It was the hottest May in a century. Everything wilted – especially the human beings.
Our town smelt of melted tarmac and uncollected bins as the council lorries kept overheating. I’d been banished to Craven Sands ostensibly to avoid my younger siblings’ chicken pox: I was waiting for a medical to join the Army.‘Go and remind Aunty Lottie that we still exist,’ said Mother who had fallen out with her sister years before. ‘She’s no children and that cafe must be worth something- unlike us.’Having nothing else to do and fed up with plastering poxy kids with calamine lotion, I booked a coach to London Victoria and a deliciously slow train to South Devon.Craven Sands felt like another planet.It was popular with retired people who liked gin, flirting and paddling according to my Aunt who wore a floral bandana and leather flip-flops.‘Can you make pancakes?’ she said.‘Of course, ‘I replied. ‘I’m the eldest of five.’‘Here’s an apron then,’ she said, so I began.
