I took my dad to Scarborough – and saw a side of him that I didn’t expect
I’ve got a bit of a thing for my elders. As a kid I wouldn’t leave my great-aunt alone. In my early 30s, I went on six coach holidays with a load of strangers twice my age for my book, The Gran Tour. So it won’t come as a surprise to learn that I recently dragged my old man to Scarborough for a mini-break. When I say dragged, I’m only half-joking. He didn’t fancy the coach ride, for a start. For the first hour of the journey north from Portsmouth, Dad behaved like a hostage, but by the time we’d reached Reading he was leaning across the aisle to help a couple with the crossword.
It surprised me that he knew the answer to 4 down was “saturnalia”. And the fact that it surprised me showed how relatively little I knew of the man. I knew his outline well enough – born 1952, shipwright in the dockyard, 12 years sober and counting, ever so kind – but not the full picture, not the finer brush strokes. I hoped that Scarborough might fill in some gaps.
And it did. Away from his fixed address, Dad began doing uncustomary things. At dinner at the hotel on the first night, he ordered a dish he’d never heard of and then asked if I’d ever been hypnotised. Later, over crumble and custard, he wondered if it was worth him getting into Instagram.
When you go on holiday, you aren’t afforded the luxury of leaving yourself at home; your leanings come along for the ride
It helped that he liked his new digs. The Norbreck is a characterful hotel perched on a headland. It offered, at every turn, considerable perspectives. Faced with fresh scenery, Dad’s thoughts went walkabout, and his chat went with them: “I knew a girl from Yorkshire once. Her name was Margherita. Moved to Holland with a dentist.”
Ben Aitken and his father, left. Photograph: Ben Aitken
Another thing Dad liked about the hotel was the nightly bingo. And well he might: jammy git won 15 quid on consecutive evenings. He blew the lot on battered halibut during an excursion to Whitby.
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He also took a shining to Scarborough. He loved its bays, its weathered grandeur and the vistas that come with the territory – that are the dividend of being “a spit on the hilly side”, as Dad put it.
Not everything was to Dad’s liking, mind you. The tea was “odd”, the pillows were “rowdy” and the breakfast beans were “like nothing he’d ever seen”. This was to be expected, I suppose. After all, when you go on holiday, you aren’t afforded the luxury of leaving yourself at home; your leanings come along for the ride.
When you go away with a parent, you see more of each other. Case in point: we were down on the beach one afternoon, just mooching about, when Dad suddenly stripped off and skipped merrily seaward, citing Wim Hof as a pretext. I could have done without seeing that side of him.
Here Comes the Fun by Ben Aitken (Icon Books, £18.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.