Snapshot: With Dad at the lido in a caravan park

When my dad died in 2015, I created a folder of photographs of him on my phone. It meant that I always had a picture of him with me. Some of the photos are more recent – the two of us together in his garden, laughing around his dinner table, on a walk with his dog, Chloe. Some of the pictures are from my childhood.

This photograph was taken at the lido of New England caravan park near Carnforth in Lancashire. It has always been a special place for me, and somewhere that my dad loved as well. The year will be about 1976. My dad is young and handsome, macho against the side of the pool, and I lean towards him in my Sunday clothes with pulled-up socks and sandals like a chubby Little Lord Fauntleroy. No, I’m not going in the water, Dad; not in this outfit.

My grandparents had a static caravan at this site from before I was born. When they died, it was passed on to my parents, so it stayed in the family as a summer retreat.

I met my wife at university in the 90s. Sometimes, in search of solace, away from our shared student accommodation, we would get the keys to the caravan and stay for a couple of days. We weren’t really outdoors people back then – the farthest we would venture would be Morecambe or Bowness, but now we love the mountains.

When my brothers and I had all grown up and left university, my parents decided to sell the caravan. I was sorry to see it go. But then, a few years later, my wife’s mum and dad bought a caravan on the same site. So, I have been visiting this area of the South Lakes my whole life.

This year, my wife was offered a great job in Cumbria, and we had the opportunity to move our family to the South Lakes area that I have always loved. We have moved to Arnside – a beautiful seaside town 10 miles from the caravan site where my in-laws still live. Although it was a difficult decision to uproot our family, we are blissfully happy in our new home.

I often consider what my dad would have thought about our move, and I wish that he had been alive to see me settled here. It was a special place for both of us, and I can imagine him here; helping me with the house, walking his dog, laughing at me.

Christian Stretton

Playlist: Memories of my daughter as a baby

Rule the World by Take That

“You light the skies, up above me / A star, so bright, you blind me, yeah / Don’t close your eyes / Don’t fade away, don’t fade away, oh”

I never expected to have a child, but that changed when I was 39 and my partner and I came close to parting company because he wanted a family. I reassessed what I wanted from life, and became pregnant in May 2008. The change in me was incredible and happened overnight; I had a new life growing inside me and I was excited and awed by it.

Throughout my pregnancy, I came up against a never-ending slew of doom-and-gloom stories about “elderly gravidae” – mothers over the age of 35 – and the potential problems that I might face. Health professionals and acquaintances warned of back problems, emergency caesarean sections, complications with the birth and for the baby’s health – everyone seemed to know someone who had a nightmare scenario to recount.

In the end, I was lucky to have a straightforward delivery, and we took our daughter home the day after she was born, in February 2009.

When she was four days old, my partner was away overnight on a training course. I found myself sitting on the sofa with my tiny daughter asleep in my arms; she hated to be put down to sleep in a cold moses basket. Take That’s Rule the World had been playing on the radio for a couple of months before her birth, but that day was the first time I had heard it since she arrived.

As the song played, the lyrics struck a powerful chord, and I wept, a combination of hormones and being overwhelmed by the sight of the beautiful creature I held in my arms. I remembered the words a friend had texted to me the morning after the birth: “Nothing else matters now she’s here.”

Ginnie O’Farrell

We love to eat: George’s jam fritters

Ingredients
1 egg
135ml milk
55g plain flour
Margarine
2 slices of sliced white bread
Raspberry jam
25g lard
Sugar

Beat the egg, milk and flour in a bowl to make a thick batter. Spread margarine on two slices of white bread, sandwich them together with raspberry jam, then cut into four squares. Heat the lard in a big frying pan. Dip each square in the batter to cover. Wait until the lard is sizzling hot, then place the battered jam sandwich squares into the pan of fat. Fry until crispy golden brown on both sides. Lift the squares out with a fish slice on to a piece of kitchen roll to soak up any excess fat. Sprinkle with sugar and serve.

My sweetest childhood food memory is eating my dad’s jam fritters, as an evening treat. The recipe originally came from his uncle George, who made them when he was a chef in the army in the 40s, and then later, back in Liverpool, for his own offspring and my nan and her six children who lived next door, probably as a cheap, postwar dessert. My grandad had died in the second world war when my dad was just a baby, so as a youngster he went everywhere with Uncle George. A good impression was obviously made because Dad, also called George, became an army chef during his national service, later becoming a full-time butcher.

During the 70s and 80s, my mum and dad worked full-time and had four kids to feed, so jam fritters became a staple of our household menu as a quick, fun way to satisfy four constantly hungry mouths. Dad made them for us after Sunday dinner, and often as a midweek evening snack. Smoke would billow from the back kitchen, through the serving hatch, to every room in the house. We kids would fly into the kitchen like vultures, grappling for that very first, golden fritter.

Despite the fact that they were essentially fatty, sugary, stodge, I still hold a special place for jam fritters in my arteries, and my teeth will never forget them.

Clare Brumby

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