If I can take Silverdale, I can take anything

My mum couldn't afford to take us on holiday when we were kids, but she did manage to get us on a two week holiday for underprivileged children in a place called Silverdale.  It was 1980.

It was quite a tough regime.  There was no showing off about what fancy stuff you'd got.  They made sure of this by taking all your clothes off you when you got there and giving you a random selection of clothes out of a cupboard.  

My brother couldn’t find any underpants to fit, so he had ones that were too big that hung out of the sides of his shorts.

There was pretty much non-stop running.  60 boys in 30 a side football games which were a just a mob of swinging legs kicking anything that moved.  Cricket with a bat that was so worn away it was more like half a bat.  Running for the sake of running, sometimes just round the building.

We had a disco one night, but they only had 3 records.  One was Rockin' Around the World by Status Quo and one of the others was Toccata by Sky.  I can't remember the third.

The weather was red-hot, nearly everyone got tonsilitis and under no circumstances were you allowed to leave any food on your plate.  Most meals featured giant boiled potatoes which were undercooked but they had to go down the neck, tonsilitis or no tonsilitis.

We took regular baths, which were supervised by someone called the matron.  I was 12 at the time.  It would be a long time before I'd be naked in a room with a woman again after that. 

When we got back to Leeds and had our clothes returned to us, my brother and I were let off the bus first as we were told we were the best behaved children they'd ever had.

It was hard, but as they used to say in the old days, it never did me any harm.  I've had other holidays since, but I don't think I've ever come back from a holiday fitter, even from my cycling holidays.

I think it's all run by charity, and I believe it's still going today.  I should really write and thank them.  

Post Script. I did write and thank them shortly after writing this, and in fact I sent them a link to this blog entry.  I ended up having a lovely e-mail exchange with them.  They seemed keen to distance themselves from some of the tougher measures employed at the time I went, but to be honest, even then it was always clear to me that they were operating with completely the best of intentions, and even with quite limited resources they managed to keep 60 young children clean, fed and occupied for a whole two weeks at a time.  And it was all done charitably, so I have nothing but praise for them.  Then and now.