Oh yes, that was a song by Cliff Richard and The Shadows. So sweet, so straightforward, so 1963, but not forgotten and out there on YouTube.
And Cliff Richard (backstory, a confession: I had a small girlish crush on him, which I exaggerated to my dorm mates, my greater crush was on bad boy Elvis, less acceptable in English girl’s 1960s boarding school.) But Cliff R still has a fan following, I see it out there on Facebook – ya, I Follow – and he has done fine – now he is Sir Cliff, made a Knight Bachelor of the British Empire by the late Queen. Apparently for his work and donations to charity rather than his music. But he was an important UK musician sandwiched between Elvis and the Beatles. And his backup group The Shadows had a prestigious career beyond Sir Cliff.
Enough of all that, let me get to the nostalgia of a summer holiday! This does bring me back to the song, as We’re all going on a summer holiday was a movie: 4 bus mechanics – Cliff being one – on a dismal rainy English summer day get the idea of asking for a London Transport double-decker bus to adapt for a trip to the south of France for a summer holiday:
`We`re going where the sun shines brightly. We`re going where the sea is blue. `
They actually end up in Greece having collected various dolly-birds along the way (Brit 1960s speak for girls, sorry, so not PC)
This summer this tune kept buzzing around my head as I holidayed in Nova Scotia. I realized that I had forgotten and neglected the pure pleasure of a summer holiday: of sitting on a beach, swimming in the sea and frolicking in the waves and come evening wandering along the seafront, checking out a restaurant for supper. Just delightful and not so complicated. Not even ‘abroad’ no passport or other currencies (yes Nova Scotia is a few thousand km to the east)
How come this was such a revelation? Did I really think our family summer trips camping or timeshare where I coordinated the route, and food, and negotiated the various differences of opinions and ideas as to the activities, was a summer holiday? That`s not a summer holiday, that`s a full-on managerial and domestic assignment.
But this summer with a couple of friends and later with my guy, I got to sit on the beach and people watch and swim around. My greatest challenge was changing out of a wet sandy swimsuit, then dinner – seafood – yeah and, being Nova Scotia, live music. Now that`s more like it!