Family holiday
Selina tells us how family holidays can help strengthen the bonds between the generations.
"As a child I heard about Blackpool from my father. He was always going to take me, but never got around to it. It took 20 years and a couple of children to rekindle the desire to go north.
The closed dark valleys of 1960s South Wales with little entertainment or stimulation for the young, prompted me to take them to see what I had wanted to see, but didn't.
For the first time a little boy and girl saw a circus, a live stage show, an eye show, a town lit up with colour at night and a tower that pointed to the sky. It was all new and exciting. Now, as adults, they can recall incidents from that time.
Then, recently looking over some old photographs with my daughter-in-law I asked her if she had ever been to Blackpool.
"No. Never."
Then came the idea to revisit, taking those children's children.
My son who once sat playing on the floor in the hotel lounge, now sits drinking with his dad in a hotel lounge in the same street. In turn, he watches his son enjoying the same places he remembers: the circus performance, putting his pennies in the slot machine. Dut to work commitments my daughter could not join us, but her daughter did. She too enjoyed the slot machines and the fair.
"Can we go on this? ...or that Nanny?"
All adults become children when they visit the fair. In the eyes of the children I saw my childhood expectations realised.
Goodbye Blackpool. See you next year."
Selina Kerrell
