Childhood Holidays

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain outside my open bedroom window. Not the Cornish mizzle that we usually get at this time of year but big splotty, splatty drops of rain that plip-plop loudly onto the window sills and remind me instantly of when I was a child. In particular, of the lovely holidays we had every year. It's the kind of rain I associate with our holidays to Anglesey in our little Sprite Musketeer caravan, playing card games or colouring pictures in our colouring books while listening to the rain drumming onto the metal roof. It got me thinking ..... there are loads of things that remind me of those holidays. Sounds and smells mostly, that instantly transport me back there. 

Sadly I don't have any pictures of our old caravan but I found this one the internet. 

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When I had my market stall, I could never figure out why the flapping of the marquee made me sleepy until I remembered that I used to fall asleep to the sound of the caravan awning flapping in the breeze, a soothing, reassuring sound, guaranteed to give you the best night sleep ever. When I worked at a holiday park near Looe, I would walk around the site doing my rounds in the morning and the smell of bacon frying would bring back such a flood of nostalgia that I instantly craved a big juicy bacon butty, cooked in the cute little frying pan on the cute little Calor gas cooker in the caravan. Even the smell of early mornings reminds me of my childhood holidays. Before all the new roads and bypasses were built, the trip from Sheffield to Anglesey took about 4-5 hours and in order to miss all the traffic, we would get up and 4am. Even now, if I have to get up early to go anywhere, it always brings back that feeling of excitement and adventure that I used associate with going on my holidays.

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I still love Anglesey, it still feels like going home, a familiar place that has hardly changed at all. I would love to go and spend some time there re-discovering the places I used to go as a child. To catch that tantalising first glimpse of the sea on the journey to Wales, usually around the Colwny Bay area and to feel the thrill of finally crossing the Menai Bridge, knowing that the holiday has almost begun. To hear the seagulls that hopped on top of the caravan every morning as if to say "come on, it's time to get up" and walking to the camp shop, a tiny little building that sold pretty much everything you could need, feet wet from the morning dew slipping and sliding in my flip flops. Imperial leather soap, the Old Spice that my dad used to wear, freezing cold showers in the shower block, freshly cooked doughnuts from the cafe on Benllech beach, beach towels blowing in the breeze pegged onto the guy ropes of the awning, playing in our rubber dinghy on Lligwy beach, attached to my dad with a huge piece of rope to stop us drifting out to sea but secretly, thinking how cool it would be to be rescued by the life boat. In fact even after my parents upgraded our little touring caravan to a big static van, still on the same camp site that we always went to, I continued the tradition and took my own daughters there.

I often think that if I were to leave Cornwall, Anglesey would be somewhere I could see myself settling and who knows, maybe one day I might just do it :-)

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Spontaneous Urticaria and My Great Food Conundrum.

A few years ago, after a particularly delicious breakfast in a lovely little beach cafe with a friend, I ended up in casualty after having an allergic reaction to something. On the way home from the cafe, I began to itch all over and my airway started to close up and in the end I had to call an ambulance. It was scary and worrying and after the ambulance ride to hospital, being pumped full of drugs on the way and a 6 hour stay in casualty to make sure there was no adverse reactions to the drugs, I was given the all clear and was sent home. Over the next week I ended up back in hospital twice more with the same symptoms only this time with vomiting and diarrhoea thrown in for good measure. It was only after that third episode that I was sent off for tests and was diagnosed with spontaneous urticaria. This means that basically you can become allergic to anything at any time and without any warning and despite having copious amounts of blood being taken to try and find out if there was anything in particular I was allergic to, eventually I was told there was nothing else the doctor's could do and was given advice on how to manage the attacks should they happen. Over the last 4 years, since the first episode, I have had many more. They seem to come in clusters and my body seems to be particularly sensitive and prone to more episodes in the week or so after the first one. The last episode I had was after I ate a big bowl of French onion soup and using a process of elimination, onions ....... obviously ....... were flagged up as being the most likely culprit. It's safe to say I no longer eat onions :-) however, as I haven't had an episode for a quite a while now (touch wood!!) I am wondering if it's time for me to try eating them again. The problem is, the more episodes I have and the more things I cut out of my diet, the more restrictive my available food list gets which, when you have to try and live thriftily on a very tight budget, can be very limiting . As my daughter is home from uni for a few more weeks, I am thinking about re-introducing all the foods that I have not eaten for a while to see if I am still allergic to them. It's safer to do this while there is someone else in the house because when an episode happens, it is scary and there is the possibility that I will have to use my Epi-pen if the symptoms get too bad. The trouble is, it's so horrible when it happens and can take anything up to an hour to get it under control, that part of me is really not keen to put myself in that position, even if eventually, all I end up being able to eat is toast :-)