Historically, the Brits have "done the beach" in a quintessentially idiosyncratic and eccentric way. Socks with sandals. A handkerchief knotted at each corner and worn on the head. Flasks of tea. Diverse contraptions to combat the weather (which is, after all, some excuse for eccentricity). Punch and Judy shows. Donkeys. Burying members of your family in the sand. Cunning inventions to allow, with considerable contortions, changing on the beach. And huts - the rows of gaudily painted but weather-beaten, salt-water-saturated wooden boxes with roofs, rentable for the summer holiday and now, at least in the most desirable spots, purchasable at some considerable cost. The seaside. Oh, and the saucy postcards, the most famous exponent of which was Donald McGill around the 1930s; the genre routinely featured large ladies.
It is, of course partly the weather, but the Brits have always also had a reluctance to disrobe at the beach. This postcard shows apparently bright blue skies and a balmy beach scene - but notice that the majority of people are fully clothed, at least one apparently wearing a tie. This is, I fear, not unusual - at least in the not-too-distant past. Note also the huts in this scene.
I have just come into possession of a book of photographs of the British seaside, mainly from the 1970s and 1980s, and it is an extraordinarily affectionate work documenting a social environment that is all too easy to mock. You laugh with the subjects, not at them. The cover of Writing in the Sand is at the head of this post; it's by a Finnish photographer, Sirrka-Liisa Konttinen, who has lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the northeast coast of England since the late 1960s. The image below is of where many of the photographs were taken, Whitley (pronounced "wittly") Bay, once a popular holiday destination, now rather past its prime. Wikipedia declares that it "boasts a fine stretch of beach of golden sand" but that it is "now widely seen as a dormitory town for Newcastle."
Now oddly, I have a connection with Whitley Bay which is another reason for my delight with this volume, although the photographs are several decades on from my own times there. I had a second cousin - probably still have, but we have lost touch - named Delny, and, as a very young lad my family would holiday at Whitley Bay with her and her family. I remember her fondly. The photograph below is, I believe, of yours truly at Whitley Bay, sporting some dashing swim-wear on the golden sands.
For the rest, I will simply reproduce some of Konttinen's images since they speak for themselves - there are some stunning photographs of sand, but the majority are evocative studies of people. All are clearly copyright of the photographer, but I hope that she will forgive me for using them to bring her work, I hope, to more people's attention. My favourite image I save for the last.
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