What do you remember about your holidays as a child?

When I was very small we went to Ireland and the Scottish Highlands on holiday. I don’t remember anything of either holiday, apart from when we went to Scotland we stayed in a big house near Drumnadrochit and the tablecloth on the big kitchen table was the same pattern as my swimming costume. Oh, I also remember that my mum and I shared a massive (well it felt massive!) brass bed and went to sleep holding hands! Come to think of it, that should have been in my earliest memories!

Once we got to Malawi, holidays became a little more interesting and exotic. When I was about 4, my two stepbrothers (RB & DB) came out for a holiday. We had an old VW Combi – it was so cool – wish we had kept it! We went on holiday through Zambia and Zimbabwe, in the days when it was still pretty safe to do so, providing you had fags with which to bribe border guards – always worked, it was a failsafe plan!
Anyway, the main thing I vaguely remember was being ill. My mum knew I wasn’t well – I was being sick etc, so after one particularly bad spell, she took me out of the car in order to clean up, put me on the side of the road and I just crumpled to the floor. I was so dehydrated that if she pinched my skin, it stayed pinched. The found a hospital eventually – the Wankie Colliery Hospital, run by nuns. Turns out I had a bad case of dysentery, and no one knew why, because we had brought all our drinking water with us, and hadn’t touched any other water on the way. Anyway, apparently the nurses upset me as they gave me a suppository! They did spoil me though, because I was the first child who had ever stayed in the hospital, and once I was better they would take me out and buy me ice cream! I was extremely upset though, because while I was in there, the others saw giraffe and a cheetah. To this day I have never seen a cheetah – in the wild or otherwise. By the time we got home to Malawi, I had Bilharzia, so all in all, it wasn’t a great holiday for me! The others enjoyed it though!

We had several trips up to the lake, and they were always great holidays, but the next big one was in 1983 when my dad’s contract ended and we went on leave before the new one started. We had a very imaginative travel agent, so when we were given the allowance for the trip, she could stretch it to include several places. So, we started off going to Johannesburg where some friends of ours lived – I had been friends with their daughter in Reception and Standard 1. They actually lived in Rustenburg, roughly 100km NW of Jo’burg. We went to this cool swimming pool place – I think it was called the Kloof or something…anyway, they had three pools there. One was COLD, one was warmish and the other one was HOT! It was brilliant!

After South Africa, we flew to Rio De Janeiro. We went up on the funicular railway to Corcovado (the massive statue of Christ), so I have actually stood right next to it! We also got a cable car up to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and went to an emerald and diamond merchants. Not sure why, as my parents choice was a beautiful emerald necklace, or buying a house in UK! They did buy my BMX there though.

From there, we went to Florida, and went to Walt Disney World in Orlando. Now that was the most thrilling experience of my little life – I was only six at the time! I was terrified of the characters walking about, but I did talk to Mickey Mouse. He asked for my address, I gave it to him, and the bastard rodent never bloody wrote to me! I was heartbroken! We were there just before Christmas, and the Christmas tree they had there was incredible – it must have been at least 20m tall – just stunning! We also went to the Epcot Center, which was still very new, and to Cape Canaveral to see the rockets at the Kennedy Space Center.

From there we went to Washington, drove down to Annapolis and saw the Chesapeake Bay and the bridge, and also went to George Washington’s house at Mount Vernon in Virginia. I don’t remember much about that though – I mean it couldn’t compare to the wonder of Disney World!

From there, we went back to UK for Christmas. Just after that, we went up north to see the friends in Scotland, and that was when my mum and dad bought our house.

We went back to Malawi for another three years, and during that time we went to the lake some more, went to South Africa again a couple of times (including one trip to Sun City) but nothing was like that wonderful and amazing holiday we had when I was six.