I’ve known this picture now for nearly 40 years. It was a sunny 
day in London in 1974 or 1975 when I walked into a second-
hand bookshop on Great Russell Street, along from the British
 Museum, to find a copy of Tony Ray-Jones’s book A Day Off.
 It was marked down to £1.50 (the original price was £4.75),
 so I bought it. I’m not sure if this was my first sight of the 
picture — there was an Arts Council exhibition of Ray-Jones’s
 work called The English Seen going round the country at the 
same time. But the version in the book, the second image in,
 is the one I return to and have shown in lectures ever since 
to say something about the decisive moment, traditions in
 documentary, the English seaside and so on.

Of course, it’s not only the young lovers who make this such
 a great picture. They are central to the image, but around 
them are an array of older people, their gazes outward, keen 
it seems to look anywhere other than at this couple in their
 midst. It is this refusal of social interaction which makes
 the picture an acute piece of satire, just as the network of
 divergent gazes makes it visually so satisfying. Part of my 
response to the picture has of course to do with my own age 
and background. I feel I recognise these people — their faces
 are like the ones that gaze out of my own family album from
 the period and, as I look, I assign them characters.

The woman at bottom left with glasses and a worried look 
resembles my Auntie Lil and, in my mind, that is who she becomes.
The old man in the flat cap is an archetypal working-class figure,
 though his check waistcoat, watch chain and tie clip are actually
 rather dressy. At the top, the boat’s captain fulfils his supporting 
role as weathered sea dog quite perfectly. The woman below him is
 another auntie and the placement of her face next to that of the girl 
— tilted in the same direction yet tense, almost a mask — says much
 about age and experience.

To the other side of the couple stands a rather gaunt man, taking
 a drag on his cigarette. Here we are surrounded by all this fresh
 air and it’s time for a fag; defining him by his action, I call him the ‘
smoking man’. Finally, at bottom right, there is another man, whose 
neat white shirt and swept-back grey hair l instinctively read as 
middle rather than working class. He seems to have a contemplative 
look on his face and l’m struck by his resemblance to the English
 painter John Piper.

The title as it was given in A Day Off was ‘Scarborough, 1967′. 
Immediately one imagines the rugged Yorkshire coast off to the 
left as one simultaneously thinks of hippies in San Francisco with
 flowers in their hair. (Somewhere out there, Simon and Garfunkel
are singing the old English ballad Scarborough Fair’.) All that seems 
a long way away from the microcosm of this picture, but one of the 
things going on here (very gently) is a contrast between old English 
repressions and a newer, younger freedom of thought and action.

Text from Ian Walker, full text here: from: https://the-golden-fleece.co.uk/wp/tony-ray-jones-tripper-boat/