Live like common people: why Butlins is a good idea for anyone with 5-8 year olds. Even if you’re a bit of a holiday snob

Look, I am a teensy weensy bit of a snob. I can’t help it. It was the way I was brought up. I’m not saying it’s wrong or right. But it’s hard for anyone to totally expunge themselves of standards applied to them when they were young. But there is something avariciously middle class about snobbery. So most of the time, I do my best to rise above it, not least because it smacks more of insecurity about status than actually being ‘better’ than anyone else.

But I come from a family that don’t have tattoos, or skinheads. Who don’t wear footballs shirts as day wear or drink pints in the afternoon. My only experience of gambling comes from a casino in the Mirage in Las Vegas. When I was young, I wore Laura Ashley – rather against my will, and went to National Trust properties on days out. On holiday with my Dad, who rarely drinks and abhors smoking, we went to North Yorkshire, or Madeira and stayed in charmingly old fashioned, expensive –  if slightly dull resorts, where the pools had salt water and my dad would wear linen jackets, and grow bilious after a night of five course dining. My absentee mother was more daring. With her, we went to the Algarve and Tenerife and experienced the first flush of these resorts’ development as the 80s became the 90s. These holidays, where we ran wild around a pool while mum played backgammon with a G and T, wafting Silk Cuts and Puiz Buin to the sound of waves and cranes, were more fun and relaxed. We bought ourselves Chupa chubs and Hubba bubba from the on-site grocers and ate chips by the pool or melon with parma ham in the resort restaurant where they made fans out of napkins and lined up five or six wine glasses across the table. Ma let us pick our own pre-holiday outfits from M&S and New Look, and the kids we met had accents and sunburned noses. My sister Katie and I breathed a sigh of relief and spent two weeks feeling normal as our skin turned brown as ice melted cola. When we got home, my dad would inevitably blow a gasket because I didn’t have white marks where my bikini top should have been, but then puberty was still far in the distance so he really shouldn’t have worried.

So I wouldn’t say I grew up with sophisticated tastes exactly – no one could accuse North Yorkshire or the Algarve of that. But I was certainly fairly well travelled by the time my childhood ended. Air travel was cheap, hostesses still wore hats and you got a free meal on the plane –  and English seaside resorts were largely out of fashion. We certainly weren’t a family who’d ordinarily go to Butlins.

But needs must and since Tom lost his job in the financial crisis, I’ve taken some consolation in exploring how the other half live  – and  often been pleasantly surprised. First we exchanged Waitrose for Asda. That was fine, but when I found Lidl, I realised I’d been being conned all these years, and decided never again to darken the doors of the knowingly overpriced big four.

I am perfectly content with my Nivea knock offs – the Cien makeup range, whilst not always having the latest shades of lipstick or nail varnish, provides me with a perfect match foundation for my rather blotchy complexion and mascara that, for £1.50 doesn’t flake any more than Clinique (although the waterproof version appears to smear regardless of whether or not it gets wet.)

And it’s not just supermarket shopping where I’ve found that trading down doesn’t necessarily mean missing out. We first decided to go to Butlins last Feburary as a cheap and easy break in the grim February half term. Back then, our previousholiday had been a trip to visit Tom’s aunt up north and we’d been penny pinching for nearly two years. So having been attracted by its retro rebrand and then by its bargain bucket prices, we decided to give it a go as a way to break up the winter’s depression, taking with us the always up for a laugh – and similarly straightened – Kate and Lola – who had been relatively hand to mouth since breaking up with her trader ex.

It was indeed a laugh. The sun crept out for us at the Minehead resort, and the kids ran riot among the flashing lights of the shove ha’penny machines and the free fairground, amok round the crazy golf, jungle gym and agog at the Sesame St show and a not half bad JessieJ. We, Tom, Kate and I had mild fuzzy hangovers, which blurred the edges, and dulled the wind, making everything seem faintly hilarious. This year, we returned, taking in addition Linda and Freddie, who found it right up their street. We were lucky with the weather and the Bognor resort is more compact than the one at Minehead, making it perfect for the kids to roam in a garrulous pack, or split up with whichever adult felt like moving away from our spot in the breezy sun where we ate picnic and drank spirtzers from stripey deckchairs while the carousel romped nearby. After a drop too many, Linda made the point that  ‘at least fifty percent of the people here are just like us’ – and I kind of knew what she meant. But it was good old fashioned fun, and for the money we paid, it was a bloody bargain.

Now, I haven’t been paid to write this, or recieved any freebies either.  I met, on Twitter, the night before we left, a blogger called Morgana, who was also travelling down the same day as us, who writes a blog called butwhymummywhy.com. A Butlins Ambassador, she was, I think, offered her stay gratis in return for tweets and a blog – although I don’t know the exact details of her terms. But I was afraid I might have rather over praised it to her when we discussed our trip beforehand on the Twittersphere – I was full of the joys of wine, three days off and meeting someone else who was also going on a Butlins odyssey . But our journey of two hours, rather than her five, seemed an easy hop that more than negated airport hell to warmer climes. But when we arrived, to clouds, our apartment – serviceable, small – think glamping in mock tudor porter cabins –  hadn’t yet been serviced; the ‘skyline pavilion,’ a permanent indoor tent where all the entertainment is housed, had the air of a tacky airport lounge where the gallivanting hoards congregated from wherever they had come from, and I felt the sanitizer stands situated at all entrances were a necessary precaution – last year, I left with a mild stomach bug. We ate Burger King to console ourselves, and to get in the right mindset, which is cheap and cheerful if not exactly fillet steak.

The ‘entertainment’ – and I’ve never been much of one for being entertained, took place in ‘centre stage’, where you have to have your wits about you, sharp elbow tactics to get a table, had a pervasive footy aroma that I couldn’t abide, but which didn’t stop the masses from having a laugh. But the kids – and Tom – loved it. Dick and Dom got a better review than any West End show we’ve forked out for – as did Cirque de Hilarious which left sour faced old me cold but had the others rolling in the aisles. But it didn’t matter. I had licks of sunshine and the kid’s ice cream to keep me happy, the kids marauded and made merry (though three nights late to bed began to take their toll) and gradually we parents relaxed – although for single mums Kate and Linda, this took a fair amount of wine. But in general, we were less inclined by force of circumstances to get trollied this time around, though we became gently sozzled and went to bed at 11. It all seemed rather wholesome and quaint, although Jonah became rather agitated about the fruit machines into which he insisted on feeding his body weight in two ps to win himself a resin Garfield which had a retail value of approximately 10 pence.

But when I bumped into Morgana, the Butlins Ambassador – a great spot, recognising her yellow cardie and fringe from her avatar, bopping away with her daughter to a – very convincing – Katie Perry tribute, she only seemed mildly shell shocked by the whole experience, and when I saw her again on the last day, treating myself to a cherry coke from a vending machine, she seemed to have right got into the spirit of it and said her girls had been having a great time.

We rounded off our three day stay with a trip to a shingle beach just up the coast, where we lapped up the breezy surf, and the kids threw stones.  A cloying cream tea followed in a doilied tea room in Selsea before we hit the road and the M25 rush hour, and even that wasn’t too bad. It was the perfect antidote to snobbery of any kind because, quite simply, we’d had a whale of time, which is just as well because these days, unless you’re in the 1 percent who can afford to be snobby about anything any more, most of us are in it together. And Jonah hardly mentioned Minecraft once, which has to be a result.