TSDK No. 74. The Fun Archipelago

Our true intent is all for your delight

I

All aboard the pretty girls cry for the happiest breeziest holiday of all

One evening not so long ago, I went searching for some relics from my Russia days in my parents’ attic. I always had to be careful when I went in there, because it was little more than a crawl space under the roof. Neither my parents, owners of the house since 1977, nor Mr. and Mrs. Watt, the original occupants, who had received it as a wedding present in 1935, had ever got round to installing insulation. Anyone who ventured in was at risk of contracting tetanus from the ninety-year-old nails stabbing through the roof boards.

A small vestibule led to this lockjaw zone. Once it had contained the overflow shelves of the small library I built up in my youth, but those books had long since been donated or shipped to Texas. A few traces of the past survived, however. The wall on the right was decorated with messages my oldest brother had inscribed in felt tip pen in the late ‘70s. My favorite was: Don’t forget hobbies. The wall on the left was decorated with cuttings I had tacked to the wall in the early ‘90s. My favorite was the information leaflet I had picked up during a brief stint working for the Scottish Department of Agriculture after graduation. A photograph of a sheep gazing directly at the viewer was juxtaposed with the message: Sheep Scab: Don’t Let It Be Your Problem — Or Theirs.

I had been in and out of the attic so many times that I didn’t usually notice these details. This time, however, I was immediately struck by an alien element that brought everything into sharp relief. Lying on the floor was an ancient newspaper, browned and chipped at the edges, with a large tear in the upper right-hand corner. The cover was mostly taken up by a color portrait of a middle-aged man, grinning from ear to ear. With his pencil mustache and slicked back hair, he looked like a cad from an old Ealing comedy. In the upper right was the name of the newspaper: The Butlin News. The headline read Thank you for writing.

I reached down to pick it up. The paper was extremely brittle, as if it had been baked in an oven; fragments flaked away in my fingers. I began to read the article:

During the last few months thousands of folk have written to thank me for a good holiday. I ask myself, why do people write and thank me for doing something that it is surely my job and my duty to do? I believe I know the answer. It is that, at most hotels and boarding houses, holiday makers are used to getting their accommodation and food only, and are expected to keep out of sight, and give as little trouble as possible the rest of the time, rain or shine.

We at Butlin’s try and—when you make allowance for the many temporary staff, some of whom are not so enthusiastic as our own permanent boys and girls—I think we succeed in looking after and offering a wide choice of entertainment and fun, from morn to night, to our guests of all ages.

During a rainy period, such as last summer, we make a special effort, with more indoor events, and the entertainment staff especially, go all out to give everyone a good holiday.

I believe that after a wet summer, my camper friends compare holidays with people who did not go to Butlin’s, and it is then that so many write thanking me.

Well, whatever the reason, I am delighted to receive your letters. Thank you for writing.

Yours sincerely,

Billy Butlin

Butlin’s was a chain of holiday camps located in coastal towns up and down the UK. Although I had been aware of the company for as long as I had known the light of consciousness, it had never occurred to me that the name might belong to a public figure. Yet there he was, Billy Butlin himself, as real as Walt Disney or Colonel Sanders. The names of the towns where he had built his resorts ran along the bottom of the page: Pwyllheli, Skegness, Clacton, Ayr, Mosney, Filey. Theirs was a bleak poetry, conjuring up images of wet, windy beaches.

I had never been to a Butlin’s holiday camp, having spent all my youthful summer holidays in Saint Andrews. Even so, the resorts were as iconic as fish and chips and red telephone boxes, which is to say you didn’t need to visit one to know what they were about. Butlin’s camps were on TV, in the newspapers, in travel agent windows. There was a popular sitcom, Hi-de-Hi, set in a fictional resort based on Butlin’s. For a reasonable sum, members of the proletariat could spend a week in a chalet, all meals provided, while red-coated commissars of fun encouraged them to participate in singalongs, talent contests and other amusements. Butlin’s had even bequeathed to the language an idiom, a “happy camper”, to describe a person in a state of total satisfaction. Life was better, comrades, life was happier — for a week, at least.

The question was: how had The Butlin News got into the attic? The way the light from the single exposed lightbulb fell on it gave the paper a luminous quality, as if God had sent it down to me through a portal between heaven and earth. That seemed unlikely. Through the application of Occam’s Razor I concluded that my mother had unearthed it while I had been wandering around Saint Andrews earlier that day. For months she had been slowly cleaning out the attic in anticipation of the day she and my father would sell the house, and there were many layers of sediment to work through. Our own contributions lay atop the Silurian foundation laid down by Mr. and Mrs. Watt that included old tins, some mysterious jars labeled “potash”, gas masks and a civil defense helmet from World War II. I recalled that my mother had won a beauty contest when she was a teenager; that must have been at the Butlin’s camp in Ayr. The paper was probably a memento of the trip that had disappeared decades ago and had now, unexpectedly, resurfaced.

II

Throughout the summer famous artists entertained at Butlin’s every week. Lack of space prevents us from mentioning all the top liners who appeared, but if it’s entertainment at its best you’re looking for — then BUTLIN’S IS THE PLACE!

No doubt copies of The Butlin News had once been piled high at the entrances to camp dining halls and other communal areas. It wasn’t very thick, maybe 20 pages unstapled. This was not a publication that was supposed to survive. That it had escaped destruction was clearly a sign: I had an obligation to read it, to reanimate it. To preserve it for future generations, even. And so, sitting uncomfortably in my old bedroom (there was no longer any furniture besides a collapsible sofa bed), I began to leaf through its crispy pages.

First, I went looking for a date of publication to confirm my theory of its origins, but there was neither masthead nor indicia to tell me when it was printed. I did, however, notice a photo spread of entertainers, around half of whom I recognized, who were all about thirty years younger than they were when I had watched them on TV in the 1980s. There was Jon Pertwee, the third actor to play Dr Who, described as a “stage, screen, television and radio comedian”. I didn’t think of Pertwee as a comedian as his era of Dr Who was designed to terrify children into hiding behind the sofa. He also starred as Wurzel Gummidge, a scarecrow that came to life. That was also horrific, as Wurzel had interchangeable heads with different personalities and would periodically remove one head and replace it with another, depending on what challenge he needed to overcome in an episode.

Bernie Winters I recognized from Saturday evening light entertainment shows. Here, however, he was pictured with his brother Mike, who had been replaced by a sheepdog called Schnorbitz by my time. Perhaps Mike had gone to death’s dream kingdom; either that or Bernie had decided the dog made a better straight man. Bernard Breslaw was also a name I knew. Had he been in Carry On films^[1]? Possibly. Eamon Andrews I remembered best of all: this unctuous Irishman had hosted This is Your Life for decades, only releasing his grip on the red book when the Grim Reaper himself pried it from his cold, dead, fingers. The others — Jimmy Wheeler, Don Randall — I didn’t know at all. Yet here they all were, stars of stage and screen, entertaining the toiling masses on their week off at Butlin’s holiday camps up and down the country, successors to the stars of music hall who had performed on the piers earlier in the century.

Indeed, one of those performers had been resurrected by the Coryphaeus of the Camps himself:

It was Billy Butlin who gave 83-year-old Albert Whelan, Grand Old Man of the music-hall, his first appearance since his leg amputation, when he performed in front of 5000 campers at Butlin’s holiday camp, Clacton, last season. He completed three shows, the first starting at 5:30 and the last finishing 40 minutes before midnight.

Asked if this was too much for a man of his age he replied: “I could do six shows a day, and last year I was, in fact, doing this at the Windmill.

Apart from “Stumpy” — the name he affectionately calls his leg, Albert's general health is perfect.

The biggest celebrity, however, appeared to be “bestselling recording star” Russ Hamilton, who was pictured with a guitar Elvis-style, surrounded by “a bevy of pretty campers”. The Butlin News breathlessly reported that he had joined Butlins two years previously as a “Redcoat Children's Uncle”, but within twelve months he had enjoyed chart success with two songs he had written, “We Will Make Love” and “Rainbow”. These had had “lifted him from the ranks of the Redcoats to the £300-a-week strata of famous stars.” Most impressive of all, “Rainbow” had topped the charts in the United States.

The strange thing was that I had never heard of Russ Hamilton. As far as I was aware, the “British Elvis” had always been Cliff Richard, who, starting in the late 50s, had managed to rack up number one hits every decade until the 2000s. Was Russ Hamilton a lost precursor, the first British pop star to leave the primordial youth culture soup and walk on land, paving the way for all who would follow?

A quick Internet search revealed that Hamilton was indeed the Icthyostega of British pop music. “We Will Make Love” was released in 1957, a year before Cliff’s first hit “Move On”, and five years before “Love Me Do” by his fellow Liverpudlians, The Beatles. On Amazon I found a review from 2014 of a greatest hits compilation We Will Make Love Under a Rainbow:

57 years ago my boyfriend used to sing "The Rainbow Song" to me. After searching for it for many years, I found it at Amazon...I gave it to my husband on the 57th anniversary of his giving me my rainbow "a diamond engagement ring" I can not express our joy, tears, and shared memories of an occasion so many years ago. Thank you Amazon for your great service.

Alas, “We Will Make Love” and “Rainbow” were Hamilton’s only hits; The Butlin News had caught him at the height of his fame.^[2] I was now able to date this issue of the paper to 1958, as the article placed “We Will Make Love” a year in the past.

My theory that my mother had picked it up while on holiday was instantly negated as she was only 14 years old in 1958, and I knew she was already working in an office when she took part in the beauty contest. Lacking any other explanation, I chose to ignore this inconvenient truth.

III

I spent a week in that camp, a gay week of shows and dancing and snooker, swimming and table tennis and just lazing on the beach

I read on, mapping out Billy Butlin’s mid-century regime of unrelenting fun, article by article. Besides the allure of celebrities, dancing was a major draw, and the editors were keen to let you know that the camps were hip to the latest developments. There was a report on a “Rock 'n' Roll contest” that had taken place that June, sponsored by the Daily Herald (which would be relaunched as The Sun in 1964): “You should see the youngsters… lapping it up… dancing their OWN dances to their OWN kind of music and loving it.” “Sun-tanned girls” had “swapped bathing costumes for jeans,” and “bikinis for shorts” and were “jiving with energetic young lads in beach shirts and cowboy hats.” Although the word “teenager” had been in circulation since the late 1940s, it had not yet penetrated Butlin’s empire. The revolution was in its infancy.

Dancing was not restricted to “youngsters”, however. Bandleaders could switch between Dixieland, Calypsos and Skiffle, and campers who remembered the First World War could dance the Quadrille and the Lancers in the “Old-Tyme Ballroom”. There was also a new kind of dance — the LIMBO:

The lights were doused and the piercing spotlight picked out the huge Jamaican as he started to sway in time with the beat of the music. As the tempo quickened he shuffled forward, knees jutting sharply out, his torso bending farther and farther back until it seemed he must snap or fall flat. Faster and faster went the music as his body aprroached the stand. Farther and farther he bent back his body—straining at every sinew—until in one frenzied rhythm-packed second he limboed his whole 6 ft. 5 ins under the bar, only two feet from the ground!

Having first resurrected one-legged Albert Whelan, Billy Butlin now reappeared in the pages of his own newspaper, this time as a kind of anthropologist-businessman. Witness to the LIMBO on a trip to the US, he had closely studied “how the act had affected the yelling throng.” Intrigued, Butlin discovered that a film^[3] featuring scenes of limbo dancing was soon to be released in the UK, and he summoned six of his finest Redcoats to London for a private, advance screening of the relevant section.

“For weeks they did nothing but practise, practise, practice, until finally the Holiday Camp King decided they were ready for their first public appearance.” Following that debut (in Brighton), his crack squad of limbo dancers spread across the fun archipelago. And it was in Ayr, the camp visited by my mother, that Allan Johnstone, an ex-army physical training instructor turned Redcoat achieved the feat of limboing his way under a bar a mere 2ft 1 inches from the ground. The current world record, set in 2010, is 8.5 inches.

IV

£2000 cash for bathing beauties

Beauty contests were another important aspect of Butlin’s topography of delight. Indeed, I counted five separate articles dedicated to pageants and their participants.

In “Lorna No Longer Feels Small”, Alfred Brockman, editor of Blighty magazine, delivered some hard-hitting reportage from the Pwllheli camp. According to Brockman, Lorna Douglass was a “living symbol of Sweet Seventeen.” In her ordinary life she had a humdrum job as a clerk typist in a Marine Insurance office at Wallasey, but at the Butlin’s camp she was recognized as a modern Helen of Troy.

Drawing on his “connoisseur’s eye” for “beautiful girls” Brockman described Lorna’s “rich cloud of dark hair”, “provocative smile that showed off her dazzling white teeth” and “youthful curves calculated to slow down the traffic.” These physical attributes, he concluded, were all “…things that were certain to wow the boys at Butlin's camp Pwllheli.”

Alas, Lorna lacked confidence due to her small stature. As she was only 5’ tall she did not believe she could win a beauty contest: “Pooh, what chance do I stand with my five-feet-nothing? You can bet the Judges will go for all the tall girls.” However, following encouragement from her mother Lorna entered and was victorious. “She wore a flush of triumph when I spoke to her,” wrote Brockman. “The flush went beautifully with her lovely brown hair, grey-green eyes, and that oomphish white swim suit.”

Brockman then wrote that his day job involved: “picking pictures of dream girls, talking “Girls” on the telephone” and “receiving lush love lovelies into my sanctum sanctorum.” Rather creepily, he appeared to have stalked Lorna for the rest of her holiday. “I watched Lorna swimming and learned she had won two medals for life-saving instruction… I admired her pretty dresses and discovered she had made them herself…I watched her dancing and found out that she was a pretty nifty Rock ‘n’ Roller…”

Sufficiently ill at ease I looked up Blighty. Having begun publication as a patriotic magazine in World War I, it adapted to changing mores and by World War II began featuring pin-ups to raise the morale of the troops. In the post-war era it lost its connection to the armed forces and become a “glamor” magazine; this was during Brockman’s tenure as editor. Two years after his trip to Pwllheli, the magazine was renamed Parade and started featuring pictures of topless girls. In the late 1990s it went full hardcore, before going out of business in the early 2000s, by which time Brockman was almost certainly dead. It was a long, strange trip from the charnel fields of the Western Front to the Battle of the Boobs.

However, just as Butlin arranged multiple styles of dancing for different generations, so he made certain that his beauty pageants were not restricted to the young and nubile. “Miss She” was a contest open to women of all ages, sponsored by She, a women’s magazine. Instead of swimsuits, the contestants wore “speckless dresses and impeccable suits” while white shoes and gloves were also popular. The judges were not looking for curves and provocative smiles but rather “poise, good grooming, good dress sense and personality — basically a spotlessly clean girl of any age at all”. Rounds were held each week; winners received a silver charm bracelet. Those with the most poise would compete against each other at the Grand Final in the “Butlin Festival of Reunion” in the Royal Albert Hall for a “Silver Challenge Bowl” and a grand prize of one hundred guineas (somewhere in the area of £3000 today).

There were also beauty contests for “glamorous grandmothers”. Here the top prize was the princely sum of £1000 (nearly £30,000 today). The Butlin News reported that the Glamorous Grandmother pageant had “gripped the imagination” because “it proves that glamour doesn’t fade with years, that you can still be the centre of attention at 70.” That said, some of the “grandmothers” were not that old; Mrs. Rose Winter of Nottingham, for instance, was only 49. She attributed her youthfulness to adopting a baby at the age of 45, when her three daughters were already grown. Now, four years later, her toddler son cheered her on.

In the camp at Skegness, meanwhile, a great-grandmother, Mrs. Emma Wilmore, competed against her daughter. She confided in the reporter: “I always wear nice lace-trimmed undies, and I do like ‘em in black. They are so smart they make me feel young again.” Mrs. Wilmore was not cheered on by a toddler but rather her adopted son of 58 who had never married; the reason given was that he could not “…bear to leave such an ebullient companion.”

Oh, Mr. Wilmore, don’t you think they know?

V

Our true intent is all for your delight

The fun deepened like a coastal shelf. There were talent shows, so many talent shows — who knows, you might even be “discovered” and be the next Russ Hamilton. There was an escape artist called Johnny Cairo: they tied him up in a mail bag and threw him in the water, yet still he did not drown. You could play snooker and be coached by a champion, or learn the secrets of table tennis under the tutelage of the masters. You could learn what the future holds from a palm reader. You could build sandcastles, go swimming, wrestle, box, do judo, ride fairground attractions, ride a miniature train. You could leave your infant children behind, and they would come to no harm. You could even witness miracles, like the 7500 campers in Clacton who watched in awe as thirteen-year-old David Butler of Hemel Hampstead who had lost his legs and one hand “after picking up a mortar bomb while out picnicking with his family” learned to swim in a single week.

Truly, Billy Butlin was the gardener of human happiness. And yet, the editors of his newspaper nevertheless felt the need to defend his regime against the accusation that camp life was a little too regimented. They stressed that there was no compulsion on Billy Butlin’s “fun-and laughter plantations”. If you did not wish to dance, or to show off your curves, or sing a song, or watch an ancient music hall comedian, you did not have to. If you wanted to lie around on the beach and do nothing, that was fine, totally fine.

Even so, you might find yourself becoming a shock worker of fun in spite of yourself. Consider, for instance, the case of the “fierce, choleric” colonel with the waxed moustache, who retreated each day to the quiet lounge to study his newspaper. He had not reckoned with the “unseen hand of Butlins”, for “by choosing this particular room, he found himself among several others of like disposition” and soon they were “snarling over politics, the army and the decadence of youth like a bunch of happy tigers.” By the end of the week, it was reported that he had joined one of the Campers Committees and was seen “prancing in a bathing suit” cheering on competitors from his “house” in a swimming contest.

The fun at Butlin’s was numinous, transcendent. Ernie Barton and his wife Joan from Nuneaton had not taken a holiday in 30 years until they went to Butlin’s; now their fondest wish was to see the camp again. One old couple had visited Butlin’s 86 times; only the grave could stop them from returning. Even men of God could see that something remarkable was taking place in the camps. An “extremely tough” American bishop who was in England to attend the Lambeth conference had paid a visit to one and was amazed to learn that the English could enjoy themselves so much. A stronger endorsement came from the reverend E.S. Sketchley, Vicar of St. John's Church, Abbeydale, Sheffield who spent a week at the camp at Filey:

Just imagine, there were nearly twice as many people in the camp as there are in my parish….Billy Butlin has realized one thing and that is that man is a social animal and for the most part has agreed and expressed desire to be a definite part of some organised society. To be happy, man needs to belong somewhere... he was never designed to live for himself, by himself. Man needs to know that he BELONGS. And it is this sense of belonging to one another on holiday that Butlin has fostered, and indeed with very great success. For the facts are that literally thousands of people go to these camps every year. What is it that encourages so many to come? It may well be the sense of belonging, this sense of fellowship, which draws people back year after year. Perhaps the Church of England could learn something Billy Butlin, for it is not everywhere that we excel in promoting the spirit of belonging, the spirit of fellowship that should most surely be one of the hallmarks of all true Christian churches.

And if Butlin was indeed doing the Lord’s Work, then the Lord appeared to reward him for it — for a while, at least. By the mid 1960s, Butlin had nine camps in the UK and one in Ireland, as well as other holiday parks and a network of hotels (including one in Spain). In 1965 he built Britain’s first monorail, which, at nearly a mile long, ran in a loop around the camp at Skegness. He even opened “Topofthetower” a restaurant on the 36^th floor of the Post Office Tower in London, which at the time was the tallest structure in Britian. In this sophisticated establishment, diners could enjoy “Les Medaillons de Filet de Boeul Sautées au Beurre Noir”, “Le Poussin Grand'Mère” not to mention "Les Fillets de Sole sur les Toits"^[4]. Diners would receive a “certificate of orbit”.

Source: Butlins Memories

When he retired in 1968, Butlin could look back on his life’s work with satisfaction. He had come a long way from his childhood in South Africa, his youth in the trenches, and his days running a hoopla stall after the war. In all that time, only one of his camps had been a failure: he had attempted to expand to the Bahamas, where he had made the black camp staff wear white gloves in case they left fingerprints on the bedding. But it turned out that American tourists were not so keen on porridge for breakfast and singing Knees up Mother Brown. Although Butlin had handed over responsibility for the Fun Archipelago to his son, he returned to the fray to fight off a hostile takeover bid before finally selling his empire to the Rank Organisation, a British film studio and manufacturer of photocopier machines, for £43 million in 1972. He died eight years later, aged 80, on the Isle of Jersey.

It was a good moment at which to die, because it spared him the sight of his empire’s swift decline. Increasingly, British holiday makers opted for cheap beach holidays in Spain and Portugal, where good weather was guaranteed, over compulsory fun in a camp with a 50/50 chance it might rain. One by one the outposts of the Fun Archipelago began to close: Mosney in Ireland in 1982, followed by Clacton (where David Butler had experienced his swimming miracle) a year later. Then Filey, then Barry Island. Some of the camps were sold off, or rebranded only to die under a different name, though some survived after a fashion (the camp at Ayr is now a caravan park called Craig Tara. It has a Burger King). Others acquired a new purpose: Mosney was reborn as a refugee camp, where for years asylum seekers lived among rusting and dilapidated fairground equipment^[5]. Today only three camps remain under the Butlin’s brand: the original that opened at Skegness in 1936, plus the ones at Minehead and Bognor Regis.

But I didn’t know any of this as I flicked through The Butlin News that evening; I would conduct most of my research later. My goal at that point was to get my mother to confirm my theory of its origins. I took the artifact downstairs.

“Look what I found in the loft,” I said. “It’s a free newspaper for Butlin’s from 1958.”

“Oh, that’s strange!” she said.

“I never knew Billy Butlin was a real person,” I said.

“Neither did I,” said my mother.

“It was lying on the floor. I’m assuming it was under the linoleum and somehow became dislodged sixty years later.”

My mother nodded. She was a lot less excited by the discovery than I was.

“Did you go to the camp in Ayr?” I asked.

“No, never.” my mother replied. “My mother and sister went, but I didn’t. I was 18, and already going out with your father.”

“But isn’t that where you took part in the beauty contest?” I asked. After all, this was the only way I could explain the newspaper’s presence in the attic, even though I knew the date of publication was too early. Not only that, but it would have been strange for my mother to hang on to the Butlin News for twenty years and then conceal it under the floor when we bought the house in 1977, now that I came to think about it. But still, my obviously implausible explanation was the only one I had, so I clung to it, like one of those paleontologists who conjures forth an entire dinosaur species from a single bone.

“That was Arbroath,” she replied. “Your dad and I were staying at a guest house. A previous tenant had won the contest the year before. The landlady encouraged me to enter, and so did your father.”

“Ah, I see. You came first, correct?”

Yes. But I didn’t enjoy it.”

“Why not?”

“It was freezing for a start. Two of the judges were from a group called The Bachelors and the third was a member of the public. As you walked around the pool you could hear them discussing you: “I like the wee one with the dark hair” “I like the blonde one.” Then, when I went back to work at the Federation of British Industries, word had got out in the head office in London that there was a beauty queen in Glasgow. So whenever one of them came up for business I had to make the coffee. In fact, I had to make the coffee for everyone, even if I wasn’t their secretary. I got letters from sailors and some factory workers in Wales asking if I’d send a photograph so I could be their pinup — my picture had got in the papers, and the newspapers forwarded the mail they received to the office…”

“Did you send one?”

“Absolutely not. I just wanted the novelty to wear off and for it to fade into oblivion — the sooner the better.”

“How long did that take?”

“About four or five months…”

“It must have been Mr. and Mrs. Watt, then….”

“What?”

“They must have gone to Butlin’s in 1958 and picked up the paper. And it’s been under the linoleum until now.”

I had never met Mrs. Watt, the original owner of our house, although in the early 1990s, after we had been living in it for fifteen years or so, an American academic had come to our door. He was investigating belief in the “second sight”, the term used in the highlands and islands of Scotland for the ability to see the future. Apparently, Mrs. Watt, who was born and raised on the Isle of Skye, had possessed this gift/curse, and somehow the academic had found out about it.^[6]

The story was that one day Mrs. Watt opened the front door and saw one of her neighbors, a certain Mr. McKay, walking down the street. She said good morning, and he returned the greeting, yet she knew he was dead, and that his soul was taking leave of this earth. Mr. McKay’s widow Betty confirmed the story. The academic wanted to observe the street from our door, presumably to confirm that it was possible to see a ghost walking along the from that angle (it was).

Now I knew something else about Mrs. Watt: that in 1958 this seer had gone to Butlin’s, presumably with her husband and son, and while there she had picked up a free paper, which had then made its way into the loft where it had remained under the floor for over six decades. Had she foreseen that I would one day discover it? I doubt it; that would be a trivial use of her mystical gifts. In fact, I expect that she quickly forgot the paper was even in the house.

I, however, did not forget. I took The Butlin News with me back to Texas. And now I keep it close, in a box of vintage newspapers and magazines in my personal library. Each time I take it out to read, a few fragments break off and drift to the floor. Having survived for far too long, it now strives for disintegration. For that reason, I must open The Butlin News no more. Instead, I will hide it away, this fragile relic of the Fun Archipelago, preserved in an acid free plastic bag with a backing board at the bottom of the box. The plan is to leave it there for several decades, then die. My children get to decide what happens next.

---

^[1] The innuendo-laden Carry On comedies were produced between 1958 and 1992 and were staples on British TV for many decades.

^[2] Hamilton died in 2008, embittered by his brief encounter with stardom. "I was going round the world singing my head off and I was swindled out of a fortune. I never even got my gold disc."

^[3] Most likely Windjammer, a documentary about a 239-day sea voyage by a team of Norwegian sailors that featured a trip to Trinidad where the Scandinavians witnessed calypso music, steel bands and limbo dancing. aIt premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on April 8, 1958, and played for 36 weeks and was also the only film ever to be shot in “cinemiracle”, a process that involved shooting three roles of film simultaneously from a single camera.

^[4] “Two large fillets of Sole, one coated with a Lobster Sauce, the other with a Champagne Sauce as well as a Bouchée of Lobster and a Barquette of Caviar.”

^[5] The fairground equipment was eventually removed. The asylum seekers remain.

^[6] She was also a native Gaelic speaker who wrote radio plays and published at least three collections of short stories in her mother tongue. Some of them featured supernatural elements. It is strange to think that the same house had produced two writers; whoever owns it next will need to step up.