Author’s Note:
In March 2025 I took part in a creative non fiction workshop with Ilaria the Storyteller. This is the result. The piece was performed on 11 March at Broadly Speaking at Broad Street Social in Bury, Greater Manchester.
Getting There – A Holiday Memoir
The horizon is a thin parallax fade. We watch the tide arrive across the Irish Sea. I have been to this place many times. A merry band of holiday makers are gathering round the fire for an evening together. Their tents and vehicles are scattered about the place in playful irreverence of any kind of formal organisation.
Here we are wild, here we are free. Out here on the perimeter there are no wine bars, out here we are stoned – immaculate. Despite the Doors reference this is not the 1960s, it is 2015. I am with my new girlfriend – Katrina. Our children are with their corresponding other parents and we are here to relax.
Kat tugs at my arm, reminding me of my daughter when she was a toddler. “Are we going down, I want to sit by the fire, look I got sausages – sausages.” You have to do the sausages voice. I used to come with these people to this place when the children were little. The men are a little more grey in the beard now, and the women less vocal, and the world is no longer a binary of men and women. There are teenagers roaming around, bringing instruments, fire wood and youthful vigor. “I’ll see you there.” She kisses me on the cheek and strides off toward the gathering, “Hey Tony, get your big buns out I’ve got sausages,” and she does the sausages voice again.’
I stare out to sea and remember the first time I came here. I was a different person then.
“Where the fuck is it,” Clare is hurling items from the pink furry nappy bag into the footwell; Sudacream, nappies, wipes, nappy bags, a packet of Golden Virginia and a bra are all jettisoned
“Where the fuck is what,” I alternate my attention between the single track lane we are on and the fountain of detritus erupting from the home made bag which now seems as ridiculous as it is capacious. You could fit whole communities in there. The idea is that the bag unbuttons to be a changing matt, the reality is a fucking massive, pink furry sack that you can never find anything in.
“The instructions, the directions, where the fuck are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck it,” She says.
“Fuck it,” comes a cute voice from the back seat.
“No Ben, please don’t say…
“Fuck it.” Says Ben. He is three.
“No Ben.” She says again.
“Fuck it,” I exclaim as a tractor rounds a corner. I slam on the brakes and the entire contents of the roof slide gracefully into the road in front of us. Sleeping bags, a duvet, pillows and air beds come tumbling down. The farmer looks at me and shakes his head in a manner employed by all rural workers when confronted by a car full of idiots on holiday.
“Fuck it,” says the farmer, spins the tractor 90 degrees and sets off cross country. I watch him drive away with the afternoon sun bouncing off his wing mirrors. I turn and look at Clare smiling. I immediately regret it. I turn the stereo off because at this point The Chemical Brothers seems like overkill.
“I’ll get the stuff.” I make the executive decision that gathering our belongings from the road is preferable to any kind of attempt at division of labour. After twenty minutes or so I sit down next to Clare. She has tucked the car into a passing spot and is feeding Rye, our baby girl. Ben is sat next to her sucking juice out of a box and gripping a very important stick in the other hand.
As we sit there we are suddenly very calm. A mother feeding her baby is an activity that simply makes the whole world stop. Or perhaps it is that the cortisol that has been ravaging our synapses, has had time to metabolize and we can think again. The battle is now over, we have suffered losses and there has been collateral damage taken, but for a moment we can feel normal again. I am Robert Duval on a bombed out Vietnamese beach, sweating slightly after the exertion of the fight, but still the protector, vigilant and proud. “I love the smell of nappies in the morning, that smell, that ammonia smell, smells like…”
“I’m driving,’ she says. I am back in the room. The old I’m driving eh? There is a special kind of gravitas that only a mother can achieve by making a statement of such serious tone whilst at the same time sitting with one of her tits out.
I have made a flow chart.
Clare guides the car gracefully down the country lanes of the Llym Peninsula toward our destination. We eventually found the instructions covered in ribena and marmite tucked under Ben’s bottom.
This is our first proper time away together since our daughter was born, and we are looking forward to a few weeks on the Welsh coast with a bunch of people I met through performing in a Cabaret. So far there have been three near misses, two vomitings (one child related, one adult), several nappy stops, a coffee and breakfast stop and an utterly traumatic tyre changing incident.
“Have we got a cloth?” I say.
“What for?” She calls back.
“To wipe my face?”
Changing a tyre at the side of the A55 near Rhyl, in the August heat has left me somewhat drenched in sweat. We knew the tyre had a slow puncture but decided to risk it, partly because were we adventurous, devil may care ex ravers, but mainly because the spare tyre was buried under several strata of nappies.
“There’s a bunch of Mexicans down here,” I shout to Clare.
“Do they want tea?” She calls back, playing along.
“Oh I’ve found one,” I say.
“A Mexican?” She chimes in.
“A towel.” The towel is crammed into a lidl bag. I pull it out, doing most of this by feel as my eyes are now blinded with sweat. I wipe it firmly over my face, mopping up the brine.
I get back in the car, and there is a horrendous smell.
“Christ Clare, wha the fuck is that?” I say.
She is staring at me, smiling and trying not to laugh.
“What.” I enqure.
Then she says, “Did you use the towel from the Lidl bag.”
“Yes, what, Jesus it stinks.”
“Oh Dave I’m sorry, I wiped bens arse on that.” I twist the rear view mirror toward me and I have my sons shit smeared over my forehead. There is torrent of swearing, which Ben gleefully joins in with. There is laughter and groaning and the creation of a memory that will never quite leave me – ever.
That was many miles back. We are now driving down a country lane shrouded with scrub oak and silver birch. The children are asleep and with the windows down we are luxuriating in a shared roll up and a bottle of cider. We had over come all obstacles.
“Fuck it,” said Clare slowing down. In the road is an obstacle. When I say obstacle, I mean a complete absence of road. The cliff had collapsed and the road is just a pile of rocks and earth. There is a large red sign next to it saying FFORD AR GAU, and underneath, completely unnecessarily: ROAD CLOSED.
“Where are the instructions?” She says.
I pass them to her, she inspects them suspiciously, looks at me intensely and whilst doing so rotates the hand drawn map through 180 degrees. She is staring at me as if she is about to commit murder.
“Ah” I say. Anyone who knows me will confirm that I am the worlds worst navigator. But this was special, even for me. “So where are we?”
“Not a fucking clue.” She says.
We sit in silence for a moment. This trip is no longer funny. We can make a joke of most things buy this is starting to feel like we are actually putting our own kids in danger.
Then we hear something. Voices. Familiar voices. We get out of the car and walk toward the ruined part of the road. There is no doubt. “That’s Sarah, and Paul,” I say
“And Liz,” says Clare. She calls their names and there is a pause in the sounds of the voices. She calls again. “Its us, where are you?”
One voice calls back, “You have to go round.”
After ten minutes of directions being shouted to us we turn the car around and are on our way. It turns we are on the right road, but the wrong end of it – about 180 degrees the wrong end of it.
When we arrive we are greeted by the farmer, “Oh its you, get everything back on the roof did we?” You couldn’t make it up. Although that bit, I did.
Clare pulls up in a space large enough for our gear, she turns and looks at me with something between relief, rage and excitement.
“I’ll pitch the tent” I say, “why don’t you…” and she is out of the car like a stabbed rat. As I toil away I can hear her raucous laughter by the fire, telling the story of our insane journey here.
As I emerge from my reminiscence I catch the faint whiff of sudacream and ribena, olfactory memories clinging to me like sticky buds. I sit down by the fire with Katrina. I tell her stories about games of beach cricket, spit roasting legs of lamb with Spider, the Jamaican DJ, mad Nigel and his holiday breakdown, games of rounders in the darkness, smacking golf balls off the cliff with Rick and Tony, drinking tequila and talking and playing tunes til five in the morning. I think of my childhood holidays and how they taught me the value of freedom, and sharing and endings and beginnings.
“Would you go back,” she asks.
“What do you mean?” I say.
“To the past. If you could, would you?”
The smoke drifts on a full moon starlit night. The waves crash far below and once again I am held in the bosom of Hells Mouth bay on the Llym peninsula.
“I never left,” I say, “now where are those sausages?”
“SAUSAGES!” Comes the chorus from around the fire.
