On this family holiday one thing is occupying me above all others, above my anxiety about finding new Biggles books in the WH Smith I visited last year in the same seaside resort, above my hope that my dad won’t snore with a sound like a giant cement mixer in a submarine. I am worried about getting changed into my trunks to go for a paddle. I am just about to ascend the foothills of adolescence and I am becoming aware of my body and I see it as a butter sculpture created by a first-timer at a butter sculpture evening class in a dusty community centre.
As my mother explains it, there are two trunk-options: I can put my trunks on in the guest-house room before we go down to the beach or I can put them on under a towel when we get to the beach. My mother was always a great explainer, turning everything into a story you could learn from. As she pointed out, there were advantages and disadvantages to each approach: Trunks On In The Room was probably easier, but it meant that you had to walk back with wet trunks on. Trunks On On The Beach meant that you were always at the mercy of a sea breeze lifting the towel Marilyn Monroe style just as you were pantless and just as the Chester WI annual trip was trooping by discussing jam. ‘We might need bigger jars’ one of them might be heard to say. My dad, who had faced high seas and explosions and evenings carrying naked sailors back to the ship from overcrowded brothels, said ‘Just take your trousers off and put your trunks on. Nobody will notice.’ I went redder than a matador’s cape and burrowed into a self-indulgent sulk. In the end, the possible exposure of flesh won out over the damp stroll back and I decided to change into my trunks on the beach.
The day was overcast and so we reasoned that the beach might not be too busy and that people might be scattered across the shore like pieces in a chess endgame or a crowd at a reserve match. We were wrong; the beach looked like Woodstock. There was hardly a spare inch of sand. We almost turned back but luckily a large family vacated a spot just as we arrived; it’s decades ago but I can still remember the disgruntled dad saying, in the high-pitched siren voice of the entitled posh, ‘You broke the cup and it’s on your shoulders.’ The phrase has haunted me for so long that I almost called one of my collections of poetry after it to exorcise the ghost.
We settled into their vacated space. My dad spread a tartan rug on the sand; from a distance it would have looked like a melted Highland Chieftain. Our picnic basket went on top, and my dad opened the flask and poured tea for him and my mother. He poured it triumphantly, celebrating the parking place we’d acquired. The sun came out to join in the fun. In the next space a bored boy who could almost have been me defiantly read The Beezer as his dad encouraged him to dig sandcastles with his little sister. He was wearing trunks and folds of fat almost rendered them invisible. He looked like I would if I had trunks on, I reasoned to myself. I wished I’d brought a Biggles book with me.
My dad said ‘Let’s go for a paddle. Get your trunks on!’ I almost began a second sulk-fest but then my mother said ‘Come on, I’ll hold the towel round’ and I felt such a tidal wave of love for her that I decided I’d put them on.
They were fished out of the bag. They were a kind of duck-egg blue if the ducks had survived a nuclear holocaust and become radioactive. I felt the boy with The Beezer’s eyes on me. Over the years, as a poet and performer, I’ve come to enjoy having people look at me; I’ve become a show-off and someone who is very comfortable being the centre of attention. Indeed, my wife will say that I crave attention, which is probably true. The younger me didn’t, though. The younger me avoided mirrors and would have enjoyed living on an uninhabited island thereby making it no longer an uninhabited island.
My mother held the towel up. I stood behind it and it was as though I was behind the curtains at a theatre and I was about to come out for my big number in a musical. I would have been wearing a certain outfit in the first act and I would have got changed into something spectacular in the interval. I was nervous. I took my trousers off. My mother held the towel. My dad said, ‘Hurry up lad, your mum’s arms will be getting tired.’ I don’t want to suggest that my dad was an impatient man; far from it. He just, in his Royal Navy way, wanted to get the job done efficiently while the sea was looking.
I picked up the trunks my trousers were round my ankles I kicked off the trousers and held my trunks in one hand and pulled my pants down with the other and I pulled hard and they began to slide and I held the trunks and my mam held the towel and the sound of the people on the beach seemed very far away and my pants were off and I was exposed to the world except I wasn’t I was behind the all-encompassing towel in the comfortable room of the towel and a breeze blew round my nether areas from somewhere and I threw the pants down and I hopped into one leg of the trunks and my mam pretended to drop the towel and laughed but I didn’t laugh and then I hopped some more and pulled the trunks up and pulled them up and they were on and she dropped the towel.
‘Let’s go paddling’ my dad said. My mother folded up the towel and somehow my nakedness and a moment of growing up were folded away inside it.