The simple things

You don't need fun fairs, theme parks or jet skis to enjoy a seaside holiday, just a bit of warm sunny weather. It was good to see young and old having fun together here at Mudeford in Dorset today. Crabbing seemed to be the most popular pastime. We'd visited my brother and sister-in-law who moved down to the south coast in the spring.

The old sibling rivalry never goes away. He's older than me so when we were growing up he had the role of basher, me the bashee. Things haven't changed so much so it wasn't long before the banter started. When he told me he had a "wireless shower" in his new house I thought it amusing. Aren't all showers wireless? Ours is. He scored a good point back when he told me I looked like Bill Oddie. It's been said before, and no, I don't, but I can see where people are coming from on that.

Most childish of all, however was in the cafe when he bought us some drinks and the girl behind the counter gave him 95p change in 5p coins. Did I have a 5p, he asked, the plan being to give her the change back for a pound? No, I said, knowing that having 95p in 5p coins weighing down his pocket would irritate the hell out of him. It did, and once again I became the bashee. Don't we ever grow out of this?

In this morning's Daily Telegraph it says the new Marmite ads have been upsetting animal lovers. Hadn't seen them but have now. I love parody and this one is brilliant at the way it homes in on reality TV techniques and domestic gush over animals. There's a whole series on line.

Responding to some of the comments below and my own in the first par and heading, I'm wondering how representative of the holiday this picture is? It seems to me to reflect a kind of Ladybird book ideal - how some of us might like to see ourselves on holiday. It's also very middle class. The kids are really well turned out, well behaved, not squabbling, and mum and grandad are involved, very much the nuclear family. I didn't do it consciously but I think I homed in on the group because it represented a sort of belief system, that this is how I remember seaside life from my childhood. But is it the truth? Not everywhere. It's a truth. Is it representative? Well around this area and the nearby beach I think it was. Families were enjoying very simple things, often around their beloved beach huts. It's a "sand-between-the-toes" kind of a place. But it's not representative, for example, of the kind of multiculturalism you see in London. It was almost as if some kind of cultural self-selection was going on.

I would love to have done a cultural survey. At a guess I 'd say that a sample of this beach crowd would have found a much higher than average number of conservative voters, older people and house-owners than you would find in the inner cities. It's more England as it was than England as it is but, as it shows, it's England as you can still find it in parts. Is it better than the England of the inner cities? Not at all. You can take your camera and find the simple life there too. But I think it does show a kind of Darwinist natural selection of sorts, people exercising their preferences. Will this lot survive in the long run? Probably not. Oh dear, I just took a snap and this is it where it takes me. Sorry about that.