Adeline Akande, Seaside Trip Organiser

For the glory of His church

I organise the seaside trip.

People pay me for the coach ticket and then I hire the coach. It’s £15 for the adults and £10 for the children. If you don’t have a ticket you don’t get a seat. But if you want a seat and you don’t have the money you can come and speak to me. If you come and speak to me we will see what we can do.

It’s a funny thing, the seaside trip, people don’t think they can do it on their own. But when it’s organized, in the group, they will jump at it. On our trips we used to have 2 or 3 coaches, over a hundred people. This year we had 70. We could easily have got more.

We’ve been to Clacton-on-Sea and Walton-on-the-Naze. We’ve been to Great Yarmouth and we’ve been to Bournemouth.  We’ve been to Hastings, which was a bit hilly. We’ve been to Barry Island, that was a long one. Once we went to Calais. Have we been to Eastbourne? I can’t remember. But this year we went to Brighton.

There’s lots to do in Brighton, something for everyone. There’s fish and chips and the Pavilion and cricket on the beach, the big screen. There’s also shopping, though Brighton is expensive for shopping. And this year we had the gay parade. That was a surprise for us when we arrived in Brighton, to find we had the gay parade.

When we go to the seaside for the day our people like to dance and they like to have fun. So it was fun for us to join in the parade.  The people in the parade were so happy in their costumes. They were over the moon.

The children, they don’t understand about the gays, they are just happy to join in. They just think it’s a carnival and they join in. Is this a good thing? Yes, it is a good thing, in my opinion.

It’s like the mixing as children between the Blacks and the Whites. When you are young you are happy to mix with all sorts of people and you don’t worry what others might think. It’s only as you get older that you begin to worry. But by then you know it’s OK because you have done the mixing and the mingling.

Our members like to go to the seaside in a group, they want to go in the group and come back in the group. Singing songs as we drive down in the coach, the old Gospel songs and Jim Reeves and Reggae Reggae and what have you.

The group gets us there and gets us back. When we are there we like to do our own thing. You see, the seaside trip, it’s like the dancing: together and then on our own and then together again.

And all for His sake

Adeline (on right)