HarperCollins, 2001

Illustrated by Peter Sutton

     "This summer, Joe and Mum and Dad are spending two weeks by the sea at the Ocean Star Hotel..."

     When my sister and I were small we spent a week of every summer staying with our grandparents in Brighton. It seems like another world now. Crazy golf. Fish and chips restaurants with huge laminated murals of Swiss chalets. White bread and butter with everything. We stayed in an old-fashioned boarding house. Like Mr Robertson in Ocean Star, the owner of the boarding house had an attic inhabited by a vast train set. I remember that you went up to the top landing, removed a fake gas fire and slipped through a little hole in the wall...