The Pride of England

Thanks for all your lovely comments around my mum's 80th and her entry into the world of apps on the iPad. She has already embraced it with some considerable enthusiasm. I think she is going to be fine.

My sister lives close by, so after popping around for a visit to catch up with her and two of my nieces, mum and I caught the bus into Bournemouth and went on a bit of a nostalgia trip. I honestly can't remember the last time I'd been down to the seafront here and taken a walk along the pier. It was on a holiday here almost 50 years ago that my parents decided that this was the area where they wanted to bring up their children. A few years later we moved from South London to near Christchurch. I suspect I'd have grown up to be a very different person if we'd stayed in the city and I'd not had the opportunity to explore the coast and the countryside as I did, and enjoy that sense of freedom as a kid.

The sun came out in the afternoon and there were thousands of people out on the beach. I've always been one to avoid crowds and, when it comes to the coast, I will walk a long way to seek out a secluded spot, as far from other people as possible. On the beaches of England, however, people seem to love to congregate. It's a long tradition and one that seems barely unchanged in this age of technology. Kids this afternoon were doing what kids have done for a hundred years, like paddling and building sandcastles. Adults were doing what adults have done for a hundred years, like paddling and sunning themselves in deckchairs. There is a kind of timeless and endearing tackiness to the whole affair.

I love the way people mark out their territory with wind-breaks and deck-chairs and towels. This guy had a prime spot and, judging by the number of cans in his garbage bag, I can only imagine that he'd been camped out here for most of the day. But I don't post this photograph to point fun. I don't want to judge. I present it as a homage to a very real kind of Englishness, one which is totally alien to me but one which is at least honest. There is not a lot of pretension here. I'm trying to respect this guy's unashamed pride in his country, declared with a tattoo on his chest. I'm a little disturbed, though, by how difficult that's proving to be. That's me being honest.