May 2021 on the surface of the spinning globe; well, on one particular scrap of the surface of the spinning globe, the scrap that connects South Yorkshire to Cleethorpes, connects hopes and dreams to reality; connects, for the mother-in-law, a lockdown winter with a summer that with a bit of luck will include trips from the caravan site to Grimsby on the bus on a sunny day with the sea reflecting the sky as though it’s auditioning for a calendar.
My mother-in-law has been ready to go to her caravan for weeks but the weather hasn’t been ready for her to go. It reminds me of those times when, as a boy, I would be knotted with anticipation as I waited for news of another rocket launch from NASA because I was a boy who loved rocket launches because they felt like a noisier and shinier version of real life than the one I was living in the South Yorkshire coalfield. Every so often the weather or a mechanical glitch would cause the postponement of the launch and it felt at that moment that the carefully constructed tent of my world had had the pegs pulled out. It was the same for my mother-in-law, without the countdown and the thrust.
We planned to take her to the caravan on a Monday but the rain was incessant and apocalyptic. We planned to go on a Tuesday but the drizzle was a stolid, chuntering presence. Wednesday wept and Thursday had a sky that watered like an eye. My wife and I would go to her house after our afternoon stroll and my mother-in-law would, after she’d put the kettle on, say ‘I listened on the wireless to what the weather said and it didn’t sound good.’ It was as though the weather was speaking, bringing bad news of unfurling umbrellas and muddy paths to caravans. I imagined the weather speaking in a thundery voice that occasionally trickled with moisture.
Historians of the weather in the pandemic will note that, in the UK, the spring and summer of 2020 was glorious and mild, maybe (as many people said at the time) because we couldn’t go anywhere and we had to watch the weather through the window or (if we were lucky) our gardens; they will also note that April 2021, when we all began to shudder into a tentative reopening that we hoped wouldn’t be postponed like a NASA mission, the weather was bad. The start of May was an improvement on that but that’s like saying that opening a tin of mushy peas and eating them cold with a fork is an improvement on not opening a tin of mushy peas and eating them straight from the tin with a fork.
The rain signs the windows like an artist. But then the weather says there will be a break in the clouds and the sun might stare through. So it’s decided, on the Yorkshire version of a whim, to go the next day. My mother-in-law celebrates, as you’ll have realised by now, by making a pie. The only fly in the ointment is the fact that I won’t be able to go because I’m working that day; still, my wife will bring back me a slice of pie but it won’t taste the same when I can’t sprinkle it with sea air.
But then the weather speaks again, in a loud and stentorian voice, and the weather says it’s going to rain again, all day, and the trip is postponed until the next day, which is a day I can go. Perhaps it’s that rain dance I did in the garden. I hope so.
The following day does as it’s told by the weather and the sun strides out to bat. My wife and I call at her mother’s to pick up the ‘last few bits’, as they call them, to take to the caravan. And of course we, following our experience earlier in the year on a shorter visit, need to remind her to pick up the pie. Those three words ‘last few bits’ are a euphemism. A huge euphemism; indeed, she is taking so much stuff that I’m surprised her house doesn’t float away just after she’s locked the door. ‘There’s just a few bits upstairs. Watch your back,’ she says and I bring the bags down. And the other bags down. And that last bag, which is probably the biggest bag, down.
The car boot is full and the area around my mother-in-law on the back seat is packed. The bags are in. The hoover is in. The tins are in. The TV, with a small screen about as big as an iPad’s, is in. In her unserviced caravan she has to rely on solar power and a trek to a tap for water. And she takes all these provisions because she’s 92 and although she’s hoping to get to the shops on the bus, she can’t carry loads and loads of shopping any more. It’ll just be a few bits. Now, where have I heard that phrase before?
I like watching subtitled films where nothing much happens. Someone will gaze out of a window. A couple will sit at a pavement café sipping coffee. One of them will light a cigarette. Somebody may or may not walk by. It strikes me that this is what our trips to Cleethorpes are like; they aren’t adventurous and they don’t break new ground, indeed they enjoy going carefully over old ground. In this sense, they are like the coast I’m writing about: change happens slowly round there. Water becomes dunes and vice versa. That painted bike on the cycle lane fades slowly, becoming more like a ghost bike each year. The forts in the estuary grow rustier and rustier. The little train runs on its little rails. And my mother-in-law packs her bags and goes for the summer. And the weather says kind and gentle things. We hope.