What I did in my holidays

Do you remember the old days, back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the summers seemed to go on forever, and the beach was a glorious playground, the sea was a giant swimming pool, and in each rockpool lurked a miniature aquarium? And at the end of the holidays, and the start of the new term, a good standby for the English teacher was for you to write an essay about what you did. This poem is an unashamed exercise in nostalgia about those bygone days.

What I did in my holidays

July was a month of summer pleasures
Licking a cone of Jersey ice cream
On a sunny day, one of the treasures
Of this month, my summer’s dream

Childhood is now a distant time away
And yet it still is so vivid in my mind
Beaches, sand castles, school holiday
And shrimps in rock pools to find

Ice cream soda, lollies, lemonade
Splashing in the sea, laughed and joked
High tides crash across the promenade
We run between the waves, get soaked

What I did in my holidays yet to write
Back then, the future was so very bright