing our family-sized trunk being loaded onto a truck, with us piling in beside it, was enough to send me into raptures of excitement as we trundled over the marsh, one of us having to jump out every now and again to open a gate and close it behind us.
Dad would send us out to find kindling for the fire. He would light it, then he and Mum would put the feather mattresses around it to air them. That first night we always had stew to eat that Mum had made at home and brought down on the train with us. Then what adventures we had! Sometimes it was playing hideand-seek in the ruins of Camber Castle, other times making a raft with the intention of sailing it down the River Rother, or in one of the many huge ballast pits near our cottage.
These rafts were never seaworthy, so it was fortunate we could all swim. We stayed out until our clothes were dry so we didn’t send parental alarm bells ringing.
Other times we went into the town of Rye to look in Woolworths or watched the fishermen bringing in their catch.
If we went to Rye during the Easter holidays, we’d watch the sheep lambing on the marsh or catch baby eels in ditches, marvelling that people in London ate them. Sometimes we made dens out on the marsh or just lay around in the sunshine chatting about all things and everything.
during those marvellous holidays where the sun always seemed to shine, we didn’t realise what a lot we were learning about nature, about becoming resourceful and about caring for one another.
I am very aware that today’s children are unlikely to experience the kind of freedom I had as a child.
Today’s adults, me included, are too aware of the dangers out there for unaccompanied children.
But I do feel strongly we should try to steer our children and grandchildren away from the canned entertainment of Legoland, alton Towers and the like, and encourage them to use their imagination. Hence buying my house.
Children must experience more simple pleasures that don’t involve lots of money. Playing rounders in the park, hide-and- seek in the woods, to find out what it is like to be part of a little gang of friends, the older ones helping the younger ones as they hang out together inventing their own games. My grandchildren love to climb the rocks or fish with their nets. They caught a little jellyfish the other day, which thrilled them. They are rather like me and their mother — they like to sit and watch the sea and other people, but they also tend to dig big holes i n the sand then fill them with seawater. Harley acts the big boy and tells Sienna what to do. I’ve seen him growing in confidence at climbing and becoming fascinated by sea creatures.
Sienna is a bit too daring for her own good sometimes, but I like to see that in children. you don’t want them to grow up scared of everything.
I want Sienna and Harley to revel in these delights. To have long lazy days that just flow with no real organisation, where Mum has got time to be silly with them, where their aunties can visit, too, and we can all laugh a lot and enjoy being together.
It is important to spend time alone with grandchildren if you are fit enough: it gives them time to tell you things they might not be able to tell their parents.
It’s also good for them to learn to follow your house rules about tidiness, what they eat, time for bed. They learn, too, that Granny tires more easily than their parents.
My aunt Norah always had piles of old Beano comics for us to read, and I’ll have Peppa Pig and The Gruffalo here for my babes.
I’ll also be there paddling with them, trousers rolled up, just as my father did with us, we’ll have too much ice cream and candy floss, and hope the crabs they catch will live long enough in a bucket to take back the next day to be released.
and little do they realise the i mportant life skills they’re learning — and how much joy they’re giving me, too.
WITHOUT A trace by Lesley Pearse is published on August 13 (Penguin, £7.99).