A Postcard from Blackpool

As an itinerant IT Insultant my career alternated periods of working long hard hours with weeks of inactivity, so recently I found I did had room in my schedule for some time out. So packed with wife Tracy, boxes of medication and a clean pair of underpants we set of for a midweek break staying in her bricklayer brother's Holiday Flat, formerly a cupboard, in a house on the North Shore at Sodom-by- the-Sea ; Blackpool

The town of Blackpool is large nearly seven miles of shoreline, easily a city by modern standards though they lost the recent competition to win city status to nearby Preston which became Britain's 50th city in 2002. Roughly the North shore stretches from The Gynn roundabout along a tram lined road to Cleveleys two miles up the coast over windswept cliffs and rowdy seas. This area of Blackpool did have some grand houses once but they're nearly all now bisected and converted into Guest Houses and such, now large rooms and parlors are divided into little squints of space containing every modern convenience. And each fawltyesque edifice proudly boasts the charms therein, next to the reversible Vacancies/No Vacancies board signs advertise "Tea Making Facilities in Every Room "i.e. a kettle. "Colour Television" now this one always amused me since when was the qualifying adjective "colour" used to aggrandise the fuzzy picture, on the Chinese A4 sized black box with set top arial (which are invariably on a pound and hour meter) ? Also "Book Now for the Illuminations" was their a time when people travelled across Britain to look at light bulbs?

And after tearing through Preston (generally the best policy) we arrived on a rain swept and windy Tuesday night, left our bags in the cupboard and set out to find what delights the town had to offer us.

Our first stop was at a pub called Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was so named because on that site once stood a simple cabin selling whelks, rock and Ice cream - and not because of the lynching and floggings that take place on the premises during the annual Clydeside shipyards shutdown "The Fair Fortnight". During this time allegedly the cleaners each morning sweep out the sawdust- that was last nights furniture - into the windy street.

Leaving after a few pints we battle the force 8 Beaufort and crawl down the coast road where we found a sea facing hotel called The Pits (name changed to protect the guilty) which is offering live entertainment through the week. So we pry open the highly pressurized doors and head for the Lancaster Lounge to find tables full of bussed in coffin dodgers being tended to by young keen Eastern European types. Highlight of the evening was cabaret performed by a Cell Block H resident look-alike who introduced each song with far to much detail i.e. "layddees and gentlemen this was recorded by Miss Celine Dion...".leaving pregnant pauses between each word for drunken, senile audience to full in with gasps, applause, calls for bed pans etc.

The compere of the "show" was an example of that oxymoron "welsh comedian" however he could sing a little which he did in the following evening's Tribute To The Rat Pack (no it wasn't Breakfast TV's Roland and Kevin the Gerbil). This show was very high tech, they used a digital projector to show the soaps, display the numbers during bingo and then to run a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation of inane verbiage and internet found images of Sammie Davis Junior et al whilst the bastard son of Max Boyce crooned along side it. And after downing a few pints you could quite honestly have believed you were in Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn on the Las Vegas Strip (a few pints of paint stripper that is). He looked and sounded nothing like Sinatra or Dean Martin but he could sing a little, which I believe is in the job description for being a Welshman. Bingo followed the more traditional line of calling a quirkiy one liner after each number ie "Number 10 - Tony's den", "Two fat ladies - 88", "65 - The old age pension", actually I think they'll soon may have to revise that last one. Tracy, who could talk a glass eye to sleep, nattered to an old couple from Burnley, he was a retired steeplejack and scornful of the high regard a now deceased fellow chimney climber from Bolton was held in since he had made his living of demolishing most of the Industrial Heritage of the North West.

The following day I brave the weather whilst the wife visits a gambling joitn named for the holy city of Islam of and sits with the grannies for a bout of dabbing and pocket emptying. I drove around a bit, drove past he Tower which was shut (no that isn't a typo). Actually the Tower is a Grade 1 listed building and one of the few things worth seeing, as is the Circus. This years show Mooky's Angels, a cheeky tip of the hat towards Benny Hill. features an all female cast including the worlds only lady human cannonball - did I mention the gag about this job needing people of the highest calibre? Sorry this town's rubbing off on me. Then up the windswept coast to Cleveleys to wander around the tat shops selling one pound lines, tooth rotting rock, cheap t-shirts and grotty souvenirs. I note that whilst the trinkets and ornaments from Victorian highbrow resorts such as Brighton might now end up in auction rooms those from Blackpool generally end up in landfill.

The following evening in The Pits I chatted to Ranjeev from Bombay who was working the bar, he was studying navigation at Fleetwood and wants to be a ship's Captain, well after tonight he must know what the last hours aboard the Titanic were like.

They, bang on cue, as we leave the next day the weather breaks, the sea clams, the hurricane abates and out comes the sun. Someone up there has a sense of humour and he's ribbing me know, as I spell check this my computer doesn't recognize the word "Blackpool" and gives me a couple of options "Ignore Once" or "Ignore Always" - if only life were that simple!