Every year for one week in July or August, the Nowsty family peers suspiciously from the windows of their terraced house in Darlington as if the weather is about to play yet another intentionally cruel deception. They pray for sun but prepare for rain, slaves to a typically unpredictable British summer that sometimes seems intentionally malicious rather than casually reassuring. Yes, it's time for summer holidays! But never mind - let's leave all that doom and gloom behind for a little while and escape back to the good old days before everything began to go to pieces, back to the English working-class world of half a century ago when life was just as complicated but expectations more simple.
