Keep Calm and Carry Vegemite

A (very wet, cold) day at the beach

October 27, 2011 at 9:21 pm Leave a comment

We’re back from our Suffolk farmstay (oh, the bliss of a decent shower, a familiar washing machine and two toilets! Sad, no?). The suitcases have been unpacked, the groceries have been fetched and I’ve just downloaded the photos.  Amazingly, as I looked through the pictures, I realised one very wet, cold day at the beach was probably the most fun we’ve had in England so far.

I decided to take the kids to Southwold for the day because I knew Southwold had a pier and I knew the pier had some kind of a roof.  This sounds like a sad reason to go anywhere, but when you look at the sky and know it is going to drizzle all day long, a roof is exactly the kind of thing you crave most.  By the time we got to Southwold, however, it wasn’t just drizzling, it was truly raining.  So, as you do, I hit the 2p slots with the kids and set about instilling a lifelong love of gambling in them.  Over the next hour or so, we systematically fed 2p pieces into the kind of machines that push coins to the edge of an abyss, but through some odd freak of nature (or the use of simple magnets), never really fall over into your little cup, waiting patiently below. The kids managed to ‘win’ some keychains.  ’Win’ meaning, I paid about five quid for two items I could have bought for 20p.  Mr5 was thrilled with his little gold soccer ball keychain (being gold, it was obviously a ‘real treasure’). They loved it.  And, as their mother, I don’t feel at all guilty because I’m sure they’ll meet lots of lovely people later on in life at Gamblers Anonymous.

By the time we’d had morning tea, a walk up the (strangely deserted) pier, a ‘walk’ of the dog, a bit more gambling (yes, yes, judge me if you will) and lunch, it had stopped raining and we were able to have a walk on the beach in our wellies.

Oddly lovely.

 

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