ABSTRACT
The impetus for the discussion in this chapter came about through a chance get-together with Scott and Rachel (Scott’s ‘new’ bird) during the summer of 1997. My family had rented a caravan for a week at Rose Dale Holiday Park on the Yorkshire coast, and on our second day we bumped into Scott and Rachel, who were also holidaying there. What is written in this discussion draws on our mutual holiday experiences and some intimate conversations, particularly between Scott and myself during that week at Rose Dale. However, the discussion is also very much informed by my own interpretation of those events and how they fitted in with my research with ‘the lads’. At the time of the holiday I was in the midst of writing up my Ph.D. thesis and was consciously living the double life of the sociologist and ‘normal’ person. And if what happened at Rose Dale clarified for me a great deal more about the significance of leisure for ‘the lads’, it also suggested much about working-class leisure experiences, more generally, in the time of ‘liquid’ modernity.
