Summer Holidays
SUMMER HOLIDAYS
Most people took their two week summer holidays at roughly the same time, between the middle of July and the middle of August. In many towns, whole industries closed down for the last week in July and the first in August. Many people stayed at home or went for day trips into the seaside or countryside. Towards the end of the 1950s a few people flew to Spain on one of the recently introduced “package holidays”. But most people who could afford to get away for a while spent their week or two weeks in one of the many seaside holiday resorts like Blackpool, Scarborough, Skegness, or Bridlington, if they lived in the North of England; Rhyl, Llandudno, or Weston Super Mare, if they lived in the Midlands; or Brighton, Clacton, Southend, or Great Yarmouth, if they lived in the London area. Wealthier professional people might spend their holiday in more “genteel” places like Eastbourne, Frinton or Bognor Regis.
Most big resorts had one or more piers and all types of amusements: shooting galleries with rifles which never seemed to shoot where you aimed them, coconut shies – (where the suspicion was that the coconuts were glued into the holders so that they were almost impossible to dislodge even if you hit them), quoits, fortune tellers, donkey rides, Punch and Judy shows, photographers ready to take your picture with your wife or girlfriend, husband or boyfriend (remember, this was a time when most people did not have many photos and, probably, not even a camera), dance halls and theatres. Dodgem cars, roller coasters and helter-skelters, sandcastles, candy floss, sticks of rock (how did they get the resort's name printed all through the rock?) and the illuminations – all these were part of the annual holiday for millions of people.
