Snapshot: My dad's day as Lawrence of Arabia
These are my parents, Lola and Cyril Seeve, at the 1968 fancy dress parade at Prestatyn holiday camp. Every August they would pack three kids and a pile of dusty hardboard suitcases into their Mini, and head off from our home in Liverpool to the North Wales resort. The camp's promise was "infectious gaiety you'll notice the moment you sniff the sea air".
Mum and Dad were stalwarts of the ballroom, with its resident orchestra. A day of tombolas, tug-of-war contests and talent shows usually ended in the smoke and glitter of the dance hall, where we kids scrambled on to velvet bar stools to watch as our parents swept around the sprung maple floor.
The outside world appeared only in the headlines of the Daily Mirror newspapers that were left lying around the sun lounge. Russian tanks had just rolled into Czechoslovakia, causing some consternation to my Soviet-friendly father.
That day, with her resigned smile, Mum deftly stripped the beds to dress Dad in his new white robes, his habitual tie recommissioned as a headband. "Another of your father's daft ideas," joined the list of his more serious schemes – the business ideas, the ventures gone awry. She painted a quick moustache on him with her spit and brush mascara.
Soon, Lawrence of Arabia stepped out of our chalet, on his way to win first prize at the parade. At the time, I felt the usual embarrassment of a child. I now understand, however, with Mum recently buried and Dad lost to us in a local nursing home, that this was the time of their lives.
Natalie Seeve-McKenna
Playlist: Marc Bolan, memories and magic
Cosmic Dancer by T Rex
"I danced myself right out the womb / Is it strange to dance so soon? / I danced myself right out the womb"
I would not usually have gravitated towards music I would consider hippyish, but this song has a special place in my life and serves as a kind of marking post for two very particular events that have helped to shape it.
The first time I heard this song was, aged 15, after accompanying my mam to Tesco. She picked up a T Rex Greatest Hits CD and told me how much she had loved them as a teenager, then tossed the CD in with the weekly shop. When we got home, we put it on and danced around the kitchen to Cosmic Dancer as we put away the food. I loved it immediately, its nostalgic atmosphere and strange phrasing: "I danced myself right out the womb." It seemed a perfect song for a teenager, unsure of her place in the world, or of what the future held.
Two weeks later, my mother moved out of the family home and, as I watched her car pull out of the driveway, I listened to the song with tears streaming down my face, its lyrics filling me with sadness and grief for my childhood and the innocence I felt I had lost too soon.
The second time the song really moved me, I was sitting on a bar stool in the Camden Head pub in Camden, London, on the morning of my last shift there. After living in London for a couple of years, I had packed my bags for my return to Ireland. I was broke and miserable, but unsure as to what I should do about it – stick around in London and try to ride it out, or return home, slightly bruised from the experience. One of the best things about London was my job at the Camden Head. I loved my workmates, the local buzz, the familiarity and laid-back atmosphere. But I was only 20, and tired. I had to return home, a little heartbroken, to rethink my next move.
As I sat at the bar drinking a cup of coffee before we opened the doors, the familiar sound of Marc Bolan's ethereal voice came over the speakers and brought a wave of emotion with it. Morning sun streamed through the windows and I watched dust dancing in the empty room, feeling excitement, uncertainty, sorrow and joy all at the same time. It takes a particularly magical piece of music and song-writing to conjure all of these emotions at once.
Now living happily back in Ireland, I often listen to this song and can enjoy it without sadness, just the sheer nostalgia and memories it evokes, of a young person trying to find her way in the world.
Ciara Ross
We love to eat: Fusun's yoghurt and pasta
Ingredients for four
Four handfuls of dried pasta
Two cloves of crushed garlic
Two small cartons of plain yoghurt
Boil the pasta until done. Drain it, cover the pot and put aside. Add the crushed garlic to the yoghurt. Add this mixture to the hot, drained pasta. Mix and serve immediately. You can add anything you like to this basic dish, such as cooked broccoli, dried chillies, minced onion or chopped tomatoes, and just stir it in.
From 1980 to 82 I taught at a girls' school in Nigeria, through Canadian Universities Overseas, the equivalent of the American Peace Corps. I lived in the north, in a small town called Numan. My house had no electricity or running water and I found life very difficult. I caught dysentery and remember I was outside the bank in the city of Yola with stomach cramps when a very handsome Brit got out of his pickup truck and asked if I was all right. He worked up the road from Numan and took me home.
He was rather shocked at my living conditions as he had air-conditioning and an on-site cook. Richard was building the airport and had been in the country a few years. He would come round to my house with freshly cooked meals and cold water. Soon, my dysentery went away, but our relationship blossomed.
The next year, Richard and I met a couple from Montreal, called Ron and Fusun. She had been born in Istanbul and was an amazing cook. They rarely took the daily anti-malaria medicine and I'd like to believe this dish prevented them from getting it. We all became good friends and regularly ate together at weekends. Richard, as a typical meat-and-potatoes man, was reluctant to eat this but, like me, came to love it.
As fresh milk was limited, Fusun used to make the yoghurt from powdered milk. She got a tablespoon of culture from a member of the Fulani tribe, mixed it with water and the powdered milk and let it sit in the hot sun. Her yoghurt was like whipped cream. The only drawback was that she used to add far too much garlic, and your breath would smell for days, but at least it kept the mosquitoes away.
At the end of their two-year stint, Ron, Fusun, Richard and I travelled to Fusun's homeland – Turkey. This was in 1983 before the tourists had arrived, and travelling down the Bosphorus, touring Istanbul and meeting her friends was quite a treat. We went our separate ways, but that recipe stayed with us. Richard and I returned to England and got married and had two sons.
I gave both boys this recipe before they left to study at Manchester and Bristol universities. Ron and Fusun returned to Montreal in 1984 and, like us, had two children. One day we hope to see them again. When I do finally get around to emailing Fusun, I must ask if she still cooks this dish.
Janet Betteridge
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