Holiday Directions

I had lunch in Dunoon with a friend who had come across the Clyde and I walked back to the ferry with him before returning to my office.

When I passed this sign on the front by the Queen's Hall I was reminded very forcibly of the child in Robin Jenkins' novel "The Changeling" who is taken to the fictional "Towellen" for a holiday with eventual tragic results.

I suppose that association is because the sign seems to be from another era yet looking at it more closely much of what was on offer to those who came "doon the watter" for generations remains available, though perhaps in a different form ( the plural "Cinemas" needs a letter lopped off for a start).

And those things that don't - the "Bathing Lido" for example - have been rather cleverly faded out. Gone, certainly, but not entirely forgotten.

A bit like my own childhood memories of growing up in a very similar seaside resort, Troon, which had a wonderful open air pool where I learned to swim and whose top sunbathing deck with its asphalt surface ( sometimes uncomfortably hot to the touch of bare young feet ) and its faint smell of seaweed always springs to mind when I see the word "lido"!