DOVERCOURT BAY HOLIDAY CAMP 1950
the great heave of recent war
lay back swallowed by the cold channel floor
beach out of bounds
with its lullabies of mines and barbed wire
marram grass saluted a past
like a bereavement
as we climbed from the train at Harwich
en route by Bedford coach to a week of levity
the boiler of the locomotive hissed in the rain
platform alight with puddles
ending at a scrubby foreshore.
The rest belongs to history:
toytown chalets, boating lake,
communal eating, Disney murals
a fix - all, diversions,
talent shows, shadows
of a pinched future.
As a family all stress forgotten
brothers in matching fair isle jumpers.
New horizons, disinfectant,
silly contests, the rest a dream.
A tiny photo curling is proof
surviving from a deck of receding cards.
M.C. Newberry
Sat 14th Nov 2015 17:29
I "lived" the premise of these lines - thereby admitting to
a certain vintage age-wise! Some really resonate: the
hiss of the locomotive and the "platform alight with puddles"...top stuff for my own boyhood memories of a
country still suffering from the effects of world war,
when bombsites were playgrounds of dreams and we
were lured home by the promise of a fish and chip
supper and the early evening episode of a radio serial.