Holiday spirit

As the schools have broken up for summer and we are enjoying/enduring/suffering the heatwave in the UK and beyond at the moment, we are probably all thinking of holidays. A hundred years ago, so too was the Shields Daily News. Looking at the historical data for the Durham weather station at the observatory on Potters Bank (available on the Met Office website), their mean temperatures were somewhat lower than we are seeing this year. July 1918 saw a mean high of 19.7C and a mean low of 9.7C.

D/CL 27/277/370 Whitley Bay c.1920 

The Shields Daily News

27 July 1918

Holidays 

July breathes the holiday spirit into one’s being. We thought four years ago we could do without holidays “for the period”, but prolonged experience proved that impossible. On the contrary, the war has made them more absolutely necessary to keep the human instrument in tune. The people who do not take them get enforced rests in the shape of nervous and physical breakdown.

July and August are the ideal months, for then the year is at its ripest. There are September partisans and winter faddists, and they get their share of enjoyment, but they miss the full tide of the year. July is said to be a raining month, but it is not raining all the time, and without its reviving showers it would not be what it is. In August both land and sea are steeped in the sunshine of the advanced summer. It is the wisest arrangement possible that the authorities of the Tynemouth schools give the children holiday in a part of July and a good bit of August. 

In spite of the example of philosopher Kant, who never went away from home, it is better to seek out new scenes and change of air in holiday time. A new scene each year if possible. There is less choice in these days, for the sea as an avenue of enjoyment is closed to holiday makers. But in former days what a fund of pleasure was to be derived from a voyage from the Tyne to London, opening out scenes of interest which made one live pages and chapters of English history ever again. How romantic one’s first impression of Edinburgh, in sailing up the noble estuary of the Forth at dawn.

Most of us prefer the country for a holiday, but there is great enjoyment to be had from a holiday visit to a town. This is subject to two conditions – the first, that the town is sufficiently far away; the second, that one is in the society of friends, for to be alone in a town is to experience the full force of solitude.

We are fortunate that we have not far to go from the industrial banks of the Tyne to reach beautiful holiday places. Northumberland abounds in them. The old town of Hexham stands in a country smiling and beautiful with a wealth of historical interest that is inexhaustible. A visit to the North Tyne carries us into a world where the passing of the centuries hardly seems to be counted. The border country up Wooler “gate” imparts to visitors enough of its own vigorous life to keep them going for half a year at least. 

The charm of the old “shire” country round about Tynemouth lies in its well-cultivated farms. It has no hills but the little eminence of Earsdon, but it is not hills alone that make landscape.

On breaking up for their holidays this week, the boys in at least one school, in Shields were advised to offer their services to farmers and market gardeners. A great many will do this, for the school boy is a true patriot, and never happier than when doing work which he knows to be useful to the country. Those who do so will reap great benefit to their health and gain at the same time an education almost equal to that which they get at school. They will remember the holiday of 1918 as not the least pleasant of theirs lives.