Blackpool Walkabout 2011
Blackpool - 'Omega Man' style
There is something about Blackpool. It is naff, shite, full
of drunken morons during the season, often dirty (mostly, due to the
aforementioned drunken morons), twee, and has a phenomenal drug problem. It is everything I hate. That is during
the season. I should know; I used to live here.
Once the brain surgeons have left, Blackpool reverts to a [largely] empty town, with many of the businesses closed for the winter. It gets wet, windy, cold, and there isn’t a bloody tourist to be seen. Bliss! Blackpool is many things, but the one thing it is, is honest. It is what it is and has never pretended to be anything else. You can love it, hate it, or lump it.
When I lived here, between March and November, I would never go near The Promenade, Hounds Hill Centre, or the first three streets back from the prom between Tussaud’s and Talbot Sq. You just don’t. No point in coming into contact with the grockles; you never know what you may catch. No, I would take the back streets, along Rigby Road, past the bus depot, up onto the old railway line (now Seasider’s Way and Central Car Park), up Hornby Road, and into town the back way.
As the song says, that was then and this is now. Blackpool has changed in the twenty years since I lived here, undoubtedly, but in some ways it hasn’t changed at all. You can still buy your naff shit, drink yourself to oblivion, act like a twat, vomit everywhere, have a shag over a bin in the precinct, eat fish and chips out of a polystyrene tray, and think you can jump in the sea and get out again, only to discover that you can’t and the next anyone will see of you is when your foot is washed up on the beach at Preesall sands two weeks later. So, what is different?
Once the brain surgeons have left, Blackpool reverts to a [largely] empty town, with many of the businesses closed for the winter. It gets wet, windy, cold, and there isn’t a bloody tourist to be seen. Bliss! Blackpool is many things, but the one thing it is, is honest. It is what it is and has never pretended to be anything else. You can love it, hate it, or lump it.
When I lived here, between March and November, I would never go near The Promenade, Hounds Hill Centre, or the first three streets back from the prom between Tussaud’s and Talbot Sq. You just don’t. No point in coming into contact with the grockles; you never know what you may catch. No, I would take the back streets, along Rigby Road, past the bus depot, up onto the old railway line (now Seasider’s Way and Central Car Park), up Hornby Road, and into town the back way.
As the song says, that was then and this is now. Blackpool has changed in the twenty years since I lived here, undoubtedly, but in some ways it hasn’t changed at all. You can still buy your naff shit, drink yourself to oblivion, act like a twat, vomit everywhere, have a shag over a bin in the precinct, eat fish and chips out of a polystyrene tray, and think you can jump in the sea and get out again, only to discover that you can’t and the next anyone will see of you is when your foot is washed up on the beach at Preesall sands two weeks later. So, what is different?
Post Apocalypse
Yates's Wine Lodge... Not!
Well, if you didn’t live here, or visit regularly (and not
for a Kiss Me Quick hat) Blackpool did have a great deal to offer. It used to
have a wonderful music scene, as anyone who ever visited Jenks will testify. Come
on, hands up if you ever went there to see the young John Sykes in
Streetfighter? Post Jenks, there was the wonderful Kite Club, started by my
good friend Mick Schofield and, there was always Yates’s Wine Lodge. All are,
now, sadly, gone. Sad, except for Yates’s, of course, which was demolished
after some turnip set fire to an adjacent building. Come on, no one ever went
in there for any reason other than to get shit-faced on their sticky, sweet,
sickly ‘wine’. I still remember how the carpet used to squelch… Classy!
Talbot Sq
This used to be Talbot Sq.
All the crap is still here and, if anything, there’s more of it than ever. Blackpool, as with other town planning departments, has elected to pave everything it can, put in speed humps, traffic cameras, reduce speed limits and, generally, do everything they can to make the motorist’s life as painful as possible. They are well up on the Great British pastime of screwing the motorist for as much as they can. In fact, I understand that screwing the British motorist over is now so popular that Seb Coe is trying to get it added as a new Olympic sport for 2012. You see, there is an upside to it: you can do whatever you want to the car driving populace, as they will always pay up rather than, oh, not use the car for a day. Sure, they’ll complain, but they’ll always cough up, rather than actually take any stance. Oh, and there’s a bonus too. In Blackpool, they decided that if they keep extending the Pedestrian Precinct, then they don’t need to repair any roads. Just as well, as they appear to have spent so much money on slowing and/or stopping the traffic there is no money for road repairs anyway. So, that all worked out nicely, didn’t it?
The Prom
After the war...
Down on The Promenade (sounds like a Dr Feelgood song!), God
only knows what the hell they are doing. Actually, I don’t… What I do know is
that they appear to be digging up all the stuff they did last time… Someone
said something about building an open-air theatre on the prom… Yeah, sounds
epic, that. Just one question. Has the person who came up with that genius
brainwave ever been on the sea front at Blackpool? Even on the hottest day of
the Century, it will not be anywhere you would want to sit for more than a few
minutes without reaching for your cardie!
Nyich! It’s Blackpool. Whatchagonnadoboutit?
I am sure that, by the time the season starts it will all be done… Wait a minute, it’s April now… Ah. So, if you plan on going to Blackpool, remember your hard hat, donkey jacket and wellies.
Sitting on a park bench,
Mark L. Potts
The God of Thunder
5th April 2011
Nyich! It’s Blackpool. Whatchagonnadoboutit?
I am sure that, by the time the season starts it will all be done… Wait a minute, it’s April now… Ah. So, if you plan on going to Blackpool, remember your hard hat, donkey jacket and wellies.
Sitting on a park bench,
Mark L. Potts
The God of Thunder
5th April 2011