WORKING for a school means management gets a lot of holidays.
Which is great. But now that I work from home, in her mind this means I am on perpetual holiday.
So I’m under continuous pressure to take her ‘away somewhere’ when she gets her breaks, whereas before I could claim, not that truthfully, that my boss urgently needed me in the office.
Last month was half-term and she tracked down an affordable cottage in the Devon seaside village of Ilfracombe, which had the added advantage of accepting dogs – something we now have to factor in.
Despite my outward indifference, I was looking forward to it mainly because I have discovered that most holiday cottages are far bigger than our actual house.
Anyway, I have given up hoping that any English beach haven will come even vaguely close in comparison to a South African seaside town.
English resorts are usually quite drab as they are all working villages, and until tourism started booming some years ago, most were very poor.
So you get council flats overlooking a beach that is probably prime real estate today, but a blue-collar hub not so long ago.
If you go out of the towns you will see splendid villas like you do in, say, Umdloti – the South African resort I am familiar with – but most of the town centres are pretty dowdy.
However, the harbours are always interesting as they are still active fishing docks and I love watching the trawlers offloading on the high tide.
That’s another thing that intrigues me as I come from a sailing family.
If you own a yacht in England, you only have a few hours a day when you can get in and out of port.
The tidal range is so huge that low tides are mud flats that stretch out to sea for up to a kilometre.
So if you’re out in a storm and the tide is wrong, your crew will be chundering over the side.
But one thing I do love about English seaside resorts is the fantastic history. I guess that goes for the whole country, but these villages really are unique.
For example, we went to a restaurant called ‘Alfie and the Kaiser’, and when I asked the waitress why such a weird name, she gave me a pamphlet outlining the story.
Beach brawl
Apparently, the history books have got it all wrong. The First World War did not start in June 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and Kaiser Bill invaded much of mainland Europe.
Not at all. Instead, it’s because a beach attendant called Alfie Price gave Kaiser Bill a bloody nose during a beach brawl in 1878.
According to reports at the time, the 19-year-old future Kaiser, then Prince Wilhelm, was on holiday in Ilfracombe and, apparently bored, started throwing stones at a row of Victorian beach huts which belonged to Alfie’s father.
Alfie, who was only 16, told the imminent German Emperor to cease and desist.
The Prince then barked the hipster’s favourite phrase: ‘Do you know who I am?’
Alfie replied: ‘I don’t care a dash who you are. Stop chucking stones or it will be the worse for you.’ (That’s taken verbatim from the historical record – and it’s highly unlikely that Alfie did not recognise the celebrity Prince as Wilhelm was also Queen Victoria’s grandson.)
Wilhelm, who had a bad left arm but had been professionally coached in boxing, punched Alfie in the face, knocking him onto the sand.
Alfie immediately got up and floored the aspiring Kaiser with a single punch, bloodying his nose.
The resulting brawl lasted 20 minutes, and even though Prince Bill was three years older than the peasant teenager, he came off worst and was rescued by members of the royal entourage.
Apparently, from that day on the Kaiser nurtured a hatred for the English, but for obvious ego reasons didn’t mention the brawl.
Which apparently is why history books got the real reason for the start of the Great War all wrong.
Or so they say, down on the beaches of Devon.
