Saturday morning and Beancounter and myself loaded up the car and set off for Treardurr Bay in Wales to scatter Elsie’s ashes into the waters of the bay. This popular holiday resort on Holy Island off Anglesey in North Wales had been a favourite haunt of both my mother and father for over 40 years. Indeed they once bought a caravan there shortly after my father retired and they would spend up to seven months a year in the caravan and I have many happy memories of holidays and weekends that I spent at that location. So it seemed rather fitting that mum should request that her ashes were scattered in the place that she had spent many of the happiest years of her life.
The journey down there was quite uneventful and after two hours we arrived at the motel that was to be our accommodation for one evening. Clean comfortable and relatively inexpensive with a bar next door and just a short walk to the sand it had everything we could have wished for. After a quiet drink in the bar we decided to get changed and have a meal before we set off to the beach. I ran a bath and poured the complimentary bottle of bubble bath in and when it was full tested the temperature. I decided it was far too hot and so I switched on the Jacuzzi machine to obtain more surface area for the water to cool down and then went outside for a cigarette and a cup of Bacardi and coke (there were no glasses in the motel only cups for the complimentary tea, coffee etc). After what seemed only a short time I wandered back into the bathroom and was met by bubbles pouring over the top of the bath and attempting to cover the floor. In blind panic I scooped armfuls of bubbles up and stuffed them into the toilet bowl and then into the sink and watched in horror as they went no where at all and decided to take their time about it into the bargain.
Having eventually bathed and cleaned up the bathroom we went for a meal and then headed in the night and onto the beach. The tide was going out and I waded as far out as I could to the waters edge and let the contents of the urn go. When it was empty I took out my hip flask and swallowed a large draft of neat Bourbon and said good bye to mum again. I immediately rang my brother so he knew what was happening and when and then had a quick drink via mobile phone with him.
At this point and deciding the night was still young BC and me walked up to the caravan site and had a couple of drinks with some of the people who had known mum and who still stayed at the site. Leaving the camp site club house we set off in search of further refreshment only to discover that there wasn’t any. All the pubs had shut at 11pm and it was now the quietest seaside resort I had ever seen. I did not expect a Blackpool like orgy of late night drinking and tacky kiss me quick hats but I really did not expect the resort to go to sleep after 11pm.
North Wales, for years had a history of abstinence on the Sabbath and it was always difficult to obtain a drink in Holyhead on a Sunday unless you were a member of one of the many local clubs that would not take memberships from non permanent residents of the island. However I always remembered Saturday nights to be leaping and full of life until the early hours. Now it was like a ghost town. I expect mum to be quite at ease in somewhere really peaceful with a bog full of bubbles.