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Bill soon afterwards. However, divorce was not so easy to obtain in those days, and whether through accident or design, on several occasions when a court date had been set Bill failed to turn up at the designated time and the hearing had to be postponed. Hilary finally divorced him and married Bernard in 1969. They had two children together, both boys.

      Bernard and Hilary kept pubs together and had The Shoulder of Mutton in Baildon, near Bradford, for seventeen years. ‘So I suppose in a way I was still doing a redcoat-type job,’ she says, ‘and still entertaining the public, even then.’

      When their children were small, Hilary and Bernard took them to Butlin’s for holidays two or three times, and one year Hilary even judged a competition, just like she’d done in her redcoat days. Most of her old friends had moved on by the time she went there on holiday, but Rocky Mason was still there; he had been promoted from redcoat to entertainments manager by then. It was a strange feeling for Hilary, watching the redcoats at work, rather than being part of it with them. ‘I couldn’t stop myself from watching them, of course, checking what they were doing and rating them on how well they were doing it! They were great family holidays for us, because they still had all the entertainment and everything, and once you had paid the price to go there, everything was free. I still think it was the best possible holiday and the best value for families with children, especially compared to the cost now when you take your children or grandchildren somewhere, and every ride, ticket or show costs you an absolute fortune.’

      Bernard was a very good husband to Hilary and a wonderful father to their children, but tragically he was killed when he was only forty-five years old. ‘He was just crossing the road,’ she says, her voice still showing her bewilderment, ‘and two taxis were racing each other, driving like lunatics, and one of them hit him.’

      He was not killed instantly, but Hilary thinks that he was clinically dead by the time he reached hospital, though he was kept on a life-support machine for some time. ‘It was heartbreaking,’ she says. ‘The boys and I also had to make the decision about whether to donate his organs. We decided to do so, and his heart, liver and kidneys were used in transplants, so we were at least giving other people the life that had been denied to Bernard.’

      Hilary grieved for her husband for a long time, but gradually she rebuilt her life, and though she never remarried, she says, ‘I’ve had my moments since then! I’ve a lovely family, two sons and two lovely grandchildren, and of course I’ve got my friends.’ Among them is Valerie, of course, and another Butlin’s girl, Mavis, whom Hilary first met at Minehead but then lost touch with for many years. Like the other redcoats of their generation, they had all started to get computers and explore the internet, and about five years ago, Valerie said to Hilary one day, ‘There’s this site I’ve found called Forever Butlin’s and you should go on it.’

      A few days later she rang Hilary again, really early in the morning, and said, ‘I’m heartbroken and I haven’t slept all night.’

      ‘Why, whatever is the matter?’

      ‘I’ve been on that Forever Butlin’s site again,’ Valerie said, ‘and I’ve seen all these obituaries of people we used to know,’ and she began reeling off the list of names. However, a few days later she called her again and this time was much more cheerful, telling her that she had also found people they had worked with, like Rocky Mason, who were still very much alive. She had sent them an email mentioning that she was in touch with Hilary and had then had a long phone conversation with Rocky. ‘I’ve given him your number, too,’ she said. ‘So he’ll be calling you as well.’

      Sure enough, Rocky phoned Hilary and they had a good long chat about the old days and what they’d been doing since, and he also told her about a reunion they were planning in Scarborough at the old Butlin’s hotel there. Not long after that Mavis phoned Hilary, having also got her number from Rocky.

      Although Mavis and Hilary had worked together at Minehead, they hadn’t really been close friends at the time, and hadn’t seen each other for almost forty years. However, it turned out that Mavis was living only a few miles away from Hilary, so they met up in Leeds, got on like a house on fire and became firm friends. They met up again at the Butlin’s reunion in Scarborough, and still meet regularly now. ‘It’s all sitting down somewhere, eating and drinking lots, and talking our heads off!’ say Hilary.

      A few years ago Hilary returned to Butlin’s, this time with her grandchildren, Oliver and Maddie. They went to Butlin’s in Skegness, but this time she didn’t stay in a chalet; they rented a caravan on the adjoining site and walked onto the camp every day. ‘It was nothing like it was in the years when I was working there,’ she says. ‘It’s a very different place, but then, these are very different times.’

      Today’s Butlin’s is a reflection of both the changing times and rising wage costs, of course, which Hilary acknowledges. ‘It’s a business like any other, I know,’ she says, ‘so it has to pay its way, and you just could not afford the staffing levels today that we had in our era, but although it’s probably the nostalgia we all feel for the “good old days” as we get older, I do regret the passing of those times.’

      People go away on holiday a lot these days, but when Hilary was working at Butlin’s, most people who went there had to save for it the whole year round, just like she did, and that was pretty much all they had to look forward to. ‘So you had to make it special for them,’ she says, ‘and it really was. They’d forget all their cares and worries when they went to Butlin’s, and they would just have a ball. For the majority of people, I’d say that their annual holiday was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, things in their lives. They just lived for it, so we felt a responsibility to make sure that the holiday lived up to their dreams.

      ‘We had a permanent smile fixed to our faces and no matter how you felt on the inside, you just had to keep smiling. It didn’t matter what was happening in your personal life – you might be miserable and heartbroken off duty, but when you put on that red jacket you’d think to yourself, they don’t want to know about your problems, they’ve come on holiday to get away from all that.’

      Since Bernard’s death, Hilary has travelled all over the world with her friend Dorothy. ‘I’ve drawn on the confidence that Butlin’s instilled in me in those days to do it,’ she says. ‘I’ve been to the Caribbean, I’ve seen the Great Wall of China, the geysers and glaciers of Iceland and the midnight sun in Norway, and during my travels to Japan, I visited Hiroshima. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life, seeing the devastation that wars create. I’ve also been to Korea and found the grave of Bernard’s brother, who was killed in the Korean War. None of his family had ever been there, but I laid flowers on his grave and my son Danny did the same a few years later, so he’s not been forgotten.

      ‘I never regret my time at Butlin’s,’ Hilary says. ‘It was not only great fun; it was a great life experience, too. A lot of things happen throughout your life and the things you learned at Butlin’s, especially how you are with people and how to deal with them, come back to you, and they do help you through.’

Mavis

One

      Mavis Idle began working at Butlin’s as a musician and redcoat in 1959. She was born Mavis Wilcock in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, in the summer of 1938 in her grandmother’s terraced house. Unable to afford to rent let alone buy a house when they got married, Mavis’s mum and dad were still living with her grandmother at the time. Even when they eventually got a house of their own, it wasn’t that far away – just two doors along the street. It was an old type of terraced house, with no bathroom and a toilet outside in the yard. Like most people they knew, they would get the tin bath out on a Friday night and the whole family would take it in turns. Although it lacked modern amenities, it was a decent house, stone-built, very solid and in a good street, and Mavis had a very happy childhood there.

      Her father had a job winding coils for an electrical transformer company, while her mother looked after Mavis and her little

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