Drayton Reflects

There are two gates at Butlin's in Skegness. The main gate is open all day and night. The little gate that opens onto the promenade shuts at 5. Which means that if, like Burton on Sunday, you go for a bike ride up the promenade to the Admiral Benbow, you get locked out and have to come round the camp to the front gate. Which makes me recollect.

When I was a child, I would walk with my parents to chapel. In the summer, when the ground was dry, my father and I would take the long way back across the meadow, while mother went home to start cooking Sunday lunch, and we would come in to the garden through the back gate. We lived in a long lane, and the rest of the meadow was fenced off, so this was the only way through. But sometimes, because I was growing up and headstrong and yet still not old enough to control my emotions, I would get into a mood with my father and go off and hide in the bushes and refuse to come home. You know how children are.

Of course, I would never stay there. As soon as I thought he had walked off ahead, I would creep along behind him, peeking through the undergrowth and trying to make sure he could not see me. And he would always try to act like he was not looking back - but I always knew he would. And then when he got to the back gate and went in, I would always have that lurking horror that he might lock the gate, and I would be consigned to retrace my steps, and take the two-mile walk back through the meadow - which could be quite scary to an eight-year-old - and up the lane round to the front of the house, and find when I got in, scared and tearful, that dinner would be cold.

And do you know, every time it happened, the gate was locked.