Popular | Yesterday Remembered

Travelling seemed much simpler then

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Scotland and back

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A Cockney voice from just along the row said: “Not exacdy the crahn jewels, are they?” The jewels’ in question were a pair of very basic cufflinks stamped out of some dubious-looking yellow metal – all part of the civilian kit being handed to each one of us in the middle of 1946 by a […]

Holiday in Bournemouth, 1946

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When Holidays Were a Privilege

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A Holiday to Remember

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Mother stood back, lips pursed, hands on hips as she surveyed father’s latest mode of transport. “Get to where on that contraption – Blackpool did you say? Lucky if we get to the end of the road!” I was aged about six, and could hardly see over the ‘contraption’, which was a gleaming green and […]

Get to Blackpool in That Contraption?

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In 1937 my parents moved to Swindon from Luton when there was a slump in the straw hat trade. My father had managed a Singer Sewing Machine shop in Luton, and all the ‘home-workers’ who had been buying sewing machines and electric motors on hire-purchase returned them when the slump came, father’s income depended on […]

A New Life in Swindon

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During the Second World War we travelled every year, despite the air raids, from our house in the West Riding of Yorkshire to spend summer holidays with my aunt and uncle in Buckinghamshire. It was always the same. When the day arrived my mother and I (and my toy panda) set off for our small […]

A Country Holiday in Wartime

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Listening to a group of schoolgirls talking about their exotic holidays spent in Spain, Italy and Greece made me recall my own childhood holidays in the 1930s. We were lucky to get one at all in those lean times, when there were no holidays with pay. My parents, brother Tom and I lived in the […]

Family Holidays in the 1930s

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There was no way I was ever going to become a caravan convert, particularly after caravanning with my parents and grandma when I was just 13 in 1963. All I remembered was this uncomfortable caravan that afforded no privacy to a teenager. To get any light meant the use of gas mantles which were prone […]

What Caravanning Was All About

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Southend Revisited

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Package Holiday Pioneers!

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Being stung by nettles as I cleared the ‘problem’ bit of garden, brought back a memory that hadn’t crossed my mind for a very long time now. If I tell you that soon I’ll be able to travel free on the infrequent bus service from my home village, and that the painful memory is of […]

A Real Sting in the Tale

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Hop-Picking During the Battle of Britain

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Going on Holiday Seemed So Much Simpler Then…

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Remembering the Skegness of Old

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Dover Remembered

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Motoring in the 1930s

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A holiday to remember

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Recently I spent Christmas in my home town of Blackpool. I went to Canada in 1966 but still call Blackpool my home. In the mid-1950s Blackpool was ‘the place’ to visit for vacations. There were two train stations – North and Central -and my family had a jewellery and fancy goods store beside Blackpool Central […]

A barrow boy in Blackpool

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