GWR Holiday Haunts, 1939,
I bought you at Didcot in 1978:
GWR Holiday Haunts, 1939,
All sepia tinged arts and crafts, and art deco modernism,
And Olde Englande Mockobethan,
For this is a book to get you through the winter months of 1938-9,
A book full of promise and practical tips
As you plan your summer holiday haunts
In the dark nights of winter.
No fear of war here, no barbed wire beaches,
No pill boxes and tank traps along the Thames;
Instead, punts and tweeds and flannels:
‘Make a holiday based in Reading
An idea worth serious consideration’;
Or, you might make it to Wiltshire:
‘Camping Coaches and Fashionable Walking Holidays
In Marlborough and Savernake Forest’;
Photographs of passengers with tea and scones smilingly served,
Steaming west to the Cornish Riviera –
And I’m pleased to say that everything
Is just tickety boo, Cheerful Charlie and Even Steven,
Especially in the buffet car from Bath to Newquay,
Thirty-four shillings and fivepence return –
No wonder they look so happy.
But doesn’t hindsight give an air of tragedy to it all?
The unspoken foreshadowing of war.
For even though there’s no shots of barbed wired beaches,
Gas masks, sand bags, bomb shelters and pill boxes,
Just the carefree innocence of buckets and spades,
The cheerful innocence of the high tides’ tables,
An almost limitless list of west country
Hotels, guest houses and bed and breakfasts,
At ports and seaside resorts served by the GWR,
All the way from the promise of spring
(When Hitler will break his Munich pledge),
Until the late summer of September
(‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room, 10 Downing Street’);
In truth, what fearful thoughts were in the minds
Of those model passengers, posing for the camera
Captured in those holiday haunts buffet car snaps?
What haunting anxieties?
How many women were to wait anxiously at railway stations,
As children were evacuated
Or as GWR troop trains left for the coast,
Or arrived back with the wounded?
How many of those men would stand in queues
On the beaches at Dunkirk,
Or in the cold waters of the English Channel,
Taking their turn to embark for home,
And arrive back at their old holiday haunts?
And all that, just one year later.