I just rang a friend of mine to get another friend’s number I’d misplaced. “It’s 07970”, he said, “57708067...” Nice try, mate, I said, but that’s too many numbers. “Well spotted, Bobby!” he cackled. “I did the same thing to my mum once. She rings me for someone’s number and when I get to about 40, I hear her turn to my dad and shout, ‘Gerry! I need another piece of paper!’ I’m reading E numbers off cans in the kitchen! I got to 60 before she twigged.”

Be that as it may, in a superb non sequitur even by Beta Male standards, in 1975 my family went on holiday to the Isles of Scilly. We met Harold Wilson walking Paddy the labrador on the beach. Wilson was Prime Minister at the time. He had one bodyguard. If I'd been IRA instead of an unarmed 11-year-old English schoolboy in a purple anorak with a large Goathland Steam Railway patch sewn on the breast, a mighty blow against the British state would have been struck. As it was, the bodyguard took a picture of me, my brother and my mum and dad with Wilson and Paddy, and all was well.

The other thing I remember from that holiday is we got a boat to an uninhabited island called Nornour and played cricket on the beach. I had a new bat. My dad and brother bowled at me until I’d got 100. My mum was wicketkeeper. They got me out about ten times, but I ignored that and continued hitting the ball ten yards into the sea and declaring it a boundary. Afterwards, I wrote the score on the blade of the bat. I’ve never scored another hundred from that day to this.

Politics moves on, but in the world of beach cricket, not a great deal has changed. On one of the two half-days of our holiday when it wasn’t raining (our luck with the Pembrokeshire weather definitively ran out this year), a game was arranged. The teams were North of England/Rest of the World versus South of England/Wales, about 25 a side, the numbers varying as players got cold, hungry, thirsty and, in the case of the women and many of the kids, bored stiff.

Obviously, I faced a dilemma as to which side to represent, a dilemma teetering, assuming dilemmas ever do any teetering, over the crevasse of my split identity as a northerner living in the south. Heart or head? Hull or Hackney? Roots or leaves? Short vowel or long? Past or present? Parents or children? Mushy peas or guacamole? Pint or shandy? Proper job making things or mystery job moving numbers around the world? I decided to sniff around to see which team had the best bowlers, and play for that one.

There was a lad there, only nine or so, but he can bowl proper leg spin, no fun dealing with that as it spits up off the sand. He lives in Hong Kong, hence Rest of the World, hence an opportune rediscovery of my northern soul. I bashed my way to a swift 25 before most of their fielders had arrived. Writing the score on my bat later in the hotel, I reflected that romance is all very well, but success in this life usually comes from playing the percentages.

Other than that, the holiday high point, in every sense, was going on Vertigo at Oakwood Leisure Park. It was raining, as per usual. Three of us were winched up to 150ft and then released on a giant bungee. Unbelievable raw courage! “I am Lindsay Lohan!” yelled Lily, the ten-year-old to my right, as we plummeted to earth. “No!” I shouted. “I am Lindsay Lohan!” “No!” called Lilija, 12, to my left. “I am Lindsay Lohan!”

The three of us swung back and forth ranting in the rain, two purple cagoules and a fat blue one in the middle, perfectly co-ordinated, perfectly balanced.

Afterwards, I bought us all a commemorative pencil, 75p, but that’s the kinda big-hearted guy I am. “Vertigo: you’ll never come down” it says on the side. Good line. Then I went in this (pretend) electric chair. You put a quid in and grasped two hand grips which then vibrated rapidly and rather unpleasantly while the power went up to “2,000 jolts”. “You’re smokin!” said the electronic display, in not especially good taste. After that, I played House of the Dead 4 and got badly damaged by a zombie.

On the way back to London, we stopped off at the Museum of Welsh Life outside Cardiff. It was absolutely chucking it down, children in low spirits, bickering in the car park. I gathered them round and tried to explain hoplite infantry tactics using umbrellas instead of shields. “Come back!” I called, as they hurried away to the dry. “It’s called Umbrella Thermopylae!”

Indoors, umbrella furled, I gave them Unicorn Daddy (umbrella sticking directly out of forehead), Jousty Daddy (umbrella under arm), Lord Nelson Daddy (umbrella up to eye as telescope) and finally, in some desperation, Sabre-Toothed Tiger Daddy (umbrella shoved under top lip).

Eventually, reluctantly, Sabre-Toothed Tiger Daddy raised a laugh. See, I said, it’s all about adapting to the prevailing conditions.

robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk