Did the sun shine all the time during the summers of the 1950s and 1960s?

Do you remember when we built dens in the garden, played hopscotch on the pavement outside the house, made perfume with flowers we had collected from the garden, and hardly noticing that we were hungry until mother called us in for tea.

There was no pressure in those days to obtain holiday brochures. No one visited foreign climes. Even in the 1960s when we went on a coach holiday down to Torquay it seemed to be the next best thing as abroad as there were actually palm trees there!

As children my sister and myself spent part of the summer holidays on our grandfathers farm in the Republic of Ireland. It was only when we grew older that we found out that we had been going abroad for years as that part of Ireland wasn't part of the UK!

But unmistakably British was the week each Whitsuntide when we spent a week in a caravan near Bridlington. Caravans then were small and lit by calor gas which also provided the cooking. You had to be careful that you didn't run out of gas or father had to sprint to the camp shop to obtain a replacement canister.

It wasn't much of a holiday for mother who still provided three meals a day, taking a box of provisions with her, together with bedding and towels. The first thing she did when she got to the caravan was wash all the crockery and cutlery saying 'well, you don't know where they've been!'

We have fond memories of rain beating down on the caravan roof, playing card games and dashing across to the toilet block!

There were dire tales from people who had been able to afford a week in a boarding house. Often called something like 'Dun Roamin' or 'Sea View' they could be places of dire discomfort with shared bathrooms and a policy of no return until teatime, whether hurricane or war! Not to mention the food which presented two choices - edible or not!