itt: things that strongly remind you of holidays as a child

the smell of washing up liquid as you pour boiling water onto it straight from the kettle into a plastic bowl

the sound and smell of rain on welsh slate

https://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/686x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/2/1/213932-vesta_paella_146g_1000x1000.jpg

vesta paella! i remember mum serving it for supper when it was a new and fancy item in the late 60s or early 70s: shrimps and rice in a box! the tiniest shrmips ever to get into a box -- i looooved it and often requested it, considering myself very fancy

perhaps i should revisit it (perhaps not)

(lol yes they are PRAWNS now, shrimps have vanished from human cuisine)

tywyn cinema on a wet day: in particular watching the documentaries BLUE WATER WHITE DEATH (a shark bumps the camera and my mum always shrieked) and IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT GODS

by which i mean, those docs and anything that today reminds me of them remind me of tywyn cinema on a wet day (and thus of holidays as a child)

plastic army men

whenever i can smell orange juice and wet grass at the same time

bits of crisp that have been broken and sat into a car seat

ringbinders of information with the pages laminated

putting on your wellies without any socks - once a prelude to traipsing to the toilets across the dewy campsite

(if you just slipped out for a pee round the back of the tent though, you'd have that thing of getting back into a sleeping bag with wet feet)

pebbledash!

esp.ice-cream pink or pale mint-green pebbledash

Hotels (or any other building really) with a fire hose in the corridor as opposed to a hydrant

Bus timetables in book form (as non-drivers acquiring one of these was #1 holiday priority for my parents)

Barley sugar* or the tins that used to contain it (commonly now containing screws, nails etc in my Mum's house)

Plastic table numbers on restaurant tables

* utterly ineffective travel sickness prevention

earwigs

UHT milk

Rounded cobblestone

My mum's French so most of our summer holidays were spent visiting family there. You couldn't get regular milk for whatever reason, so UHT milk is the number one 'I am on holiday' taste. I hated it at the time. Now I get a quaint nostalgia

fruit pie & clotted cream
smell of lager & lime
ploughman's lunches
saucy postcards
knick knack shops

'Summer Special' comics

bland rubbery sliced cheese and sand sandwiches
miniature flags of the constituent countries of the UK

variety packs of cereal

Horlicks
those giant plastic tanks of orange "juice" with the ballcock swishing in them

narrow country roads overhung by trees

Blackpool

michelin i-spy books

proper pillows on the backseat of a car

the moldy smell of damp astroturf surrounding a florida swimming pool

dark veneer panelled motel rooms with low drop ceilings

the specific mix of solvents and oil that characterized the smell of my grandfather's garage

(i-spy books is good: the UK ones still exist but the design is very different)

are those the ones with "magic ink"?

grizzled seadogs in chalk ware!!

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/10/27/28/1027285401a970aeb534042f4e6d4d92.jpg

as previously analysed here: Real England

The scent of Niveau sunscreen

jelly shoes

Wasps

insects that remind me etc are very particular:
• cicadas of course for our single french holiday in 1972
• wood ants for our two camping holidays in the lake district

nothing particular for any of the welsh holidays, even though i did get attacked by wasps (for attempting to put a jam-jar over the mouth of their nest, it is i that was the monster here obv) (but wasps are common in shropshire so there was no negative imprint really)

variety packs of cereal

― devvvine, Tuesday, September 26, 2017 2:24 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes

paperback copies of my mum's holiday books. especially lorna doone.

threads like this really bring out the englishness of ILX

I won't bother contributing then :(

everyone must* contribute, this is another mark s just-abt-to-go-under-the-knife** gift-to-ilx threads, like the dinosaur one

*not that i can make you
**again not actually a knife

Tea from thermos flasks.

Tartan thermos flasks.

The smell of tobacconist shops.

Boiled peas in vinegar in polystyrene cups.

Tango in the Night in the tape player

Boiled peas in vinegar in polystyrene cups

this is all-time

french cricket

something about peas and tinned veg - minted new potatoes out of a tin

Palatine Road, Stanley Park, the Duple Club...

Being given money to play 'the machines'.

The eternal question, what Fair Fortnight will it be? Glasgow or Paisley?

Raku, pit & sawdust firing.

What, didn't everyone else go on holiday to ceramics festivals?

if early-mid teens counts - the taste of 3% French stubby bottle supermarket biere

Travel sickness pills, "Take two hours before journey'.

http://www.museumofbeyond.org/images/sealegs-500.jpg

this had a neat little slideing door at the top-left corner to get the tablets out

Wasps
Oily mud masquerading as a beach
Car sickness
Standing on the hard shoulder crying wearing nothing but orange and brown y-fronts (may be related to previous entry. thank fuck I grew out of that. and the car sickness)

parents arguing.

and there's me thinking people go on holiday to have a good time

Mint or grenadine cordial with lemonade and ice for France. Imitation pork ribs for Butlins.

• Tunnock's Teacakes
• the taste of coffee from a Thermos flask
• sitting in a car looking out a rain slashing down on a seaside town
• lime marmalade
• the weird smell of a rented house
• the weird smell of our own house after returning to it after a week away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzi9wPKRxr8

Blue-green algae
Live, angry turkeys
Empty golf courses

https://images.lukiegames.com/t_300e2/assets/images/PS2/ps2_grand_theft_auto_iii-110214.jpg

the song just another day by john secada

being in the back of a car for an extended period of time

caravan parks. rain. final fight and street fighter 2.

REM - Out of Time
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy

the sound of a walkman with the battery running out would bring back waves of nostalgia. hot ears from terrible 80s/90s headphones. tartan blankets. those spray cans of water that people use to cool down. french road signs/motorways.

Summer special editions of comics: http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/heyday-of-summer-special.html

xp i was going to say - those nasty foam headphone cover pieces, but you never see them anymore.

tins of icing sugar-dusted travel sweets (h/t Grandpont Genie but we got the fruit ones, not barley sugar)
"anatomy of a ..." postcards
cheap limeade
7up, glass bottle, straw
my parents' 3 tapes, warped from sitting in the sun in the car: Swingle Singers, Reinhardt + Grappelli, some unknown boogie-woogie-ish piano instrumentals

really old Archie comics. the smell of the old ceramic electric kettle we had at the beach house. heck the smell of that house (musty, old, salty). the tree house at my cousins farm. all of the above is gone now :(

I'm beginning to think car sickness might have been related to 7 in an Austin Allegro with the heating on and 3 smokers.

definitely those weird sweets in tins with the dust on them. my dad's aviator ray bans. a sunroof. do cars even have sunroofs anymore? probably, but no car i've been in for many moons, and i guess i've never holidayed with a car since the old family trips.

those huge toblerones you get in duty-free. smell of suncream obviously, my mum always used p20 which stained everything. or the bizarrely named "piz buin". for irish holidays i'd say hitting potholes, rain, card games, freezing water, though i'm prob drifting into "things i think about when i remember holidays".

Squeaking funfair fittings

definitely those weird sweets in tins with the dust on them

yeah, 100%

for me more than anything it's the sound of the eagles' their greatest hits (1971–1975) which played endlessly in the car on holidays to spain to the point where the californian countryside and the catalonian countryside are forever linked in my mind

my dad only had like two tapes, the best of simon and garfunkel and the best of the beach boys.

we had Simon & Garfunkel, the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, Roy Orbison and Dionne Warwick, think that's it

he had james last on vinyl, for dinner parties.

It's strange that my father, despite being Indian/Trinidadian and listening to phenomenal music around the house - only had three cassettes for holiday car journeys - James Galway, Don McLean and Julio Iglesias.

I am going on holiday with my mother for the first time in 20+ years in December and look forward to reviving simmering arguments about map reading skills.

my parents' cars were pre-tape deck until well into my high-school years :o

just the sound of the wind whapping through the open windows (no A/C) and the occasional country or oldies station. i remember it being very mysterious that my dad knew the words to things. how did he know? he never played that music at home.

the smell of wooden matches burning