The last week of the summer holidays was spent in North Cornwall – Polzeith to be precise. Never before have I been on such a “bucket and spade” type holiday. Having been brought up abroad, I am still in awe of the consummate* British beach holiday maker. You need so much kit to set up camp…wind breakers (or 5, in order to make wet and dry areas, sitting rooms and bathrooms, mazes etc), mallets (who would ever think you’d need a bloody mallet on a day out to the beach?), chairs, tents, plastic mats, colourful towels, buckets, spades, thermos flasks, stoves, picnics, surf and/or body boards, wet suits, suncreams, changes of clothes, reading materials, boules, football, rugby ball, volley ball, tennis ball, bats, bikinis, raincoats, blankets and most importantly a swirly whirly thing attatched to your encampment that can be seen from the outskirts of the estate so that you can find your way back in once you have been swimming and/or for a wee and/or for icecream. I was exhausted – it took three adults and 6 children to carry everything down to the beach and three hours to find everybody again because we didn’t have a swirly whirly thing.
The kids had a brilliant time – we had great weather and spent nearly every day at the beach. They all had surfing lessons. I had a brief go, but couldn’t pull myself out of the water and onto the board, let alone leap, in a cat like manner onto my feet in readiness for the next wave. I made a very quick, but not difficult decision to leave it to the youngsters, mainly because I looked like an arsehole. Not only because I couldn’t do it, but because I was not wearing cool gear. I had borrowed my friend’s husband’s wetsuit – which obviously didn’t fit at all, so I had bumps in all the wrong places – all the kids pretended they didn’t know me (I don’t blame them, I pretended I didn’t know me either) and my friend laughed so much she wet her wetsuit.
Instead, I spent a lot of time body surfing which was much more fun. We also took the kids on a bike ride along the Camel Trail to Padstow, which was lovely but horribly busy and the town itself is now completely monopolised by Rick Stein and his many establishments. “Padstein” I’ve heard it should be called. Had very good takeaway fish and chips from his Seafood School though.
We went to watch some Donkey races. Small children put on strange helmets and sit on what looks like half a bicycle behind the donkey. Hilarious. My son managed somehow to get covered in donkey poo so we had to go home.
* Interesting, I think that the word “consummate” can either mean “complete a relationship by having sexual intercourse” or “show great skill and flair for something” – the meaning, it seems, totally changes depending on the pronunciation – I can see no other correlation between the two definitions.
