Monday, September 17, 2012

Like A Vicar In A Strip Club

You may recall that I was going on last week about being the type of person who needs to organise the world into neatly labelled file boxes. My excuse for a brain likes to link B to C and then place them in their rightful position between A and D. If George Orwell had been writing about me in 1984, my Room 101 would have been the kind of student house The Lad lived in last year, where cast-off objects littered each room like some ever-palpable dandruff (he seems to have undergone a sea-change this year but that is another story). However, as with many annoyingly organised people, I like to occasionally walk on the dark side. Like a vicar surrepticously entering a strip-club, I like to abandon my ordered faith and see where my fancy takes me. This will be such a week. Who knows where my posts will take me by the time Friday comes around, certainly not me. If you would like to jump on board and join me in this mystery trip, please be my guest.


I am starting at the Butlins Holiday Camp in Skegness, England in 1938. Normally there would be a reason for starting there, but remember, this week we have left rationality in the cloakroom. I know it is Skegness in 1938 because the picture was taken by Uncle Frank and we all know how he loved to catalogue all his photographs ("Frank Fieldhouse, I renounce thee, you shameless organiser") I know it is Bultins because it says so just above Auntie Miriam's head. Now if I was a logical and organised person, I would go on about how the British Holiday Camp movement was started by Sir Billy Butlin when he opened this very camp in Skegness just two years before the photograph was taken. But the dangerous, irrational, unorganised me has no time for such trimmings. Just look at the photograph and let your mind go where you want it to. And call back tomorrow to see where mine has gone to.

25 comments:

  1. Hello Alan:
    Oh dear, Skegness. Our memories are of such a desolate and decidedly tatty place where all hope of being stylish was washed out on the afternoon tide.

    And, always cold....at least in our memories.
    Indeed, even Auntie Miriam seems only prepared to uncover a single ankle whilst the rest of her is swathed in thick clothing!!

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    1. It's bracing - I think that is the phrase.

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  2. It's not Butlin's, but Buntins - and early forerunner of IKEA, just as they were changing their name. You can tell by the KEA from IKEA behind the trees on the right.

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    1. And rather like IKEA called their various furniture ranges things like "Stiglio" and "Saados", you could buy a Mablethorpe bed or a Cleethorpes cupboard at Buntins.

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    2. And Buntin's Pocklington commode was a particularly sought after item. Even to this day it causes a small motion in antique sale rooms, even though it bottomed out in the 70s.

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    3. Oh my God - see what you've done? You've got me double entendreing again...

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    4. More crap-pack than flat-pack.

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    5. LOL. as they say. You two have me chuckling all the way back here in Minnesota.

      I'll just add here: Love this post. Great fun. Such restraint you're showing against that organizing/labeling thing.

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    6. Thanks Teresa, I have filed your comment away.

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  3. Enjoy your sense of abandonment this week, Alan. You should wear mismatched socks, too, just for the fun of it! lol....

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  4. I'm so glad to come along when all of these comments have been added. Great amusement over morning coffee.

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    1. I assume that you are sipping that coffee from your set of Buntins' Goole patterned bone china mugs.

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  5. I'm wondering what the lady is wearing on her head....

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    1. That's no Lady, that's my Auntie Miriam - and the answer to your question is a tree

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    2. I notice that growing a tree from a head is becoming popular.

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  6. Like Jane and Lance my memories of 'Skeggy' are of the bracing kind mostly, but I did visit it a lot being brought up in Nottingham, and once spent an entire week there!

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    1. Back in those days each industrial town seemed almost to be twinned with a seaside resort. For Bradford it tended to be Morecambe, whilst Halifax favoured Bridlington

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  7. Okay you're living on the wild side by not being organized! Sometimes in life even if we're super organized we can be tripped up and the organization thrown into disarray.

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    1. The trouble is I am tending to be organised in my disorganisation, if you follow me. A week without planning and organisation sounds a bit like a plan to me.

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  8. My father was the manager of the photographic department of Butlins, Filey in the late 40's - 50's.

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    1. Ah, that is the kind of job I half fancied as a youth : but I suspect it would have become very monotonous after a time.

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  9. We had a couple of Butlins holidays, as children. It wasn't as bad as people now make out. The letters, KE, probably form part of KENT. As I recall, the dining halls were given place names, and KENT was one of them. Hi-de-Hi!

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    1. I had assumed they might have been part of sKEgness, but you might well be right. I have tried to find another old image where the frontage can be seen clearly but, as yet, I haven't tracked one down.

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  10. Did I read Strip Club? I always enjoy how you lure us in! Your auntie is fabulous....and I love your little outings on these mystery tours...they are so much fun!

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