Kennedy - The Tent, the Bucket and Me

About the Author

Emma Kennedy is an actress and writer who has appeared in many award-winning comedy shows including Goodness Gracious Me and The Smoking Room. In 2003 she won the Comedy Lounge Best Actress Award for her role in Bill Shakespeares Italian Job and in 2005 won the British Television Advertising Craft Award for Best Actress. She has been writing for TV and radio for over a decade and has won Sony Awards for the Sunday Format and The Now Show. Her first book was How to Bring Up Your Parents and her website is www.emmakennedy.net.

About the Book

Growing up in the Seventies, we were on the brink of the modern age. But despite a brave new world of Casio hand-held calculators and digital watches, one thing remained the same: the family holiday. For the Seventies child, summer holidays didnt mean the joy of CentreParcs or the sophistication of a Tuscan villa. They meant being crammed into a car with Grandma and heading to the coast. With just a tent for a home and a bucket for the necessities, we would set off on new adventures each year stoically resolving to enjoy ourselves.

For Emma Kennedy, and her mum and dad, disaster always came along for the ride no matter where they went. Whether it was swept away by a force ten gale on the Welsh coast or suffering copious amounts of food poisoning on a brave trip to the south of France, family holidays always left them battered and bruised.

But they never gave up. Emmas memoir, The Tent, the Bucket and Me, is a painfully funny reminder of just what it was like to spend your summer holidays cold, damp but with sand between your toes.

For Midge, who kept me going

My Familys Disastrous Attempts to go Camping in the 70s

EMMA KENNEDY

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN 9781446407776
Version 1.0

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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright Emma Kennedy 2009

Emma Kennedy has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Ebury Press in 2009
This edition published 2010

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780091926793

The idea for this book came about when my mother asked me, about two years ago, whether I would like to go on holiday with her and my dad. I refused immediately, swearing that I would never go on holiday with them again. That might seem harsh, but my experience of holidays as a child in the seventies was so dogged with ill luck, it beggars belief. It put me off camping for life.

As we laughed about the dreadful things that happened to us, it struck me that I wanted to write these stories down. And so I began the long process of interviewing my parents about our family holidays. I was amazed by how much we were collectively able to remember: my father had an extraordinary memory for tiny details, my mother for conversations, and the more we talked about our experiences, the more we were able to recall.

Are you having to make anything up? Thats the question I have been asked repeatedly since starting this book.

My reply has always been the same: Sadly not. In fact, I wish I had.

Everything you are about to read happened. Some names and place names have been changed (because my mother made me), but thats it. I hope you enjoy the book. And that all your holidays are nothing like ours.

Emma Kennedy

in which the universe throws down the gauntlet

I was conceived amidst the smell of damp canvas on stony ground. My life had clattered into the universe on a honeymoon between two people who had no business being married. My parents consummated their happy day on a campsite in Corby. I was unplanned. My life had begun in a tent.

If we were living in Ancient Greece the Fates would have thrown their arms up in horror. Was my destiny to be forever entwined with guy ropes, thick, rusty zips and a pervading aroma of mildew? Or would I, like the heroes before me, be able to surmount the dreadful cards Id been dealt? If I embarked on an eternal holiday-based struggle, then one day, if the Gods gave me the thumbs up, I might reach the heady peaks of staying in a caravan with a toilet that actually flushed. Imagine that. But I had a long way to go before I reached those blessed shores. My tent trials were only just beginning.

The wedding of my parents had caused something of a stir in the small Welsh mining village of Treherbert. Sitting at the top of the Rhondda valley, the village was typical of the area. Mining was its beating heart, and small, tight terraces squashed themselves into knots at the base of the mountains. Waless major industry was on its last legs but that was the furthest thing from anyones mind on a sunny day in August 1966. England had just won the World Cup and one of Treherberts favourite sons had returned to get married and show off his new bride. It should have been a day of joyous celebrations. But instead, the happy couple was greeted with incredulous stares. The bride was dressed in black. And no one knew why.

Is it because shes English? my aunt Gwennie had asked, in a whisper.

Is it true shes a feminist? mumbled a neighbour, standing on a flagstone step to get a better look, a suggestion that was beaten down with a flurry of hand gestures and urgent shushing.

The small crowd gathered outside my grandmothers house couldnt believe their eyes. Theyd already thrown confetti at the wrong person, my mothers younger sister Phyllis, who had come dressed in white and was now standing, flicking tiny bits of paper off herself, and looking mortified. My mother, who only thirty minutes previously had been declaring that she wasnt going to get married, was wearing a huge, black Spanish mantilla and looking the perfect picture of misery.

Why cant you be normal! Phyllis had wailed in an upstairs bedroom. This is SO embarrassing!

Phyllis! snapped my mother, Brenda, who was in no mood for platitudes. I am NOT getting dressed in white! I will not bow to the patriarchal expectations of society. I am wearing black in solidarity for all womens suffering at the hands of men.

Then why are you even GETTING married? cried her sister.

All right then, declared my mother suddenly. Youre right. Im not going through with it! Thats it! Weddings off!

But Ive got dressed now, whined her sister. And Margaret Evans told me if you didnt marry Tony then she would. And she sleeps with firemen.

Fuck her then, replied my mother. And that was that.

My mother stood, dressed in her black outfit, to a deafening silence that was only broken when my fathers brother-in-law Roy came out to do the Scramble, a valley tradition where pennies are thrown into the street for children to collect. As the children scurried around her, jostling for coins, my mother began the short walk to the Welsh Baptist chapel where she would be wed, cheered on by nothing but audible gasps. She had refused flowers and had no one to walk her up the aisle. She was nothing if not determined.