In all the 40 years I spent living with Phil, I went on tour with him with In Cahoots on several occasions but only twice on holiday. I told you about the first time with Richard Sinclair. These were in the early 1980s. Back then I had a long term friendship with Laure Fildes, who at that time was working as a kind of au pair with a family in Essex who had 2 children. Phil and I, with Pip and Pam and their children were frequent visitors to this family who happened to have a holiday cottage in Polzeath in Cornwall. One day we were asked if we, with all our children, would like to take this family’s children on holiday to Polzeath in a people carrier/ van that the family owned. We all thought it was a great idea. We decided to take Phil’s sailing dingy The Fox with us on a trailer behind the van as it would be a great place from which we could go sailing.
Phil had a trailer for The Fox and he and I spent some time building a lighting board to go onto the stern of the boat to ensure the trailer was road-legal by providing the van’s registration number and all the necessary rear lights (indicators, brake lights, and tail lights) which took some time because it had to be connected to all sorts of electrical goings on inside the van.
The great day arrived and Pip, who was going to be the driver, was given a long lecture about the ideosyncrasies of the vehicle and how it must not be driven over a certain speed etc, all of which Pip promised to adhere to (ha ha). You have to remember that Pip had a very rich father who regularly replaced all the various cars that Pip had written off in the past. Writing off cars was not a particularly big thing in Pip’s world – it all added to the spice of life.
When the day came we packed all our stuff into the van and set off. We has been travelling for a couple of hours before Pip decided to see how fast the van could go. We were in the fast lane doing 70 when the engine conked out with 5 adults and 5 children on board- no seatbelts in those days. To give him his due, Pip skillfully managed to manouvre the van – with a conked out engine, complete with a boat and trailer – across all the traffic filled lanes to the side of the motorway.
We spent the rest of the day getting the old van towed away, phoning the children’s parents/owners of the van and getting their permission to hire another vehicle so we could continue with the holiday and fiinding and hiring another van. Laura and Pam managed to keep all the children occupied and safe. Phil and I had to re-do the numberplates and re-wire the trailer into the hired van. it was loads of work.
It was quite late in the evening when we finally arrived at our destination. It was a super little seaside cottage and we all settled ourselves in. The beach was virtually on our doorstrep.
We all had a lovely time. The setting was wonderful. We seemed to have the whole area to ourselves. Phil and Pip took Phil’s little dingy out and sailed practically every day and the children swam and played on the sandy beach. The surrounding counrtyside was glorious. It was the perfect summer holiday.
On our last night we had a barbeque on the beach.Pam had made us lovely beefburgers and all sorts of food. We had loads to drink and most of the adults were pretty drunk.
We had a hilarious time and the children went crazy. Out in the pitch dark with a huge crackling fire and Pip and the rest of us as high as a kites. The children were in their own private world, which we didn’t really understand, but they kept, one by one, appearing out of the dark, presenting themselves with arms outstretched at their sides like weird scarecrows, shouting some mad kind of slogan, which none of the adults understood, and then falling flat on their faces into the the sand. I don’t remember why we all thought it so hilarious but on and on they came, seemingly from all quarters in a continuous mad pantomime, one by one, arms out outstrtched, shouting their weird slogan and collapsing face down into the sand.
Of course it all ended badly with Pip cooking on the barbeque and finding no other garnish at hand scooped up a handfull of sand and scattered it with a great flourish all over the beefburgers!
Thanks Pip, just what we all wanted.
The picture of Pip’s daughter Jojo is the only photo I could find from this holiday
What a lovely story. I guess it must have been great to get away from the music for a few days.