Other Writing

 

 

The Big Holiday

 

I'M NOT feeling well. I'm sitting in the back seat of a 1961 Ford Anglia. I'm 10 going on near-dead. My two younger brothers are beside me. Three boys all in a row being slowly cooked in the arse end of a car the size of a camp oven.

I'm sweating. It's 1966 and England has just won the World Cup.

Bastards. Scotland got nowhere. At least the bloody Germans didn't win. My old man couldn't have stood it. He's still going on about the war.

We've been in this car for hours. It's boiling hot. Most of Glasgow is heading down the road to England for 10 days of supposed summer magic, pebble beaches, sunshine, fairground attractions and a bit of bingo.

Well, we are not exactly heading. Heading suggests speed, some sort of constant velocity. But us, we are crawling like a caterpillar wi' a gammy leg. The problem with going to England at this time of year is that every other flea-ridden, poverty-stricken, half-drunk Glaswegian is on the way as well. So the traffic is well banked up for the next 120 miles from Glasgow to friggin' Blackpool.

I'm feeling a bit sick. All this water keeps rising up in my throat and I keep swallowing to push it back down again. The two younger brothers have the complexion of polar bears, the old mid-Antarctic tans. They're half asleep and dribbling. The back seat of the Anglia is about two foot six wide. There's no room to manoeuvre. No escape from any unwanted regurgitations from pallid siblings.

This is it, the big holiday. Four years they've been saving up for it.

The parents. Ten days respite from pebble-dash hopelessness. We went to Whiteley Bay last time. It rained. Pissed down for two weeks. I tried to hide my spending money (8s/6d saved up from selling evening papers outside the pub) by dropping it into mum's new vacuum flask. It made an awful racket when all the insides smashed into a million wee pieces. The flask cost a pound. It never kept the tea hot anyway.

My head feels all clammy. I'm taking big gulps of air. My head is wobbling around from side to side. I have a self-fanning head. The sun is beating down through the windscreen. And the side windows. Every bit of glass is being attacked by the stinking rotten hot rays of the bloody English sun. It can't get through the smog in Glasgow. But down here across the border it's a free for all.

I tell you the bloke who designed this car has a lot to bloody well answer for. There is not one natural fibre anywhere in the entire stinking interior of this poxy vehicle. Everything is vinyl. Vinyl this. Vinyl that. A bit of sunlight and its reeking noxious gases which us three boys are trying our hardest not to inhale. The trouble is if you don't breathe you die. Even in England.

We're booked into a boarding house. Near the seafront probably. One room with two double beds and a cot for the wee yin. He always wets the bed and my mum has to spend her time taking sheets to the laundromat. When she goes on holiday she always takes the drudgery with her. Never one to forget anything my mum.

I don't know about the English. They look at us if we are some sort of white Glasgow trash. And them from some shithole seaside town in the north of friggin England. Cheek.

We've got the new khaki shorts on. The three of us. We all are dressed the same. Same shorts, same T-shirts. Same skinny pale little arms and legs sticking out apologetically from the appropriate apertures.
Plastic sandals. None of that trendy French stuff they have nowadays.
Jelly beans. These were dirt brown and 3s/6d a pair. You can't play football in them. Useless.

The old man is driving. He loves it. He could drive to the end of the universe and he'd be happy. He bought the Ford second hand from some dodgy used car dealer. Skelly his name was. Smelly Skelly. It's two-tone blue. Lovely paint job. Rotten engine. Four cylinders of disappointment. He needs the car for his work since he works the night shift. The car's on the never never. But it won't last that long.

I tell you, I'm feeling terrible. I don't know if I can hold out much longer. I've got to get some air. There's all this water welling up my my mouth. I'll just spit it out the window. Look at the wee yin lying there. He's pink.

We're moving again. One long Glasgow traffic snake sliding along the road to Blackpool. The sandwiches are all hot. Ham never tastes right in a car. Tea doesn't bear thinking about. My mum's been looking forward to this holiday. She works part-time in the shoe section of a big department store in town. I like going in there. All the women make a right fuss of you in yer school uniform. She works late on Fridays and all day Saturday. She's knackered.

She's a worrier. Worries about everything, but mostly money. How there's never enough of it, what with practically their whole bloody lives being on hire purchase. She says she's got bad nerves. She looks OK though sitting there in the front seat of the Anglia. She's determined to enjoy herself, traffic or no traffic.

We're nearly there. Thank God. I feel like all the color has drained out through my feet. My stomach has shifted positions. It's now somewhere near the base of my throat. I'm trying not to dribble. I'm swaying around the back of the car. The two-tone vinyl is searing the back of my legs.

The old man says it's just around the corner. The boarding house. He's looking all cheery. Bingo and lawn bowls in Blackpool. Can't go past it. The chance of a night out without the weans. He's singing. Tony Bennett. Something about his heart being in San Francisco.

I tell the old man I'm going to be sick. And I am. All over the back seat of the Anglia, all over the other two. There's everything in there. Ham sandwiches. Tea. Oranges. It' a torrent. The old man is well pissed off.

"Aw Graham, fer fucksake."
"Sorry, dad, sorry".

England. Fuck it.

© Graham Reilly