I am holidaying with my mother on the Northumbrian coast. I realise how this sounds. After a certain age, all British mini breaks, no matter how chic one tries to be, are like the opening lines of an Alan Bennett monologue – one in which the orator, who has never had sex, chunters on about the poor standard of pier-end bingo blotters, before revealing between the lines that they have committed at least one murder. For the record, I have not murdered anyone so far in my rich and varied life; although there was a point just before this half-term break when I came close to gently throttling some Dent family members.
Days before we set off to Alnmouth, on the north-east coast of England, a mini-rebellion began. “I don’t want to go,” said my niece. On the cusp of being a teenager, she seemed unenthused by the notion of visiting a former working lighthouse. My niece’s ideal holiday would be spent on a chaise longue next to a wifi router where she could make and send TikToks of herself doing elaborate hand gestures to squeaky songs. “You are going,” I said. “If I’m going, you’re going.”
She sighed, her long, pale stuck-on nails curling around her phone as she lay horizontal. She is all limbs, laziness and hair, like a beautiful three-toed sloth. “I mean, where even is Alnmouth?” she said.
“It doesn’t matter where it is!” I said brightly. “We’re going to have half-term family time. We can all hang out and make memories. Do it for your gran. She needs a break. She’s looking forward to it.”
“Pgghhht, Gran told me she doesn’t want to go, either,” she sighed. “Can’t I stay with her? You can all just go.”
Her grandmother – my mother – an 83-year-old with serious lung problems and limited mobility, would be the easiest one to finish off. I’d sneak up on her during Flog It! The tween might be more wriggly. But not a court in the land would convict me, especially when I pleaded in martyred tones that I could have been in the bloody Caribbean, near-naked and drunk on rum runners.
Instead, here I was, making memories! My brother, his wife and me converging in Northumberland with two farting dogs. None of us can bear to put them in kennels, so all family breaks must be near dog-friendly beaches. We had found a cottage within a two-hour, emergency-dash distance of my father’s care home. Even if he has had more comebacks than Lazarus this year, we stay vigilant. Fun was happening. And now I was experiencing some very ungracious pushback.
More sensibly, I’ve realised lately that the half-term holidays on which my mother took me and my brother David in the 1980s (to Prestatyn in Wales or sometimes a static caravan on the Solway coast, 20 miles from our home in Carlisle) – well, maybe they were not exactly her dream vacations, either. She had elderly parents she couldn’t stray far from, limited funds and work commitments, but was hellbent on making memories.
And she did. I still warmly remember wearing Odor-Eater “rabbit ears” in a Blackpool hotel fancy dress competition, and the time our Austin Princess broke down on the way home and we were towed by the AA, the nadir of excitement. Endless rain. Beachcombing trips that brought up zero crabs. The Rhyl Sun Centre, where the wave machine gave you a mouthful of verucca plasters.
I am abundant in crap, yet weirdly amazing, let’s-all-make-the-best-of-this half-term memories. Looking back, those family holidays were really just a chance to take the mick out of each other, pointing out each other’s shortcomings, in the same old manner, in a fresh and uncharted setting.
In Northumberland, we have walked on the sands three times daily, throwing balls and picking up multiple dog poos. My mother has watched from the window with binoculars, waving and doing her wordsearch. We saw a seal, though it could have been a bin liner. We’ve eaten chips almost constantly and played air hockey in Seahouses Amusements. We’ve told Dent family folklore, usually about my ex-boyfriends, over bottles of Londis vin de table.
The tween has joined in with our fun, semi-humouring our elderly capacity for tedium. Her joy is scrolling and reading a never-ending group WhatsApp chat, her mood shifting in real time to its highs and lows. “Dustin says he’s pansexual,” she grunts, alerting us to new gossip, phone to face, lying along a window bench, ignoring the gorgeous, desolate shores.
“Does that mean he only eats things out of pans?” asks my brother. “Yeah, that’s right, pan-fried salmon pancakes,” I say, winding her up. “Sometimes for a treat, panna cotta.”
Then my brother, my mother and I laugh like drains for at least half an hour. My niece is still waiting for the part of the trip where we start making memories. I haven’t told her this is exactly what I meant.
