Last updated on 21/10/2024
Prologue to my novel The Road to Ancona.
See the page listing the chapters.
In early January 1966, Michael staggered out of the travel agents, in his home town, in the Midlands, with an armful of holiday brochures. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for; he had never been abroad before. His best friend, Richard, once went on a school camping trip to Switzerland; it was Richard who talked him into the idea of going on a package holiday. Michael would not have bothered if it had been left up to him. Both of them had finished school last year; they now had jobs and were both earning money for the first time and wanted to get out of their claustrophobic Midlands town and see the world. This was at a time when going on holidays abroad was just beginning to take off. Tour operators were being formed and the holiday industry was booming, as people’s incomes allowed them to choose to go abroad rather than taking their vacations in Skegness, Blackpool, Wales or Morecambe. New jet aircraft were being chartered to cater for the increasing traffic and, in the continental resorts, hotels were being built, in response to the growing demand for beds.
When Michael visited the small branch office of the travel agents, he saw large piles of brochures stacked all over the shop and marvelled at how so much paper had been printed. All the brochures came out at the same time, in those days, and people had to get their holidays booked as soon as they were delivered because most of the popular choices would be sold out within a couple of weeks. As soon as the brochures arrived people turned up to book; they would choose their resort, their departure dates and then hurry back to the travel agents anxious to know if their choices were still available. By the end of January, most of the popular package deals had gone.
Michael was enthralled by the whole idea – going to a country in Europe, flying in an aeroplane and staying in a hotel – three things he (and his parents) had never done before. In his small world, he knew of foreign countries only through what he had seen on the television and at the cinema. The teenager had led a sheltered life in a family whose aspirations were decidedly limited. It would be no use, he thought, asking his parents if they were interested in going on a package holiday. They never went on holiday – anywhere – and so, neither had he.
During the long winter nights of early January, the boys poured over brochures. The coloured pictures of beaches, dazzling hotels and people in bathing costumes excited the boys’ interest, evoking images of glamour and romance. The descriptions of the resorts made them seem like wonderful places. The travel industry had recently started to offer ‘cheap’ packaged holidays and now a wide variety of tour operators were producing these enticing, multi-coloured brochures. On the television, adverts were broadcast every night showing scenes of people on holiday in Spain and Italy. In the cinemas too, advertisements were shown, before the first film came on, extolling the virtues of continental holidays. A lot of people were becoming excited by the glossy, colourful images that bombarded them daily and the prospect of going abroad, they realised, was within their grasp.
People in England became excited by the wonderful world of travel and the idea of taking their summer holidays in Europe. The people who became most excited by this were the young; the teenagers who had grown up with holidays by the sea in the English resorts. Added to the massive amount of advertising by the booming travel industry, was the growth of unfamiliar foods in the supermarkets: spaghetti, pizza, olive oil, tomato sauces, garlic and a variety of other food products were beginning to line the shelves in the shops and ordinary people were beginning to drink wine, a beverage that was previously regarded as being the preserve of the wealthy.
Michael was sixteen and he had rarely been outside his home town for more than a few days. Once, he went to stay with an aunt and uncle for a week, in a village a few miles away from where he lived with his parents. For him, that was a huge adventure. He had never flown in an aeroplane before. He had never stayed in a hotel. He did however have a fascination with foreign countries and avidly watched television programmes about travel. His background was fairly impoverished and had been very sheltered. His father worked as an electrical fitter and his mother was waitress. They rarely went out in the evenings and so their earnings, although meagre, allowed them to make ends meet, especially since they would never spend money on ‘fripperies’ like holidays. So now Michael had left school and was earning a little money for himself; he felt grown up, no longer a school boy who had to ask his parents for pocket money. Now, he was independent, had his own income, and could make choices for himself. His friend Richard was in the same position and had passed his exams for the Civil Service and got himself a very respectable position, in the local Tax Office, as a filing clerk.
The two boys spent hours arguing over which resort they should go to. Several countries were on offer in the budget package brochures, although more than half of the pages, of the more popular tour operators, were devoted to Spain and Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and even Tunisia were included. Even when they had chosen a country – Italy – they had the problem of choosing a resort. They were bewildered and confused by the range of options on offer.
‘Let’s stay in Rimini,’ Richard suggested, ‘it’s a big resort and there will be lots of people there’.
Michael was not convinced. ‘Yes but it might be too big; we might just get lost in it. Surely, if we stayed in one of the smaller resorts it would be more interesting and it would be easier to find our way around.’
‘Well, if we stayed in a smaller resort near to Rimini, we could always go into town if we wanted to,’ Richard argued.
‘It’s a good idea; that way we get the best of both worlds. The prices for the smaller resorts are a lot less than in Rimini. What’s a pensioné?,’ Michael wanted to know, having seen the word in his brochure.
‘It’s just a small hotel; like our guest houses,’ Richard replied.
‘It wouldn’t be like an English guest house, though, would it? Look, this one has got balconies for every room and it’s newly built.’
Richard seemed to know what he was talking about. He said, ‘No. I think the small hotels in Italy are totally different; they have bars and even swimming pools. Look at this, it says Cattolica is the smallest of the three resorts on the Adriatic Riviera. It has an intimate air. The beach, although not quite as wide, is more than adequate. This resort is a little less sophisticated than her sisters but there is nothing old-fashioned about her. Now, doesn’t that sound about right for us?’
‘What’s a Riviera?, Michael asked.
Finally, after many hours of discussion they chose the package they wanted: Tour Number AR161 in the Galaxy Tours brochure. The destination was the little town of Cattolica, a few miles south of Rimini on the Adriatic Riviera. Neither of them had ever heard of the resort before but it seemed like it would be the perfect place to spend their holiday. The price was right and the description and coloured photos offered by the brochure made it seem like an exotic Shangri-La. They chose a twin bedded room at the pensioné Britannica. At least, that was what the brochure called it. The price included breakfast and dinner at the hotel. There was no swimming pool but the building was only two minute’s walk from the beach. There were plenty of full-colour photos of the wide sandy beach along which sun loungers and parasols had been arranged in neat rows. The dates they wanted were available – the last two weeks in July. Both of them thought they could get these dates if they booked them in advance. The tour included flights to and from England and Michael was particularly keen on being able to fly rather than crossing the channel in a ferry and then having to go on a long coach trip.
In the middle of January, the two boys went to the travel agency and booked their holiday. Richard paid the deposit for both of them; his granddad had given him some money to help him do this. He agreed to let Michael pay him back each week when his wages came in. They went home with their booking confirmation sheets. What weighed on Michael’s mind was the cost of the whole thing: £39/10/- each, less deposit. His first pay packet in his new job gave him just £4/12/4d, after tax and national insurance had been deducted. After he had paid his weekly board to his parents, there was little left to play with. He would have to save hard if he was going to have enough money to pay the balance that was due before they left. And he had to pay Richard back for the deposit. He hoped his parents might lend him some money if he was short.
When Michael arrived home he told his parents of his plans to go on holiday and how much it would cost. His mother said, ‘I don’t know why you want to spend all that money going abroad when there are much cheaper holidays over here. You could go to Morecambe for two weeks for half that amount of money.’
At least she seemed to understand her son’s desire to go on holiday, now that he had a job and could earn the money to pay for it. ‘Well I’m glad you are going on a group holiday with a lot of other people who can look after you. I would be worried sick if you went on your own,’ his mother said.
‘There’s really nothing to worry about mum; the holiday is run by a big company and everything is arranged in advance. There will be a tour guide there to look after us and most of the people in the group will be grown-ups.’
When the boys were at the travel agents booking their holiday, the counter clerk had gone to some lengths to persuade them to take a holiday in Spain. He did his best to convince them that Spain was the most popular choice for British holiday-makers and that the resorts there were far better equipped than those in Italy. The boys had spent a long time discussing which country they wanted to visit but Michael was interested only in Italy. He knew little of Spanish history and regarded the seaside destinations of the Costa Blanca as being little better than foreign versions of Blackpool or Margate. For Richard, Italy represented something that was cool, beat, stylish and more in keeping with what teenagers wanted, rather than the boring resorts of Spain which were the favoured choices of older people with young children. Even so, there was a hint of glamour about Spain; in had a certain appeal that seemed lacking in Italy, he felt there was a certain romance to the culture and life style and the way it had been organised to suit the tastes of English people. Italy, on the other hand, had a more impressive history, so Michael thought, and that is what tipped the balance for him. The Italian package offered a variety of excursions, including one to Rome. Michael was an avid reader of history books (which he took out from his local public library) and had seen many documentaries on the television about the history of the Roman empire. Italy had an irresistible lure for him that he could not find in Spain.
Months of waiting followed. Their flight was not until July, so they had plenty of time to dream about the holiday. Both of them talked about it, whenever they met. They would suggest to each other what might happen, who they might meet, what adventures might befall them … and, when Michael was asleep, he had strange dreams about being in a hotel, swimming in a blue sea beside a beach with golden sands, eating unfamiliar food and visiting places that were completely different to the dull, obscurity of his home town. Richard would talk constantly about girls and being free of the constraints of adults, of drinking alcohol, having fun, dancing and staying up long into the night. This was not the kind of lifestyle offered by their well-ordered Midlands town. In their imaginations, being on holiday meant letting go of the constraints and routines of their lives as young workers in a respectable community.
Michael spent his solitary moments thinking about what a holiday was all about. ‘Why do people go on holiday?,’ he would ask himself, in his periods of contemplation – which were many. Holidays were not part of what his family did. When his parents needed to get rid of him for a while, his mother shipped him off to her sister’s place in the countryside. At the age of 16 he really had no idea what a holiday was. It was an activity that other people did; something he had seen on the television or read about in magazines but to him and his family it was not something that had interested them. To him, the trip to Italy would be as alien as going on a spaceship to Mars. Mentally, he needed to prepare himself for the experience and hence the long hours of daydreaming, trying to work out, in his own mind, what might happen and how he would react to it. He tried to work out how he would feel about being hundreds of miles from home in a foreign country with adults who were complete strangers to him. Food would be provided that he had never tasted before; would he enjoy eating it? Would he be able to sleep in a bed in a hotel? Would he cope with the heat? What would it be like going to the toilet?
There were a lot of questions going through Michael’s mind and he found it difficult to answer them. It was reassuring that his friend Richard would be with him. If he needed help and comfort, Richard would be there to provide it, he thought. Richard was his best friend; the one person outside of the microcosm of his family who he knew well and could depend on. Most importantly of all, Richard was the same age and came from the same background. Having been to the same school together, both of them were on the same wavelength. More or less. While Michael was dreaming about the mysteries of Roman civilisation, Richard was milking the fact that he was going on a continental holiday. He would boast to his friends that he was being allowed to go on a holiday without his parents. Richard became the centre of attention in the office and at social events. He would babble away prolifically about how modern he was and how he had a penchant for European travel. Exaggeration was something that Richard indulged in with an all-consuming gratification. He was, in many ways, a typical sixties teenager. His main preoccupations in life were fashion, money and sex. Not necessarily in that order but mostly they were his principle motivations in life. He was not particularly into music but he wanted people to think that he was. He would often mention that he owned his own record player and would spend time in record shops browsing the vast array of singles; not because he was that interested in buying them or even listening to them but mainly because he wanted his friends to see him doing it. With Richard, appearances were everything.
As May turned into June their sense of excitement and anticipation grew. Michael talked about it constantly, especially with his parents, who kept asking questions about this and that and what would happen if … to which he would usually make up replies that were based more on fantasy than fact. Michael paid the balance due on his booking; he had saved really hard but his parents lent him some money to help him out and they waived the rent and board they suggested he should pay. He repaid the deposit he owed to Richard. His parents were concerned that he should not get into debt with other people, even though they did not know Richard’s parents that well. They could not understand why Michael should want to go abroad; they frequently commented it would be much easier and cheaper if he went to an English resort for two weeks. In July the boys counted down the days until the great moment arrived – the day on which they left their home town and headed to Euston station in readiness for the greatest experience of their lives.