NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN by THE MOODY BLUES. Story by Ann Banham.

Yugoslavia, 1968, and beyond.

Bathing Suits and Beaches

I loved the beach at Great Yarmouth on the chilly North Sea in England. When I was a child my family spent a fortnight there every year. It was straight out of an Enid Blyton book. There were donkey rides and ice cream and lashings of lemonade and a Punch & Judy show. I sat crossed legged, with all the other kids, watching the puppet show which was just half-an-hour of domestic violence. Punch beat his wife with a long stick, then his baby and then the policeman who appeared with a noose to hang him. But we all emerged from this violence unscathed – at least I think so.

But what I loved to do most was dig holes in the sand and make castles with my bucket and spade wearing my red polka dot elasticated swim suit. I looked like I was dressed in multi coloured bubble wrap.

Fast forward twelve years or so to my first overseas holiday on my own. I went to the Costa del Sol in Spain and wore my tiny bikini as I stretched out each day on the beach towel determined to go home with a tan.

I oiled my body and grilled my pale English limbs till they glowed and slowly turned from bright pink to the desired light brown. And at night I danced under the stars with a dark Spanish boy and lay on the cool sand with him coiled in his arms while he whispered guapa (beautiful) into my ears.

Some years later I wed a nice English boy. Not having much money we chose a very cheap budget holiday in Yugoslavia (this was pre-breakup of the Slavic states) for our honeymoon. Nobody told me, but Petrovac on the Montenegro coast in July is very very hot. We didn’t have money, but the beach was free and we happily swam in the sea and dried off under the hot Mediterranean sun, me in my respectable one-piece bathing suit.

Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues, was also very hot at the time, and we listened to it belting out from a nearby transistor radio as we stretched out on the sand and dozed to cause I love you, yes I love you, oh how I love you. Oh dear. Night times were sunburnt agony. We both lay on the edge of the bed far away from each other hissing don’t touch me. Not what you want on your honeymoon.

The marriage survived trial by sunburn, and we went on to have two children, a house in the suburbs 30 miles from London, with a garden and a large mortgage – and we couldn’t afford overseas holidays any more.

But the beach was calling. It called us half way around the world to Sydney, Australia where bathing suits were called bathers or togs or cossies and the men wore budgie smugglers on the beach. And the sand was so hot you hopped from beach towel to beach towel when you came out of the water.

Growing up in Sydney my son naturally became a surfer. Too young to drive, I’d take him and a friend and their three-finned thrusters to the beach at Curl Curl at dawn. Fully dressed in the cool morning air, I sat on the sand while they cut and plunged and crested the waves. I was mentally on shark patrol so was quite relieved that the fins I often spotted belonged to a pod of dolphins eager as the young surfers to catch the early morning shore break.

Many years later, I’m fortunate enough now to live walking distance from the beach in Williamstown, Melbourne. This was wonderful when my grandson was a toddler. We arrived at the beach fully equipped with toy bulldozers, diggers and buckets, and before long there’d be a gang of little boys and girls happily digging holes and constructing dams and bridges and elaborate castles. Just give kids a beach, bucket and spade and they will amuse themselves for hours. Just like I did all those years ago in Great Yarmouth.

During the COVID years of lock-down and restrictions the beach was both a constant and a reassurance. I walked along the silent, empty shore and remembered the good times in my life – child, teenager, bride, mother and grandmother – spent on the beach. And I looked forward to the days when it would be filled once again with happy families: kids digging in the sand and splashing in the water, and teenage girls in tiny bikinis stretched out on beach towels.

Stereo Story #742

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