I dreamt I was walking through the caravan site my family used to stay at every summer. It was one of those borderline-derelict coastal towns kept afloat by drinkers and tourists and yet my parents insisted that the days we spent trudging along the same stretch of pebble beach and same drunkards who kept "mistaking" our caravan for theirs would end up as pleasant childhood memories.
I thought they might be right too, after the years wore on and the memories dulled around the edges a little but that dream brought all the worst of it straight back to me. All those solo trips to the only laundrette in the town at 3AM when I thought nobody else would be around and the one time they were. Every single walk back from the beach and navigating my way through a labyrinth of shoddy caravans and all the barely-human faces peering through the grimy windows.
I'm half tempted to go back there just to see if it's as monstrous as I remember it being and if the site really does stretch from the outskirts of town right up to the cliff. According to my parents it doesn;t but I have such vivid dreams and memories of waking up and looking out of the window to see nothing but the sea, feeling the caravan tilt just that little bit more and praying it'd last us another few days til we could leave.
It never felt like we were guests there, it was always like we'd been sent there to atone for something. Even as a kid I knew it all seemed wrong and that we should never have gone and still every year we'd find ourselves crammed into a tin box for five weeks, counting the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the roaches in the kitchen - anything to occupy our thoughts.
Funny how now I can't seem to think of anything else - can't seem to dream of anywhere else...
I thought they might be right too, after the years wore on and the memories dulled around the edges a little but that dream brought all the worst of it straight back to me. All those solo trips to the only laundrette in the town at 3AM when I thought nobody else would be around and the one time they were. Every single walk back from the beach and navigating my way through a labyrinth of shoddy caravans and all the barely-human faces peering through the grimy windows.
I'm half tempted to go back there just to see if it's as monstrous as I remember it being and if the site really does stretch from the outskirts of town right up to the cliff. According to my parents it doesn;t but I have such vivid dreams and memories of waking up and looking out of the window to see nothing but the sea, feeling the caravan tilt just that little bit more and praying it'd last us another few days til we could leave.
It never felt like we were guests there, it was always like we'd been sent there to atone for something. Even as a kid I knew it all seemed wrong and that we should never have gone and still every year we'd find ourselves crammed into a tin box for five weeks, counting the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the roaches in the kitchen - anything to occupy our thoughts.
Funny how now I can't seem to think of anything else - can't seem to dream of anywhere else...
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