Snapshot: Our annual Easter get-together

This photo is of my dad, Laurence Skaife, carrying my daughter Sarah in 1983. For me, it sums up our annual mass family Easter holidays.

We started this tradition when Sarah was one and have carried on ever since. The original idea was so that the different generations of the family could get together for a walking holiday. Some days, while we did more challenging walks, the older ones could look after the children, as in this photograph.

In 1983, we started off with a basic cottage in Boot, Cumbria where water came through the bathroom light. Over the years, houses have become more luxurious with dishwashers as standard and one year a hot tub.

Generally, we spend the holiday in the north of England but for two years we ventured to the north of Mallorca, with its high limestone ridges and good coastal walks.

Easter Sunday morning is traditionally a chocolate fest, large eggs for the younger ones and enough small eggs to last the rest of us all week.

There is always a “big walk” where as many as possible do around eight miles and climb a hill or two.

For the rest of the week we do other walks and trips out but not necessarily all together. However, the main delight is spending time with extended family coming from all parts of England.

Now, sadly, my father and most of the older generation are no longer with us. The children grew into keen walkers, then as teenagers were not so keen.

These days, they are the stronger, fitter ones and we are slowing down. We have now come full circle. This year, Sarah’s daughter, Rosa, came on holiday with us – the first of the next generation – and it was my turn to carry a grandchild in the papoose, bringing back all those memories of Dad carrying Sarah on his back.

Margaret Manning

Playlist: Heartbreak at my first disco

Turning Japanese by the Vapors

“You’ve got me turning up and turning down / and turning in and turning ‘round / I’m turning Japanese / I think I’m turning Japanese / I really think so”

I’m waiting for my children in the reception area at their junior school a few years ago. I can hear the hum of pop music coming from the school hall where the disco is being held. I peer through the heavy curtain and spot my son Sean, bag of Monster Munch in one hand and white plastic cup in the other, chatting to his mates.

On the other side of the dance floor, my daughter, Moe, is happily bopping with a posse of girls in a circle. I notice a little boy steal a quick peck on her cheek. Well, it was a Valentine’s disco, I suppose.

Watching this pre-teen drama in front of me floods me with nostalgia for my own school disco days in the early 80s and the first time I ever got up and danced to music in public.

At my first school disco, all I wanted was to smooch with the girl of my dreams, Frances Taylor. However, she happened to sit down next to my best friend, Sean Casey – and that would lead to my dreams of romance being shattered because they got on far too well. I remember sitting there, hopes dashed, trying desperately not to let my emotional discomfort at missing my chance with Frances get me down.

The DJ had played Blondie, Squeeze, Madness, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran … I was still glued to my chair. My furtive glances at Frances and Sean, who were clearly enraptured, were destroying my confidence.

I must get up and dance after the next song, I told myself. I had never boogied at a disco before, by the way. My heart was racing at the prospect. Then, that oriental riff of Turning Japanese began and I was up on the floor, carried away by the beat, lost in the jamboree of 80s dungarees, Bowie baggies, rah-rah skirts, leg warmers, berets, headbands, quiffs and myriad mullets.

I moved to Tokyo in the late 90s so you could say I’ve been Turning Japanese for the past 14 years. I got married to Maki in 2001 and our first child, Sean – a coincidence that he shares a name with my old boyhood friend – was born later that year.

Jason Murray

We love to eat: Mum’s homemade Irish cream

Ingredients

1 ½ cups whisky
2 dessertspoons instant coffee dissolved in half a cup of boiling water
A large tin of condensed milk
A large tin of evaporated milk
1 tsp glycerine
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 drops coconut essence

 

Mix everything well, bottle and cool before drinking.

The food in 1980s north-east Scotland wasn’t that exciting. Rice was for pudding. Curry had raisins and slices of banana in it. I ate my first pizza – and first lasagne – after leaving for university.

But our mum, a housewife who’d left school at 14, was a magnificent cook. She got the Cordon Bleu course in weekly instalments. She made prawn cocktail, mingling her own mayonnaise and concocting Marie Rose sauce from scratch. (This led to an unfortunate incident in which I took a swig from the Tabasco sauce bottle to see what it tasted like. It tasted like something I had to follow up immediately with the entire contents of the milk jug.) 

Mum threw magnificent parties too. I can remember guests stacked up the stairs of our wee council house, plates of food on their laps, while my dad’s musical friends played fiddle and accordion music in the hall. After he built himself Scotland’s finest shed – cat-flap, double-glazing, cornice and all – she laid on a shed-warming party, with pumpkin soup served from the carved-out shell.

At some point in the early 1980s, when such exotica had begun to appear in the shops, she began making her own Irish cream. I’m not sure where the recipe came from, but in her blue hard-backed notebook it seems to be in my handwriting.

I spent my first two years at university going out with the teetotal son of a minister, so I didn’t drink then. In my third year, single again, I copied out the recipe once more, this time for my own use. I still remember the thrill of naughtiness I felt at buying a quarter bottle of whisky to make it with, then carrying it up the street to a friend’s flat, my hands wrapped round the Pyrex measuring jug.

Jane Cooper

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