School’s Out!

© Jenne Gray

This challenge is produced by GirlieOnTheEdge with the following simple rules:
Write six sentences, no more, no less.
Use the current week’s prompt word – STRIKE

School’s Out!

I see them marching towards me down the High Street, Dad in front pulling a toddler along beside him, Mum following with the baby in the pushchair and two older boys trailing behind, muttering and girning, and this can mean only one thing – schools are out for the summer and the city has come to the coast.

The other constant during seaside holidays, besides the inevitable preacher promising that God will strike us down when we least expect it, is smir – not quite rain, more of a steady, fine drizzle which might just pass, and so this family, full of optimism, is carrying buckets and spades, blankets, a picnic, a brightly-coloured beach ball and, amazingly, a golf umbrella to shelter them from the sun – pause for raucous laughter.

As usually happens, when they reach the beach the smir gently eases off, lulling the family into a sense of security, that is abruptly cut short by the customary vertical downpour, and as the baby cries, the toddler screams and the boys fight, Mum and Dad struggle to get everything packed away and the children under the golf umbrella, which now serves its true purpose – minus, of course, the golf.

From here they will head for the ubiquitous amusement arcade where the parents will either spend too much money on games in order to prevent the kids from killing each other, or, as an alternative, limit them to one game each, which will result in a fight over who gets the baby’s game and the children assuring the grown-ups that they are totally mean and they hate them forever, which will turn out to be until ice cream cones are suggested or, on really, really wet days, a fish supper.

There’s no time for dallying on the way to the arcade, and so Dad is not amused to see the boys stopping to stare at a man, sitting on the sea wall squeezing toothpaste out of a tube and rubbing it into his ankles, and to his cries to his sons that it’s rude to stare, the man replies, ‘Och, they’re fine, I’m just rubbing the toothpaste in because it’s the only thing that takes the itch out the midgie bites,’ and with that he gives the boys a big toothless grin.

The lads immediately run after their Dad to ask about midgies and if they put toothpaste on their ankles, will they lose all their teeth too, and so the bliss of the seaside holiday plays out, generation after generation, in the beautiful land of Scotland.

To explain…
To girn – to complain peevishly
The midge, otherwise know as the midgie: https://www.smidgeup.com/beasties/midges/