What’s the best thing about summer?
“No school!”
Okay, but what else?
“Camping.” “Yeah, camping and just spending time with my family.”
The kids know what they’re talking about. The long days with no routine, hanging out with your brother or grandparents, camping at weekends: that’s what summer’s all about as a kid here. Working parents also means summer camp for many pre-teens. It all adds up to lots of time outdoors and hopefully great memories made.
If I think back to my childhood, camping trips stand out for me too. Mine were often in France and involved long, hot car journeys stuck in the middle of my two brothers, invariably with sleeping bags wedged between us. I’m sure I complained bitterly at the time but ‘camping and just spending time with my family’ are the strongest summer memories.
The other thing though is reading. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I was a voracious reader as a child (and still am). There was a great little bookstore in the town I grew up in (sadly long gone) and each year before our summer holiday my mum would take us there and let us chose a book for our trip. She’d keep hold of them so no one sneakily started reading before we left home, so it was always with great excitement that the book would finally be cracked open, often on the first leg of the journey. It felt like a luxury surveying the shelves, looking for just the right selection; usually my books came from the library or were gifts. Reading and holidays became interconnected for me and to this day the smell when you first open a new paperback takes me back to tents and cars and a sense of freedom and discovery.
I’ll be heading to Tanners in the next few weeks, to their fabulous Children’s Bookstore, with my kids to choose their holiday books. Daniel might choose one of the Moomin books recommended by Susi in Trendspotting. He’s really taken to these funny little, magical Scandinavian folk-tales. I don’t know about Owen though. So much young-adult fiction seems to be set in a harsh dystopian world, I might gently steer him towards something a bit sunnier this summer. Of course while we’re there I might just pick up a couple of books for myself, I see there’s a new Kate Atkinson out …
I hope that Seaside Magazine is part of your summer reading, let me know what else has made it to your list.
