When I was a little girl, my sister and were taken to the seaside: I think, once a year. I say ‘I think’ because I can’t be sure… my sister’s memory is worse than mine in that respect, my father would respond in a gruff voice ‘you need to ask your mother – she was in charge of that sort of thing’ and my mother, who lives in a parallel universe which rarely if ever comes into contact with the rest of us, would remember, quite sincerely, that we practically lived at the seaside during the summer. So, I am sticking with once a year.

On the great Day Out, we would pack the car with folding stripey nylon seats with unstable tubular aluminium frames (for grown-ups only), picnic rugs interwoven with dog and cat hairs, a candlewick bedspread for sitting on, swimming costumes, towels and The Picnic.

Once at the seaside we carried our stuff like beasts of burden and piled onto the beach. Within seconds the candlewick bedspread was covered in sand, my sister and I had run into the sea and back resulting in wet skirts and knickers and wet sand on the bedspread, our father was serenely detached ignoring it all (as long as he was kept fed and watered), my poor mother struggled to come to terms with the reality of the situation as opposed to her ideal, and we munched our way through egg and sand sandwiches, home-made scotch eggs the size of melons, jam tarts and fairy cakes. There may even have been the odd apple thrown in (this was the 1970s).

Mum gradually relaxed, and if the weather was warm, would HORRIFYINGLY (for us) take her blouse off and sunbathe… in her bra. The shame…. We, of course had no sun ‘protection’, whilst my mother had a bottle of mahogany coloured oil guaranteed to fry her quicker than a minute steak.

The absolute best thing of all – and it was what we had been waiting for since the day before – was the ride on the donkeys. Scarborough donkeys are an institution: I rode on them, my father rode on them, his father rode on them. It didn’t matter a jot that there was a donkey in the village where we lived, which we were all welcome to ride: riding a Scarborough Donkey on the beach was special.

Finally…. once our poor feet had been scoured of sand, my screeching sister’s hair painfully detangled, the candlewick shaken to within an inch of its life, and everything packed back into the car we went to the harbour and ate a bag of… winkles. Yep – miniature sea snails with a snot-like interior which had to be painstakingly extracted with a pin. My mother got Crab Claws. How I yearned for a taste of that sweet-smelling pink flesh. I looked balefully, I asked sweetly, I offered more chores, I offered my soul – but no. Crab Claws are for Mummies only.

I have carried my resentment of being Crab Claw-deprived around with me like an old school scarf. The second I left home I would devour them with any opportunity I got: upmarket restaurants, fruit-de-mer in France, Chinese take-aways, even Kelso Car Boot Sale! But what I am most proud of is that on the very first opportunity I got – did I deprive my Wees as I was deprived?

No, I did not.

You may think that Crab Claws are merely the legs of a relatively defenceless sea-creature: believe me, they are much, much more than that.

This was supposed to be a post about our trip to the seaside whilst on our camping holiday – but I didn’t tap the right keys…. I’ll have another go tomorrow!