Family holidays… (i)

I have the most wonderful cousins you could imagine, they friends as well as relatives. Every Easter for the past however many years, probably about ten, we have been on holiday together for a week. Four brothers and sisters, their wives, husbands, partners and children, and now grandchildren too, go away for a week’s fun and adventure.

The first place we ever went to was the Ebenezer chapel in Derbyshire, and on this occasion we had an older generation with us, my cousin’s father Ken, and our aunty, Audrey and husband Sid. This holiday was important for me in many ways; first of all it was wonderful to be together and to have so much fun. There were probably about twelve adults, plus about the same number of children, plus various other children who dropped in for a couple of days and girlfriends and boyfriends… Marvellous! But Ebnezer had a secret; it was a converted chapel built into a quarry and at the back a stunted tree grew out of a cliff face… it became the inspiration for my latest novel, ‘Night Vision’.

The following year we went to a luxurious house, again in Derbyshire which was absolutely beautiful inside, in a lovely setting, but miles from anywhere including a pub… well there was a pub a mile down the road, but it had the grumpiest, unfriendliest landlord you could imagine, who shut the pub at random times, once as we were approaching through the darkness  Considering there were about eight of us who would all have had a t least a couple of drinks each, he was losing out financially.

Over the next years we stayed in some strange, some wonderful, some unusual, and some not altogether wonderful places, but whatever the accommodation, good food, good company, good cheer and good fun were guaranteed. The Forest of Dean, Shropshire, Cumbria, Yorkshire, oh we get about!