the day aunty arrived from new zealand
by sister-in-law, Rachael
Brighton Beachfront, England
Will every blogpost from England say, “It was just so beautiful, so green, so cute, so storybook”??? Just take a look at the pictures:
The day started out with challenging driving,
which turned out to be foreshadowing of things to come. Mr GPS delighted in luring us through a residential area with roads just two lanes wide. No problem you think? It wouldn’t have been a problem if the roads had not been playing garage to a row of cars on either side, leaving approximately one and a quarter lanes in which to negotiate oncoming traffic. And it wouldn’t have been a problem if one of the roads we needed had not been closed requiring the performance of tight three point turns right at the time mothers were dropping their toddlers at the daycare centre. And it would have been less of a problem if Mr GPS had not then taken us on an alternative route off the “main” (ahem) roads, and onto an unbelievably narrower one – so narrow that even without any parked cars, the approaching one had to zip up onto the pavement while we waited stationary and held our breath!
All that on the hurrying way to drop Grandpa off at the train station so he could hopefully meet Aunty L at Heathrow while we drove on to Brighton where they would join us (you see, there is a problem when you drive an old diesel van coz Londoners don’t like fume-emitting vehicles within a very wide radius of the city and will fine you heavily if you try to get near, and seeing as we were not certain of the details, we elected not to face the 500 pound fine and sent Grandpa off on public transport….)
Isn’t Brighton stripy beach chairs on a sandy beach with a long pier?
Almost – actually, it’s a pebbly beach, and the pier is an excuse for an amusement arcade, but yes, there were beach chairs, and there was also a long row of regal, stately, magnificent, expensive-looking mansions (not to mention rows of brick flats tucked in behind).
Apart from the 21st century thrill rides at the end of the pier, it all looked just as Grandpa remembered from his late teenage days of cycling here from Bromley (another place we couldn’t go to due to its location inside London’s Low Emission Zone). That’s just over a hundred miles round trip and sometimes they would even add in a 25 mile time trial just for the fun of it. All that in their hand-knit-by-Mother woollen cycling pants. Fortunately these rides took place on Sunday – and Monday night was bathnight in their family, whether they needed it or not. (Tomorrow cousins will be reminiscing about bathnight….”What do you mean Monday? It was Saturday for us.” “Friday in our house – with fish and chips for dinner.”)
This was not the only time Grandpa came to Brighton. In the summer of 1942 his mother brought him here for a week. The reason? His father, a major in the tank regiment, was here on embarkation for a few weeks. Occasionally throughout the holiday week (which, to an eleven-year-old boy was a bit of an adventure, and so enjoyable that he would leave thank you notes all around the Hungarian guesthouse, where they had stayed, when he left), mother and son would go walking with the off-duty father – not on the beach, of course. This was war time and you couldn’t even see the beach for coils of barbed wire and concrete pyramids deterring amphibious vehicles from attempting attack. No, they didn’t walk on the beach. But for mother and son, these walks were to be the last they would take with their husband and father, the last time they would see him. Within a week he was to return to Africa to perform his duty, leading a squadron of tanks as part of the battle of El Alamein.
He had not thought of dying for his country when he joined the army to get a job in the Great Depression. But by the time winter arrived, the policeman was walking up to the front door and knocking before delivering the telegram that would announce Father had been wounded. Not too much later, the policeman would come again. Father was dead. There were to be two more dreaded policeman visits during the war. Grandpa’s eldest brother was in a car accident; first visit. Visit two was to say he, too, was dead.
And here we sit tonight in our awesome position right on Brighton beachfront, listening to cars hoon outside our vehicles, unaware. It’s unlikely the drivers are thinking of a beach cordoned off by barbed wire or of young men dying in cars (especially ones who die because they run in to the back of a truck on a dark lane – dark, because there’s a war on and lights are not allowed; neither headlights, nor parking lights), and I doubt they are thinking about beautiful countryside or cute cottages.
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 148km
Tags: grandpa's stories, history, postcard: England
rayres
Ooh, I’m going to be in Brighton for research, and suddenly I’m actually excited about it. I had sort of wished this archive was kept in a different town – but it’s really pretty!
War. Yuck. And life goes on, and places go on, and sometimes we feel bittersweet about it.
wow rach, that’s sobering.
you know, when we walked on petticoat lane in london, where my ancestors sold their wares (they rolled cigars, strange but true), i got the goosebumps. X