The grey beauty of the Irish Sea.
When I became bored of waiting my turn on the beach, on the sand in front of the van where my brother Ian made those serious structures... I've written about already... with the other lads whose families also had vans on the field by the beach....I went walking .
I've mentioned that many liked to promenade in a summer evening along the silver sands as the sun lowered over the peninsula. When aunt Helen...mum's sister ...came to the van it was de rigeur to have a walk after tea. Teatime then being what I now call dinner.
But soon it became a place of gathering for the young people from our field and the smaller field to the right of the lane. In our early teens the gang was mainly the younger Cathcarts, Vicky Pollock, the McKee girls and myself. the leader of the pack being Vicky, she who must be obeyed!
This was seldom a leisurely stroll. This walk was invariably brisk and our given instructions were to collect shells.
Not just any old shells
They had to be either "pearlies" or tiny cowries. And to this day I keep a glass bottle full of cowries on a window ledge in my home in Morecambe...and if by chance and good luck I happen upon a "pearly" on some distant shore, why a little whoop of success leaves my lips.
Of course I never could compete with the number of precious shells that Vicky gathered, because we all had to walk behind her, thus making sure that she spied them first....and wow betide you if you thought that you could somehow sneakily get in front of her because you were then in danger of receiving a little friendly nip or punch on the arm. We remained good friends through grammer school and college until we both went our separate ways as adults never to meet again.
I was actually more of a lone wanderer.Leaving the van I liked to take the beach to the left. It was more rugged and I found it interesting with seaweed and shells and those little hopping sand fleas!. It also gave me the chance to see what the folk along the edge were up to. Always inquisitive I was, maybe a bit nosey.
I especially loved the double decker bus I've mentioned before and was always hopeful that I might catch a glimpse of one of the occupants and be invited into their van. It didn't happen. I never saw them there. Perhaps they had come to Hope's field wanting quiet and peace.
There was a headland about thirty yards away from our van with quite a rocky promontory and there the area stopped being Ballyferris townland and became Ballywhisken... as far as I can remember. One of my delights was to clamber alone over these rocks and climb right out on to the very edge of them where the water was deepest. Then as the tide came in a surge smashed up into the crevases in the rocks soaking my clothes and hair. Imagination ran riot in this place. I saw the footprints of giants and dinosaurs and thought of the generations of children who may have climbed these rocks before me and who might have dreamt of someone like me in the future. I too dreamt of my future, who I would become, what I would do in life and I even thought of the children and grandchildren that I might have one day. Such dreams as these sustained me and kept me positive in my later life when disappointments came my way, as of course they do for us all.
If I was feeling really daring I would climb over the grassy hill at the back of the promontory and walk on to the next beach.
And that was a very different environment, with a completely different feel to it, as if, as in the old testament, other gods or princes of the air were holding court in that empty seascape! Actually...it was just the way to a favourite shop in Ballywhisken, but if you were going by the beach you had to negotiate the sucking clay that melted below your feet and if it succeeded in trapping you to free yourself took a mighty muscle wrenching effort.
A cliff of sand separated the coast road from the beach. There were no fields behind it to house friendly caravanners and therefore the beach was normally deserted. Here the tide went out very far and left great acres of shining silver with what looked like little rivulets of water. But wow to the one who tried to take the path through this expanse for if the clay didn't get you then the the depth of those little streams might offer up a surprising shock. It was worth the risk as the sand was littered with beautiful stones. Stones that sparked as you struck them against each other...flints! My pockets were often so heavy with them that my shorts were in danger of falling down. And this too has left me with the joy, whether Suffolk, Spain ,Morecambe or Donaghadee where I woud seek out pebbles seawashed and beautiful. I have read that stones may roll down rivers in one part of the world and reappear somewhere else much later, with the sharp edges rounded off and ready to slip nicely into the palm of a hand. A comforting thought.
A path led eventually through the cliff and on to the road by the little emporium in Ballywhisken.
A wooden hut with rows of glass bottles full of sugary treats. Hilda's shop.Now although there were other little shops around further on in Millisle and Ballywalter, none compared to this. Hilda's was a place of magic. Now gone the way of all good things, gone the way of progress! Possibly woodworm ate away at the structure or perhaps one stormy night it just took off and flew free of the cliff it was balanced on so precariously. Dougie, my dad, had a way of flirting in an Armagh sort of a way and Hilda was one of his favourite flirt partners, if there is such a thing. I loved to be there when he was flirting. He charmed, she responded and mum just raised her eyebrows and waited for the loaf of bread or the bag of sweets or whatever it was that she had gone in for. As far as I'm concerned...nobody took it seriously, least of all mum, and in a way it added a frisson of fun and excitement to our days.
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I may have asked for a bag of dulse.....but that's for another story.
