My Mum and Dad, Jackie and Ken, retired to the Island after working most of their lives as slaves in central London, where I was brought up with my sister and brothers in our council flat. Now they live a few minutes from these cliffs (below). The really old-folks' homes along the cliff path have the best views.
Last autumn I walked to the end of Sandown Pier during a fabulous storm. The bumper-car men were the only people out there, apparently in business. Remnants of the tourist season were spending pennies in the kiddie-casinos, and pounds in the pubs, from whence they could safely contemplate, across the top of a pint of Guinness, the masses of yellow froth being whipped up out of sea-salt and Sandown's famous black sand.
The waves were breaking well over the angler's outermost platform, to roll shoreward beneath our feet, bursting up through the gaps in the old boards. In the next town, Shanklin, there's a memorial to their own pier, which went down in such a storm when we were kids. It was ninety-nine years old.
At least some of us escaped to the Island every summer without fail. But I imagine the stress inflicted upon mum and dad during these adventures must have broken yearly records. Mum was going home to see Grandma (deceased), who chain-smoked, and three of her sisters (they still live on the Island), as well as countless cousins and relatives I hardly know.
After the hols it was back to London and back to school. I would sit on a bus, hidden in a book, stomach churning, failing to prepare myself for battle with two-thousand street kids fenced in for the day - many of them, too, hating every crawling minute of it.
So thank the gods for those looong, fleeting Summers, at rest on the I.O.W.

wallywoods editorial:
DAMN THE BARBARIC LONDON COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL SYSTEM
IF YOUR KIDS HATE IT DON'T BLOODY PUT THEM THROUGH IT
P.D.W. 2002