Typefaces

Interesting how one word in a certain shape can conjure up a hundred images in your mind.
HAVEN: snapped in Poole, Dorset - those castellated white letters on a postcard-blue background, happily preserved from some time in the late 60s?



I can just see my Nan, tartan blanket tucked under one arm and a shopping bag containing a thermos, Penguin biscuites and a packet of fags hanging from the other. She would probably have a floral headscarf pulled tight over her Blue Rinsed hair, or maybe a plastic rain hat if the sky looked ugly.
If the thermos had been forgotten, or the beach too wild with sandy winds we might have gone into the Haven café and had a teacake, slippery with butter (or margarine) and a pot of creosote for two. The air would have been grey/blue with cigarette smoke, and Nan would have lit up too, smiling at me through her own personal cloud: "D'you want to come to Bingo with me and your Aunty Lil in the evening?"   

                                     

Building no 39

One of my strongest childhood memories, along with the one of sitting in the Launderette with a copy of the Beano and a sherbert fountain, and the time I took my three mice into the chip shop with me and a woman fainted, was our daily trip down to the beach at Canford Cliffs, when we were on holiday.
The trick was to go down when everyone else was leaving, all sandy and tired, clutching stripy windbreaks and rolled towels. Then there would be space to park, the beach deserted apart from a few intrepid old folks taking their regular evening dip, and gulls picking over ice-cream wrappers.
On the few times we got down there earlier, this curved, 1950s? treats place would still be open. If Mum was feeling unusually flush, she would allow an ice-cream. I can remember seeing the blue and white facade looming each time we walked onto the promenade from the steps down the cliff, and wondering if this might be a 'flush day' or a 'make do with a wrinkly apple' day.

When I was very young I would choose a Fab. I don't know if these are still in production, but I have fond recollections of the fake strawberry taste and the crunchy 'hundreds and thousands'.
If gran took me to the beach, she would get a cup of tea and ask me to choose between crisps and chocolate (an agonising choice for a seven or so year old). Then we would sit on the sand, backs up against the promenade wall; gran with her skinny legs under a tartan blanket, pale lilac perm blowing in the sea breeze, fag, tea and the Daily Mirror.