"Growing up in the Black Country (a heavily industrialised area, near to but not part of Birmingham in the English Midlands, for those not familiar!), in a family of very modest means, our nearest seaside resort for holidays was Aberystwyth. Also, my mother had always spent her family holidays there, (as her uncle had been the Station Master at Aberystwyth) and, during my childhood, we also had our holidays there - one week a year! We loved it - it seemed a long journey to small children (sometimes it still does, to us adults!) but, as with all repeat holiday destinations, it was familiar and much beloved.

We used to stay, every time, in a boarding house in Trinity Road. Was it with Mrs Lloyd? Or was it Mrs Jones? Or Mrs Lloyd-Jones? I really can't be sure after nearly fifty years but those names came instantly to mind so maybe! We were a varied party, usually my mother, father, older brother and myself but occasionally bringing along a grandfather or a friend of me or my brother, brought along to witness for themselves the wonders of Aberystwyth.

Usually we came by coach (or sharra, short for charabanc, as we Black Country folk said it), this being in the days before we had a car, from Digbeth Coach Station in Birmingham, and maybe once or twice by train. It wasn't unusual, in those days, to go to the same place each year - my cousin always went to what her family considered the (then) slightly upmarket destination of Weston-super-Mare. Abroad for holidays was practically unheard of and only for the very rich, very posh or very adventurous. Even a week in Aberystwyth would have been a luxury for many working class families.

Each year, in the late afternoon or early on the first evening, after settling in, unpacking, exchanging greetings and catching up with all the happenings since the last visit, we children would badger the adults to "go and see the sea", though we would have glimpsed it from the road on the way in to the town. So we would all, by tradition, stroll out, turning left out of Trinity Road, troop along to the station and then turn right and walk through to the sea front, along a street of different and fascinating shops which included, I can clearly remember, Boots the Chemist on one corner on the right about half or two thirds of the way along - at one early stage still advertising a lending library upstairs! I think we even went in on one wet holiday - lots of red and green bound books without dustjackets, not very inspiring.

Emerging on to the promenade that first evening was always a special thrill - it meant we really had arrived and there were the familiar and eagerly anticipated sights - the houses and hotels along the front, the shelters occupied by little old ladies, the pier, the Old College, the Castle behind, Plynlimon with what was to me the mysterious monument, the paddling pool, Constitution Hill with that intriguing little railway, the gulls, the pebbles. And every year, to my exasperation as I grew older and more critical of my elders, my mother would stand by the seafront railings and inhale great lungs full of sea air and cry "Oh, smell that sea air - the sea never smells as good anywhere else as it does here - it reminds me of my childhood holidays". As if the air could really smell different here!

We shopped in the local shops for our food, as for some strange reason, we supplied the food and our landlady cooked it! Perhaps this was a hangover from the war years of rationing - after all this was in the 1950s, not so long after the war. I vividly remember a little bakers, in a street running off Terrace Road and uphill a little way, perhaps Corporation Street or Eastgate. Did it have a Hovis loaf sign hanging outside? Certainly, it sold tiny Hovis loaves, with Hovis lettered along the side, which my brother and I bought most days on our way to the beach and devoured with great relish, saving a few crumbs to feed the seagulls on the front or near the harbour. To this day, I remember those tiny Hovises with great affection - can almost taste them!"

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