This is fascinating - you Americans have such different experiences!
Kidsal, your description of flying in Alaska was absolutely wonderful, I can just imagine those people getting out of the little boat and onto the plane as if it was perfectly normal.
My mother's family was extremely poor, but they, along with many other families, used to leave London in the summer to pick hops in Kent. Jacqueline Winspear gives quite a good fictional description of this annual exodus in one of her novels.
As a child, the most we could run to was a week in one of the then very popular coastal "holiday camps" - I expect you had them in the US too. There would be row upon row of little chalets - they were just sheds with beds and a kettle really, the bathrooms were communal and elsewhere. The meals were served in a huge dining room, there was a lot of organised activity - games, talent shows, cabarets, etc. There was always a fancy dress parade, and I have awful memories of my mother dressing me up in cardboard boxes covered in crepe paper to look like a liquorice allsort
. My mother loathed every minute of it, (and I can understand why - for example, if you were late for breakfast, which we always were, everyone in the dining hall would cheer and bang their plates - mortifying) but I seem to have enjoyed it myself. I do recall that, if you wanted to go out for the evening, you simply tied a handkerchief to your chalet door to let the staff know that you wanted the baby listening service. They patrolled around, and if they heard an infant crying the parents would be summoned by loudspeaker - imagine any of that now!
Later on, I used to spend summers with my mother's friend and her family in Fowey, Cornwall - I absolutely loved it, it always seemed to be baking hot, the river was so interesting, and the walks across the fields to Polridmouth were wonderful. I am just now reading EE Nesbit's "The Wouldbegoods", which is the sequel to "The Treasure Seekers". It was written in the early 1900s, and is about a family of middle-class London children who are always in scrapes. It is narrated by the oldest brother Oswald, and it is very funny, but also very reminiscent of times long gone. In this book, the children are sent into the country for the summer (having disgraced themselves in London by taking all their uncle's prized stuffed animals and setting them up in the garden to reproduce The Jungle Book) - their adventures in the countryside remind me so much of my own in Cornwall, and also of my children's when we lived in the country, and they were lucky enough to spend their days making camps and climbing hills, largely unsupervised. I think for me those would be the best sort of holidays - sightseeing is just so exhausting!
There is so much of the world that I would like to see, but apart from the cost and the childcare issues, these days I am really put off by flying - the endless sitting around, the uncomfortable seats, the virtually nonexistent service. I remember the first time I flew to the US - by myself, aged 19 - everything seemed so much more luxurious, and they even had Elizabeth Arden toiletries in the washrooms!
Rosemary
