Whatever next? by Hopkins Billy 1928-

Author:Hopkins, Billy, 1928-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hopkins, Billy, 1928- -- Fiction, Hopkins, Billy, 1928-, Retired teachers -- England -- Manchester -- Fiction, Manners and customs, Retired teachers, Manchester (England) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction, England -- Manchester
ISBN: 0755336410
Publisher: London : Headline
Published: 2007-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside

‘Where do we go from here?’ Laura had asked.

Southport was the answer and it came from Laura’s younger sister, Katie, who was a nurse at the local hospital there. She had gone to live there with her husband, Stuart, after their grown-up son, Robert, had gone to work as a teacher in Barcelona. Billy and Laura had visited Southport several times and had come to love the place. When they expressed an interest in moving to the area, Katie began house hunting for a smaller and less expensive house for them. Apart from anything else, the one in Manchester with its six bedrooms had become too big for two people. The resort was located on the Lancashire coast about twenty-five miles north of Liverpool and was popular with the citizens of that city because of its proximity. It was popular also with other people from the north-west because it had a carefully cultivated reputation for gentility, offering a sedate atmosphere as a holiday resort and a retirement town, as evidenced by the number of homes with names like ‘Dunroamin’,‘Rose Cottage’ and ‘Home At Last’. Generally speaking, it was seen as less flashy than rival Blackpool with its rumbustious pleasure beach and its brash Golden Mile. One wag had described Southport as ‘Blackpool with O levels’ and it was

the butt of many jokes about the sea being a long way out.

‘I saw the sea once at Southport,’ said a lugubrious comedian as an opening to his act. ‘It’s in the Guinness Book of Records. And it’s such a lifeless place, they don’t bury the dead. They stand ’em up in bus shelters with a bingo ticket in their ’and.’

All nonsense of course, since it was a beautiful town and an attractive shopping and recreation centre for east Lancashire. And it may have been their imagination, but the weather seemed better, the skies bluer and more open. It was definitely cleaner and less congested than dear mucky old Manchester.

Billy and Laura made the forty-mile trip several times to inspect various houses but none was quite what they were looking for. One had excellent accommodation but backed onto a busy main road; one turned out to have dry rot, another serious subsidence.

Then one day Katie phoned, all excited. ‘I’ve found the perfect house for you,’ she said. ‘It’s a corner house set back from the main road and the side entrance is on a quiet avenue lined with trees. It has three large bedrooms, two entertainment rooms, beautiful gardens, double garage suitable for a car and a workshop.’

They drove over to look at it and they loved it from the start and agreed to buy. It would involve a temporary bridging loan on top of the loan Billy already had with the bank. It didn’t present a major problem since the sale of the Manchester house would clear the debts and once more they’d be in the black. There was a niggling negative thought at the back of his brain, however.

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