Blackpool

Having not written for almost half a year, I'm surprisingly at a loss as to what to write now. I could concentrate on the idiosyncracies of immigration law - a witty piece on the pros and cons of the Post Study Work visa route. But I won't. I'm going to talk about Blackpool.

I have only fond memories of Blackpool. Having been back this summer, I can't imagine why this is. It's cold, it's tired, and if you let your guard down for a minute you realise it's also inestimably depressing.

Apparently everyone else has figured this out already and gone to the Costa Del Calmari, or wherever, because when we arrived at 10am on an (admittedly pre-end-of-term) day in June it was completely deserted. We parked in a vast and utterly empty carpark across which we then trudged in a howling gale to the Pleasure Beach, which didn't open until midday. So we trudged into town. I was in the mood for a bit of nostalgia, and Blackpool did not disappoint. The grey and uninviting waters of the Irish Sea lashed at the sea walls so that you couldn't get onto the beach - I think in all my childhood visits the sea around Blackpool and Lytham, its more middle class neighbour which my mum thus perferred, was always either so far out you couldn't see it or so far in you couldn't get to it. Wandering into town, the tower was still there, the entrance covered in posters for an orange-coloured gentleman with an obvious toupee who was resident and performing various 50s hits (apparently). I was heartened that Jungle Jim's, the huge children's play area, is still there, albeit under the name "Jungle im's". The town is, not to its credit, like any other town in the area - uniform, predictable, bearing the usual medium-sized Marks and BHS and various clothing stores frequented by youthful shoppers whose tops are optimistically tight and skirts unnecessarily short, main drags punctuated by seedy side streets smelling of fish and chips and urine. We went into H Samuel and watched a young woman, clearly on the hunt for an engagement ring, work her way through the shop's most garish collection - great gold snakes with diamond-diamond-diamond scales, huge silver interlocking weaves with tiny diamonds set close together to the extent that if you look at it long enough you get a migraine - and exclaiming in the sort of voice that manages to sound excited and innocent in a way only a Lancashire accent can "Ooh that's Loovely! Look!! I'nt it nice??? Don't you think it's Loooovely?" Eventually the young man with her, who'd been notably quiet throughout, mulled over this and after delivered his well-considered response in measured tones: "It looks like it's been shat on by the diamond fairy."

The Pleasure Beach is actually really rather impressive, once you get over its modern facade. Most of the rides were built in the 20s and 30s, which is a terrifying thought when you're 40 feet high on one of them and about to rattle your way down to the bottom again in a little wooden car. But first you have to get through the entrance, which clearly thinks it's in Vegas. We were treated to the kind of music they play you just before the crash of drums, explosion and spray of tinselly bits at a rock gig when the star comes on, except we were in a queue waiting for our email to be exchanged for the tickets we've bought. An over-enthusiastic, film-trailer voice was announcing "Hot Ice - the UNBELIEVABLE new show at BLACKPOOL ICE ARENA. The most SPECTACULAR, DARING and DRAMATIC ice show EVER performed." This went on for a while, but the illusion was rather shattered when we saw that the announcer was actually a bloke called Darren (it said so on his badge) with a microphone who had clearly done this so often that he didn't need a script or even much level of concentration. We watched Darren go into the office behind the desk proclaiming "gaze IN AWE at the spectacle THAT IS Hot Ice..." turn on the kettle and put a tea bag in a tea cup, rummage around in the fridge for the milk declaring "you WILL be AMAZED", and eventually wander out with the fruits of his labours cupped in one hand, still whispering atmospherically into the mic in the other "back for its second SPECTACULAR season..." We saw him an hour or so later, still singing the praises of Hot Ice, this time with a bacon sandwich.

I have a tendancy to get rather excited at this sort of thing, and today was no exception. The child in me started to scream "Oohthebigdippper!canwegoonthat?Pleasecanwe?please?Ooh!Ooh!thebigone!Canwegoonthat?" and the adult quickly followed. We went on The Big One, though we had no view through the fog and rain, which was starting to pour. Then we went on this thing whose name I've blocked from my memory for ever. I've no idea what it was called, suffice to say it went backwards at great speed and I was rather surprised when it stopped and I found that I was still alive, if a little hoarse. Then, finally, the ride my mother would never let me go on - the Big Dipper. Being a 1930's ride it doesn't, I'm relieved to say, go upside down, or indeed do very much at all, but its dips and plummets are of a stomach-churning level none of the shiny modern offers could quite muster. And you get the added bonus of whiplash if you sit at the back. Hurtling up a hill it stopped momentarily, and as we gazed across the Fylde, it started to hail. Quite a lot.

Happy Days.

The carpark was as empty when we returned, sticks of rock in hand, as it had been when we left, our Micra the only car in sight and still intact (I can only assume it's not worth nicking, which is a shame, because it is insured.) We drove out through the teeming rain, past the Yates's Wine Lodge and posters for the "Unofficial" Queen tribute band "Ga Ga" and the exotically uninviting "Ladyboys of Bangkok."

I like Blackpool, but having been back, I understand why I also like London.