The Fortnight in September

The lower middle class Stevens family have made the trek from London to Bognor for 20 years to have a family holiday; it is always the best fortnight of the year as a family unit. This one though might possibly be the final. The eldest children are at that point in their life when they move on to other things; there is a sense of an ending, as the regular holiday lodgings that they stay at are getting a little too shabby. Things stay the same to many of us, but change is inevitable in the end. The author hints hard at this and lets the reader be the judge.

The Fortnight in September is a gentle read, almost plotless and written with a charm that gives a view to a very placid English holiday between the two world wars. From 100 odd year later it feels like the author, R C Sherriff, had a sense that all was not well for the future. Yes the Great War had finished. It was the one that was to end all wars but was it? Maybe even in 1931 on this books release, bright sunny days, cricket on the beach and a stroll down the prom to watch the brass band play were all too good to be true.

The setting is strangely affecting, Bognor on the south coast of England in West Sussex, a county that has the rolling and beautiful south downs, an area that I have made visit to and would be the very emphasis of bucolic when thinking of my early teen memories of living in not far away, Bognor. My parents were born there and returned from Australia to live again for a little while in the early 1970s. “Bognor for health and sunshine” a poster joyfully announced to the family while on their way to their little bit of the seaside via the railway station at Clapham Junction. Maybe to the likes of the Stevens Family in the 1920s, but in my early teens it never felt like that. The nights seemed dark and long and sunny days far apart. The pier that the Stevens family so enjoyed was but a shell of its former glory, in my time and still today a smashed relic of a past age. Later in the book as the holiday nears its end, the family think of Bognor as a “...friendly old town”. Something tells me it may not be that place it once was when Londoners flocked to it for their fortnights by the seaside.

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! I do like to be beside the sea! Oh I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play, “Tiddely-om-pom-pom!”
So just let me be beside the seaside! I'll be beside myself with glee and there's lots of girls beside, I should like to be beside, beside the seaside, beside the sea!