From a Distance

Can you remember where you learned to swim?  We took our first, unaided strokes in the sea - not something that's particularly easy for small children to do in the choppy English channel with salty splashes in our faces, stones underfoot and fronds of slippery seaweed floating around.  In the 1940s, armbands had yet to reach Sussex.  I vaguely remember rubber rings with unreliable stoppers and also some flabby perished water wings which any passing wave could sweep away from under our arms. We had a huge inner tube from a tractor tyre which was fine if one could position it correctly and avoid the large metal valve giving us a painful jab. Bobbing about in the water with me and my brother ( below ) is the dearest German helper called  Margaret who lived with us for many years from 1946.  She was known as Tante ( aunt ) and I adored her.  At that time the four of us were all under ten.  Tante was probably in her late 30s but what mysti...

This is me in 1945 aged 18 months playing with an old rubber bathing cap at Middleton-on-Sea.  The beach was still littered with detritus from the War.  Rusting clamps were left lying around on the shingle after the anti-tank scaffolding defences against invasion were demolished.  Mum always declared that a beach was the "world's best playground," which was handy as she had four children and we lived just yards from the sea.  When we were older, my brother and I loved to go prawning in the rock pools.  There was semi-submerged old mine casing which was positioned perfectly to trap the prawns as the tide ebbed and we could scoop the grey, transparent creatures up with our nets.  We're septuagenarians now but we often talk about those trips to the mine in the hot summer days of our childhood. Recently, I was looking at footage from the South East Screen Archive and was intrigued with the films of a certain Gowlland family who spent most of their...

Memory cells are capricious.   I've forgotten where I left my bike this morning but memories of Sussex by the Sea from seventy years ago are sharply etched in my mind.  Here's a photo of our family on the beach at Middleton-on-Sea in 1954 taking a walk on a hot and glorious summer day.  The sand is warm under our bare feet and there's a lovely saltiness in the air.  We are probably slathered in some shiny cream designed to enhance the tanning properties of the sun - we have no idea how damaging this will be. It's one of the last photos of the four of us together.  My elder sister is already a glamorous young woman who's studying Dance and Drama.  My next sister with the sunhat is in her last year at school and my wiry, sporting brother, holding his camera, is already a seriously talented tennis player.  I am none of these things.