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the road.
    He still had all his old cycling and camping equipment, but again had to borrow a framed rucksack; his shorts were a bit tight, but were good enough. He had to give his bicycle a good service as it was getting a bit rusty, although the plastic wood handle grips were as good as ever.
    He pored over maps to see where he might go, first of all Blackpool, of course, to see his grandma.
    In the couple of weeks he had to prepare for his trip there was a quietness in the house he had never experienced before. His parents hardly spoke, it was as if they were almost frightened of each other.
    Before it had been the dominant father and the shrewish housewife, and now it was the working father and the actress wife.
    Although they hardly spoke it wasn’t because there was animosity between them, there was even a relaxed atmosphere. It was quite eerie.
    Having collected all his stuff together, Andy set off for Blackpool. It took him a good four days again and was just as hard as it had been the last time, just good old Grandma and her high teas with brawn, pressed tongue, potted shrimps, trifle and salad.
    He stayed for a week. At the end of the promenade at Squires Gate, he spotted a boy of his own age with a rugby ball, struck up a friendship and they ran up and down the sands day after day throwing the ball to each other, side stepping imaginary opponents and scoring innumerably unopposed tries. He liked staying with his grandma and grandpa Butcher, his mother’s parents. They were said to be as different as chalk and cheese. Andy felt that this was a mistake, and that the saying itself was a mistake. There was many a piece of cheese he had eaten that was almost indistinguishable from chalk, particularly from his mother’s larder. To say his mother was frugal was an understatement, nothing edible was ever thrown away. There would be about six resident different dishes with gravy in that might become useful, old mashed potato that could easily be fried up and several jams that only needed the mould scooping off the top to be all right.
    Andy himself had once written on the blackboard quite legibly with something hard, which on full examination turned out to be an old piece of cheese.
    It was much safer to say his grandparents were very different. They had retired to Blackpool from Sheffield, fulfilling a dream of spending their last days in a bungalow near the sea.
    Andy’s grandfather had been in banking. He was always referred to as an ex bank manager, but he probably had only been a senior clerk, whereas grandma Butcher had been the daughter of a bank manager and always felt slightly superior towards her husband.
    In Sheffield they had belonged to everything, the church, the Mothers’ Union, the bowling club, the choir, and in younger years the operatic society. His grandfather had been treasurer of a dozen clubs or societies. They could not walk down any street in the town without bumping into at least half a dozen people they knew.
    They were given a huge retirement party by friends and business associates, with even the mayor attending, and everyone envying them escaping from the soot and grime of an industrial town to Blackpool and the seaside, and it was not just Blackpool ordinary, they were going to, it was South Shore, Blackpool, and if you put down Squires Gate on a letter addressed to them instead of South Shore, it would reach them and this was almost on a par with living at Lytham St Anne’s.
    They might as well have moved to Siberia.
    From being people of importance in Sheffield, they became just an old couple living in a bungalow at Blackpool. Living off the crumbs of visits by their children and grandchildren.
    They were always hospitable, and having the family evacuated to stay with them as evacuees during the early part of the war was one of those strange bonuses that wartime sometimes throws up.
    One of Andy’s happiest pre-war memories was when convalescing after an appendix