During the first week of the summer holidays the weather was consistently sunny. One of my father’s brothers and his wife – I can’t remember now if it was Uncle Reggie and Joan or Uncle Jumbo and Valerie but I believe it was the latter – had won a prized beach hut rental in the annual raffle. Whichever couple it was, they generously made it available for the rest of the family to use too.

This egalitarian lottery scheme was satisfactory to my father’s mind, the rental for a hut wasn’t expensive, especially if spread between several branches of a family, and if they clubbed together it increased the likelihood that one of them would be lucky. If they weren’t, they might be another year. That was the joy of it, my father said, everyone had an equal chance.

The hut was to the left of Grand Avenue, east of the King Alfred pool. Marco and I spent the entire week on the beach. Both of us quickly tanned, both of us were in and out of the water. We changed in the hut and left the picnic there that Mrs Ash had prepared. Every now and again we must have returned up the beach to find a sweater or a cold drink or something, but mostly we were free to swim and wander to our hearts’ content.....

.....nearly time to meet my mother, brother and sister, read on here