Breaks
Our summer holidays
were always ‘at’ Easter,
‘cos that time of year
it’s so much cheaper,
even after a pay rise
for the-men-with-truncheons,
still that week,
but upgraded to Butlin’s:
We went self-catering
at Bognor Regis,
where Dad smuggled in
my eldest brother
through the camp’s
padlocked gates,
Chris was concealed
under oil-soaked sheets.
I sketched seagulls,
the only visible detail
in that thin view
of endless shingle.
Forty years later
and another vacation,
off to Devon,
a last-minute stay-cation,
a holiday to engender
family joy,
the gulls now snap-chatted
by our youngest boy.