If you visit her often, you might recognise me in this curious photo as the taller girl with what appears to be a brace of kippers hanging round my neck. I’m holding hands with my sister, Andy, who is holding a spider. We are wearing shift matching dresses (I think they were green) and we are barefoot. Beside us, but not with us is a much younger girl, who seems to be dressed as a gypsy child, holding a baby. If the phrase “hi-de-hi!” means anything to you, then you might guess we are at a holiday camp. From us being very little children, our parents took us every year, the last week of the school holidays to a holiday camp. For many years we went to The Constitutional Holiday Camp at Hopton in Norfolk, but the last time we went away together, when I would have been about fourteen or fifteen, we went to a Butlin’s camp. It wasn’t actually camping, we stayed in chalets, and had meals with the rest of the holiday-makers in a canteen.
There were all sorts of activities for the happy campers – sports such as tennis , bowls and putting for the adults, and playgrounds and rides for the children. There were organised games and events for the children,, hence the fancy dress competition which we had entered. In previous years I’d been a cowboy, a clown, a squaw, Mini-Mouse, and others I don’t remember. Mum made our costumes out of crepe-paper – she was so talented and clever! I think there were competitions for the adults as well, I remember there was a hat competition, and mum made herself a windmill hat, decorated with tulips – “Tulips from Amsterdam”!
So why am I wearing a green dress and kippers? I am sure they were cardboard kippers and not a real pair!! I think it was something to do with the friendly rivalry between our holiday camp and another nearby. I think it was something to do with calling the other camp “kippers”. Whenever the other camp was mentioned everyone had to shout out “Kippers!!! Boooo!!!” Whether I was supposed to be the other camp and my sister was supposed to be our camp, and if she was wearing a different coloured dress from me, and why she didn’t have kippers, I have no idea now!! Why are we barefoot? Another mystery – but look how tanned my legs are!
Hopton, by the way is a very small village on the east coast just south of Great Yarmouth, and north-west of Lowestoft. A holiday camp was opened there in 1922, but I guess it had changed greatly by the time my family visited!
