We all need our Brigadoon – and a djellaba

PENITENT stool. A few days ago I carelessly referred to Carlsberg as Carlsburg. Not my tipple but clearly my fault.

KIDS scurry excitedly down the main street of this little fishing village clutching buckets and spades. A warm breeze sets the plastic windmills humming in the newsagent's street display. The lady at the ice-cream stall hands a huge cone to an excited five-year-old. Suddenly a scarlet Jaguar XK140 burbles into sight and the trippers stand aside, admiring the rich man's 1950s plaything. Sometimes, even in the 21st century, it is perfectly possible to imagine yourself in an Enid Blyton book. Lashings of ginger beer, anyone?

AND before you Blyton purists leap in, I am aware that the phrase "lashings of ginger beer" appears nowhere in her books. Like "elementary, my dear Watson" and "beam me up, Scotty," it is one of those quotes that everybody knows, except the author.

STILL in a 1950s timewarp, Mrs Rhodes sent a friend a postcard. To do this, kids, you first visit the post office to buy a postcard. Then you buy something called a stamp. You stick the stamp on the postcard, then take a device known as a ballpoint pen to . . . I'm losing you, aren't I?

STROLLING through Beer Head caravan site, we came across a group of teens and 20s, the digital generation struggling to put up an old-fashioned family tent, a 20th century invention with no "guide" or "fast forward" button to help. It was like a badly rehearsed troupe of clowns trying to play a gigantic concertina, made funnier by the fact that young people have such a great sense of their own importance and a desperate need to appear cool. Trust me, kids, no-one has yet invented a cool tent . Just wrestle it up, hammer the pegs in and get down the pub. Tents hardly ever fall down.

SO it's official. Sun cream is rubbish. Or to quote the latest research by scientists in Manchester: "you shouldn't just rely on this to protect your skin." Isn't that what some of us have been warning for years? If sun cream worked, it would have halted the epidemic of skin cancer in its tracks. Instead, as sales of sun cream have risen, so have the numbers of skin cancers. Draw your own conclusions. If you really want to keep the kids safe, follow the example of a couple at Seaton harbour a few days ago whose blonde-haired youngsters were wearing the comfortable, loose-fitting Arab robe, the djellaba. They were not only safely shielded from UV but also looked, in every sense, cool.

AND then it was time to go home, closing the car boot as quietly as possible and slipping away through Seaton and Axminster to the M5 before anyone else is awake. Every time we come to Beer we look at the property prices and realise we could swap the baronial grandeur of Chateau Rhodes for a little house in the village and spend the rest of our lives living, breathing and totally immersed in Beer. And then we think again. It is a fact of life that we must all have our Brigadoon, a special, secret, recuperative place that comes alive for us once a year or so, like an episode of the Truman Show but without all the viewers. If you suddenly become a full-time resident of Brigadoon, then where's the magic? Best to keep your Brigadoon 150 miles away with yet another store of shimmering summer memories in your mind, and photos folded away in the album.