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The summer holidays
Those magic words
The mere mension of the musters
End shivers of joy
Rippling over my skin
All my summer holidays
And when i was four years old
When i was seventeen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty and nineteen thirty two were totally a dillque
This i am certain was because we always went to the same in delete place
And that place was norway
Except for my ancient half sister and by not quite so ancient half brother
The rest of us were all pure norwegian
By bland we all spoke norwegian
And all our relations lived over there so in a way going to normby
Every summer was like going home
Even the journey was an event do not forget that there were no commercial air planes in those times
So it took us four whole days to complete the trip out
And another four days to get home again
We were almost an enormous party
There were my three sisters
Were my ancient half sister that's four and my half brothering me that's six and my mother that's seven and then eight
That's eight and in addition to these
They were never less than two others who was some sort of ananonymous ancient friends of the ancient half sister that's ten or together
Looking back on it
Now i can't know how my mother did it
There are all those train bookings and both at ookkand hotel
Hotel ooookings
Be be in in advance by letter
She had to make sure
That we had enough shorts and shirts and sweaters and gim shoes and bailing costumes
You couldn't even buy a shoe ace on the island
We were going to on the packing
Must have been a nightmare
Six huge truunks were carefully packed as well as countless sucases
And when the great departure
They arrived the tennabis together without mountains of luggage would set out on the first uneasiest step of the journey
The train to london
When we arrived in london
We tumbled into three taxes
And when catthering across the great statitic kings cross
Where we got on the train for newcastle two hundred miles to the north
The trip to newcastle took about by bowers
And when we arrive there
We needed three more taxes to take us from the station to the dogs
But our boatat would be waiting the next stop
After that will be oslo
But capital of norway
When i was young
The capital of norbabit was not called oslo
It was called christiania
But somewhat along the line
The norwegians decided to do away with that pretty name and calcalit
It oslo instead as children
We always knew it as christiania
But if i call it that here we shall to get confused
So i better stick to oslo all the way through the sesea journey
The mucastle to wasolu took two days at a night
And if it was rough
As it often was all of us got sea sicer
They accept our donlless mother
We used to line deccheers on the prominent deck with an easy reed of the rails ebarbed in rugs
Our faces sleet gry
And our stomachs turning refusing the hot soup and ships biscuits the kind's stewid kept offering us
And as wep on ni
She began
If she will sick the moment
She said put on deck
Who i hate these things
She used to say i'm am sure
'll never get there which life vote to be go to
When it starts to sink
Then she would retire to her cabin
Where she stayed growing and trembling
Until the ship was firmly tied up at the keyside in oslo harbor
The next day we always stopped off for one night in oslo
So that we could have a grand annual family reunion
With best stmamama and best ter papa
Our mother's parents
And with our two maiden sisters
Our aunts who lived in the same house
When we got off the boat
We all went in a cabilcate of taxi straight to the grand hotel
Where we would sleep one night to drop up our luggage
Then keeping the same taxes we drove on to the grand parents house
When an emotional welcome awated this all of us were embraced kissed many times and tears flow down rinkle
Old old cheeks and suddenly that quiet gloomy house came alive with many children's voices
Ever since i persasaw bettto mama was terrifically ancient
She was a whiteird wrinkly faced old bird who seems always to be sitting in our rocking chair rocking away and smiling bennna this vast influx of grandchildren who bargeged in for miles away to take over her house for a few hours every year
Best to papa was the quiet one
He was a small dignified scholar with a white goootee beard
And as far as i could gather
He was an astloloer
A meteeoologist and a speaker of ancient greek
Like best to mama he sat most of the time quietly in a chair
Saying very little and totally overwhelmed
That imamagine by the roker's rabel who were destroying his neat and polished home
The two things i remember most about best to papa
Where that he wore black boots
And that he smoked an extraordinary pipe
The bowl of his pipe was made of mmarshum clay
And it had a flexible stem about three feet long
So that the bowl rested on his lap
All the grown ups including nani and all the children
Even when the youngest was only a year old
Sat down around the big oval dining table on the afternoon of our arrival for the great annual celebration feast with grandparents and the food
We received
Never buried this was an norwegian household
And for the norwegians
The best food in the world is fish
And when they say fish
They don't mean the sort of thing
You and i get from the fish manger
They mean fresh fish
Fish that has been caught no more than twenty four hours before that has never been frozen or juled on a block of ice
I agree with them
That the proper way to prepare fish
Like this is to puach it
And this is what they do with the fineest specimens and norwegions
By the way always eat the skin of the boiled fish
Which they say has the best taste of ball
So naturthis great celebration feast started with fish
A massive fish
A founda bibigger ad day as as thicas his arm was brought to the table
It had nearly black skin on top
Which was covered with brilliant orange spots
And it had of course been perfectly poached large white hunts of this fish were carbed out and put onto our plates
And with it we had hall on daday source and boiled new potatoes
Nothing else and by gotchi was delicious as soon was the remains of the fish are cleared away
A tremendous craggy mountain of hohomeid ice cream will be carried in apart from being the creamest ice cream in the world
The flavor was unforgettable
There were thousands of little chips of christburnt toffee mixed into it
The norwegians called it cocom and as a result it didn't simply melting your mouth ororary ary crecream
You cheat it
And it went crunch and the taste was something you dreamed about the days afterwards this great feast will be interrupted by a small speech of welcome from my grandfather and the grown ups would raise they are long stammed wine glasses and say scol many times throughout the meal
When the gasoline was over those who were considered old enough but given small glasses of homemade dly cure a colourlist but fily ly ink ink smsmelled of mobberies
The glasses were raised again in and again
And the schooling seemed to go on forever in norway
You may select any individual around the table and scollium
Or her in a small private ceremony
You first lift younglass high and call out the name best dmama do say school best dmama
She will then lift her own glass and holded up pie at the same time
Your own eyes meet hurers
And you must keep looking deep into our eyes
As you set your drink after you're both down this
You raise your glasses higher again in a sort of silent final salute
And only then does each person look away and sat down his grass
It is a serious and solumn ceremony
And as a rule on formal occasions
Everyone scores everyone else from on the table
Once if there are for example ten people present
And you are one of them
You will score your nine companions
Once each individually and you
Yourself wewill also receive nine separate schools in different times
During the meal eighteen in all that's how they work it in polite society over there at least they used to in the old days and quite a business
It was
But the time i was ten
I would be permitted to take part in these settlements ies
And i finished up as tipsy as a lord
The next morning everyone got up early and eager to continue the journey
There was another four days travelling to be out before we reached our final destination most of it by boat
So after a rapid breakfast
Our cabbcade left the ground hotel in three more taxes and headed for oslow dogs
Then we went one board a small coastal steamer
And then it was her to say i'm sure
It leaks we should all be food for the fishes before the days out
Then you would disappear low for the rest of the trip
We loved this part of the journey
The splendid little vessel with its single tall funnel would move out into the calm waters of the field
And proceed at a leasury pace along the coast stopping every hour
So at a small wouldn't jcking where a group of villages and summer people will be waiting to welcome friends or to collect parcl and male
Unless you have sailed down the oslow field
Like this yourself on a tranquil summers day you cannot imagine what it is like it is impossible
To describe the sensation of absolute ace beaubeauthat sursurounds you
The boat weeves in an out between countless tiny islands
Some with small brightly papated woolden houses on them
But many was not a house on a tree on the bear rocks
These granit rocks are so smooth
But you can lie and sun
Yourself on them in you're bayin costume
But out putting a towel and underath ath
We would see long like it goes and tour boys basking on the rocks of the islands
There are no sandy beaches on the field
The rocks go straight down to the waterer's age
And the water is immediately deep as a result and or weed and children all enter swim
When they are very young
Because if can't
Can't swim
It's difficult to find a place to bave
Sometimes when our little vessels slip between small isisds
The channel was so nando
We could almost touch the rocks on either side
We would pass robots and canoes with flags and hered children in them
Their skinns browned by the sun
And we would wait to them
And watch their tiny boats rocking violently in the swell
That our largeship left behind late in the afternoon
We would come finally to the end of the journey
The island dog kill me
This was where my mother always took us
Heaven knows how she wounded but to us
It was the greatest place on earth
About two hundred yards on the getty
Along a narrow dudusty road
Still the simple wouldn't hotel painted white
It was run by an nelelderly couple
Whose faces i still remember vividly and every year they welcomed us like old friends
Everything about the hotel was extremely primitive except the dining room
The walls
The ceiling and the floor of our bedroom rooms were made of playing
Unvanished pine planks
There was a wash basin and a jugga cold water in each of them
The ababatories were in a rickity wouldn't out house at the back of the hotel
And each cubicle contain nothing more than a round hole cut in a piece of wood
You sat on the hole
And what you did there dropped into a pit ten feet below
If you looked down the hole
You would often see rats scaring apart in the gloom
All this we took for grounted breakfast was the best meal of the day in our hotel
And it was all laid out on a huge table in the middle of the dining room
For which you help yourourself there were maybe fifty different issues to choose from on that table
There were large jurugs of milk
Which all not weaten children drink at every meal
There were plates of cold beef
Veal hair and pork
There was cold boiled macrools emerged dnaspic there was spiced and pickled hearing fillets
Souteams
Smoke deals and codroo
There was a large bowl piled high hot t boiled eggs
They were cold on lets and chocked haham in them and cold chicken and hot coffee for the grown ups and hot chrp rose baked in the hotel kitchen
Which we ate with buttred craranberry jam there were stee april cots and five or six different cheeses including course the ever present jaos st that tll brown rather sweet
Norwegian goats cheese
Which you find on just about every table in the land after breakfast
We collected our beiding things and the whole party or tennabis would piled into our boat
Everyone has some sort of a boat in norway
Nobody sits around in front of our hotel
Nor does anyone sit on the beach
Because there aren't any beaches to sit on in the early days
We had only a roboat
But a very fine one
It was said it carried all of us easily with places for two rowers
My mother took one petables and my fairly ancient half brother took the other and off
We would go in my mother and the half brother
He was somewhere around eighteen
Then were expert roers they get to in perfect time
And the oars went quick quick quick quick in their wooden roroluxks and the row has never paused once during the long forty minute journey
The rest of us sat in the boat
Trailing our fingers in the clear water and looking for jelly fish
We skimed across the sound and wwiwizing through nano channels with rocky islands on either side heading as always for a very secret tiny patch of sand on a distant island
That only we knew about in the early days
We needed a place like this
Where we could peddle and play about
Because my younger sister was only one
The next sister was three
And i was four
The rocks and the deep port who were no good to us
Every day for several summers
That tiny secret sand patch on that tiny secret island was our regular destination
We would stay there per three or four hours messing about in the water and in the rock pools
And getting extraordindinarily sunburned in later years
When we were all a little loader and could swim the daily routine became different
By then my mother had acquired a motorboat
A small and not very seaworthy white wooooden vessel which sat far allow in the water
And was powered by an unreliable one silin their engine
The fairly ancient half brother was the only one
Who could make the engine go at all
It was extremely difficult to start
And he always had one screww the sparking plug and por petrol into the cylindder any swang a flly wheel round and round
And with a bit of luck after a lot of coffand splatttering the thing would finally get going
When we first acquire the motorboat
My youngest sister was four
And i was seven
And by then all of thers had learned to swim the exciting new boat
Made it possible for us to go much farther a field
And every day we will travelled far out into the field
Hunting put a different ireland
There were hundreds of to juws from time were very small
No more than thirty yards
Long
Others were quite large
Maybe half a mile in length
It was wonderful to have such a choice of places
And it was terrific fan to explore each island
Before we went swimming off the rocks
Then there were the wooden skeleleons of shpgreck boats on those islands and big white bones by the human bones and wild roass breeze and muscles cleaning to the rocks and some of the islands had shagging long head goats on them and even sheep now again when we were out in the open water to beyond the chain of islands
So she became very rough
And that was when my mother enjoyed herself most nobody
Not even the tiny children bother with lifebelts in those days
We were cleaned to the sides of our fine ling little white motorboat drivings with mentioned ous white cap waves are getting drrench to the skin
While my mother calmly handled btiyler
There were times i promised you
When the waves were so high
That as we slid down into a trough
The whole world disappeared from site
Then up but up the little boat wood climb standing almost vertically on its tail
Until we reached the quest of the next wave
And then it was like being on top of a fooming mountain
It requires great skill to handle small bote in seas
Like these the thing can easily capsize or be swamped
If the bows do not meet the great coming break ers at just the right angle
But my mother knew exactly how to do it
And we were never afraid
We loved every minute of it
All of us except for our long suffering
Nanny
He would bury her face in her hands and call allowed upon the lord to save her soul in the early evenings
We nearly always went out fishing
We collected muscles on the rocks for beat
Then we got into either the roboat or the motorboat and pushed off to drop anger later in some likely spot
The water was very deep and often we had to let our two hundred feeded line before we touch ed bottom
We would sit silent and tents waiting for a bite
And it always amazed me
How even a little nibel at the end of that long line will be transmitted to one's fingers a bite
Some of a sht jacking the line i got him
It's a big one
It a wapa and then can the thrill up hauling in the line hand over their hand and pilting over the side into the clear water
To see how big the fish really was as he near the surface
Called whiting headache and macrro
We caught them all and bore them back triumphed day to the hotel kitchen
Where a cherry fat woman who did the cooking promised to get them ready for our supper
I tell you my friends those were the days
I have only one unpleasant memory of the summer holidays in norway
We were in the grandparents house
In oselo and my mother said
To me we're going to the doctor this afternoon
He wants to look at your nose and mouth
I think i was eight at the time
What's wrong with my nose and mouth
I asked nothing much
My mother said
But i think you've got out annoids what a day
I asked to don't worry about it
She said it's nothing
I heard my mother's hand as we walk to the doctors house
It took us about half an hour
There was a kind of dentist chair in the surgery
And i was lifted into it
The doctor had a rounded mirror strapped to his foyend
And he peared up my nose and into my mouth
He then to my momother side
And i held a whispered conversation
I saw my mother looking rather grim
But she noted the doctor now put some water to boil in an aleuminium mug over a gas lalame and into the boiling water
He placed a long thshshy stesteininstment sat there watching the steam coming off the boiling water
I was not in the least apprehensive
I was too young to realize that something out of the ordinary was going to happen
Then a nurse dressed in white came in
She was carrying a red rubber aprion and a curb white in namo bow
She put the april over the front of my body
Entied it around my neck
He was far too big
Then she held the annamal bow under my chin
The curve of the bow fitted perfectly against the curve of my chest
The doctor was bending over me in his hand
He held that long shiny steel instrument
He held it writing front of my face
And to this day i can still describe it perfectly
He was about the thickness and length of a pencil
And like most pencils
He'd had a lot of sides to it toward the end
The metal became much thiner
And at the very end
That the thin bit of metal there was a tiny blade set at an angle
The blade wasn't more than a sent to me along very small very sharp and very shiny
Open your mouth
The doctor said
Speaking norwegian
I refused
I thought it was going to do something to my teeth and everything
Anyone had ever done my teteth
I'had been painful
It won't take two seconds
The doctor said
He spoke gently
And i was seduced by his boys
Like an asi opened my mouth
The tiny blade flashed in the bright light
And disappeared into my mouth
It went high up into the roof of my mouth
And the hand that held the blade gave four of five very quick little twists and the next moment out of my mouth into the basase came tumping a whole mass of fleh and blood
I was too shocked and outrage to do anything
But yelke i was horrified by the huge read lumps
That had fallen out of my mouth into the white basin
And my first thought was that the doctor had cut out the hole of the middle of my head
Those where you're adonods
I heard the doctor saying i sat there gospeling the roof of my mouth seemed to be on fire
I grb my mother's hand and the held onto it tight
I couldn't be believe that anyone would do this to me stay where you are
The doctor said you will be alright in a minute
Blood was still coming out of my mouth and dripping into the base on the nurse was holding speak it all out
She said it has a good boy
You'll be able to breathe much better through your nose after this
The doctor said
The nurse wiite my lips and washed my face with a wet flatlow
Then they lifted me out of the chair and stp me on my feet
I felt a bit croggy
We'll get you home
My mother said taking my hand down the stairwe went and onto the street
We started walking
I said walking no troney card or taxi
We walked the full half
Our journey back to my grandparents has and when we arrived at last
I can remember as clearly as anything
My grandmothers saying letting sit down in that chair and rest
But a while after all he's had an operation so one place to chair for me beside my grandmothers armchair
And i sat down
My grandmother reached over and covered one of my hands in both of hurs
It won't be the last time
You'll go to a doctor in your life
She said
And with a bit of luck
They won't do you too much harm
That was in nineteen hundred and twenty four
And taking out of child's addonoids
And often that tomcils as well without any anesthetic was common practice ing
Those those days
I wonder though what you would think if some doctor did that to you
Today in september
Nineteen
Nineteen
Twenty five
When i was just nine
I set out on the first great adventure of my life boarding school
My mother had chosen formed me a pret school in a part of england
Which was as near as it could possibly be to our home sousouthwales
And it was called sinpepeters before post to address while sinpeters school western supermayor susummer set
Western supermayor is a slightly sed seaside resort with a vast sandandy beach
That's a mindas long peer an explanade running along the sea front
A cluttered a toils and boarding houses
And about ten thousand little shops
Selling buckets and spades and sticks of rock ice creams
He lies almost directly across the briistal channel from cardiff
And on a clear day you can stand on the explanated western
And look across the fifteen also miles of water
And see the coast of whales
Lying pale and milkia
On a horizon in those days
The easiest way to travel from cardiff to western supermabbs by boat
Those boats were beautiful
They were paddle steamers with gigantic swishing peaddle wheels on their fanks
And the wheels made the terterrific noise
As they slushed and turned through the water
On the first day of my first term
I set out by taxi in the afternoon
With my mother to catch the paddle steam er
I ve from cardiff dogs to western supermayor
Every piece of clothing i wore was brand new and had my name on it
I wore black shoes
Grey woolland stockings with blue turnovers
Grey final shorts
A grey shirt
A red tie
A grey final blazer with the blue school crest sed on the breast pocket at a grey school cap with the same crerest just above the peak into the taxi
That was taking us to the dogs went my brand new trunk and my brand new touchbox
And both head are doll painted on them in black a touck box is a small painwood frunk
Which is very strongly made
And no boy has ever gone as a border to an english pread school
Without one it is his own secret storehouse as secret as a lady's handbag
And there is an unwritten law
That no other boy
No teacher
Not even the headmaster himself has the right to pride into the contents of your attk box
The owner has the key in his pocket
And that is where it stays ads and peters the talboboxwere were ranged ououlder to shoulder all around the four walls of the changing room your your own talbobox stood directly below the pig on which hunang your games clothes a tux box
Phanae implies is a box in which you store your tuck at prep school in those days
A puzzle of tuck was sent once a week by anxious mother to their ravenerous little sons and an average talk box would probably contain at almost any time
Half a homemade current cake
A packet of squashed fly biscuits
Couple of of oranges and apple of banana
A part of ststrawberry
Jammor mam mite
A part of chocolate
A bag of liquid shore saghts and a tin of bassage
Lemonade powder
An english school in those days was purely a money making business owned an operated by their headadmter ter
It's unted in therefore to give the boys as little food as possible himself
And to encourage the parents in various coming ways to feed their or swing by parcel post from home by all means by deal
This is doone do send your boys some little tweats now and again he would say
But perhaps a few oranes in apple ononce a week
Fruit was very expensive and a nice current cake
A large coucoured cake
Perhaps
Because the small boys have a lot ge appetites do they not yes
Yeah as as often as you like more than once week
If you wish of course you're be getting planned your food
Here the best there is
But it never taste quite the same as own cooking of it
That i am sure
You wouldn't want him to be the only one
Who doesn't get a lovely very pasass all from
Oh
Every week as well as talk their talk box would also contain all manner of treasures
Such as a magnet
A pocket knife
Accomppuass a ball of string
A clockwork racing car half a dozen
Laad soldiers
A box of condering prinks
Some tidnely wks a mexican jumping bee
A catapalt
Some foreign stamps
A couple of stink bombs
And i remember one boy called arcle who drled an airhohold in the lid of his touch box
And kept a pet frogging in there she he aded on slugs so off
We set my mother and i
And my trunk
And my talk box
And we bought in the pandle steamer
And went wishing across the pistol channel in the shower of spray
I like that part of it
But i began to grow apprehensive as i diembaracked onto the peer at western supermayor
And watched my trunk and touch box being loaded into an english taxi
Which would drive us to some peters
I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me
I had never spent a single night away from our large family
Before some peters was on a hill
About the time
It was a long three storid stone building
That look ked the like a private lunatic asylum and in front of it
It laid the playing fields with there three football pitches
One third of the building was reserved for they had master and his family
The rest of it houws the boys about one hundred and fifty other more together
If i remember rightly as we got out of the taxi
I saw the whole driveway a bussel with small boys and their parents and their trunkks and their attack boxes and a man
I took to be the headmaster was swimming around among them shaking everybody by the hand
I've already told you
That all headmsters a giants
And this one was no exception
He advanced upon my mother and shook by the hand
Then he shook me by the hand
And as he did so he gave me the kind of flashing grin a shoark might give to a small fish
Just before he gobles it up one of his front teeth
I noticed was edged all the me round with gold
And his hair was slit down with a so much hair cream
That glilimed bubutter right
He said to me a few go and reprepted to the matrum and my
My mohe
He said sk ally goodbye misit down
I shouldn't llink
If i were you will look after him
My mother got the message
Jkisss me on the g can say goodbye and climbed right back into the taxi
They had master moved away way to another group
And i was left standing there beside my brand new trunk are my brand
New packbox
I began to cry
