What's Gaelic for Blackpool?

2008-10-09, 10:25 p.m.
Oh my goodness Ive been busy! I am, as you may have guessed, back from Blackpool and this is the first chance I have had to do anything LIKE an update. As the moment�s kind of passed now this�ll be mostly photos, Im afraid, so you�ll have to bear with me.

Oh but the coach journey was HORRIFIC, dear readers! The hilarious joke of �going on a weekender with a load of common, uncouth people we barely know� had worn off by Newbury and with several hundred miles still to go I was already feeling suicidal BEFORE the first round of �Bingo on the Bus� started. We didn�t join in and there were some sour looks our way for a while � but then Alfie handed round the basket (a proper basket, like red riding hood �somewhat incongruous on the arm of a 65 year old man) of wine gums and toffees and all you could hear for a while was the gentle sound of people trying to suck bits of confectionary out of their dentures. *shudder*.

After lunch in the services on the M6 Toll (!) there was a quiz so we joined in, just to show willing. Needless to say, we weren�t too popular when we won, having not got a single one of the terrifically high-brow questions wrong (hoorah for us for knowing who sung the theme tune in For Your Eyes Only!). One giant box of chocs to Stepfie and L, methinks. We also won two giant bottles of alcopop in the booze raffle (A booze raffle. On a bus. Only on a workies trip, girls and boys). Little did we realise how vital the Dairy Box and Vodka Kick were going to become to our wellbeing over the weekend. It was all I could do to drink both bottles of the alcopop as we sped through the countryside � I needed something to take my mind off the smell of the communal farts of twenty or so of my fellow travellers who, having feasted on burgers at lunch were now making best use of the old adage �better out than in�. Fucking smelly bastards.

Got to the hotel around tea time and checked into the tiniest hotel room in the whole of Christendom. To take your mind of the �bijous and compact�ness of the room, they�d thoughtfully provided a radiator with enough power to heat�ummm�Dallas to the temperature of the sun, perhaps. Sadly the temperature wasn�t adjustable and when we opened the (teeny tiny) window, the rain rained straight onto the bed. *sigh*

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Strolled along the prom before dinner and took a couple of pics of the deserted beach

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Remember this slipway�you might be seeing it again in a little while!

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Oh, and a first look at Blackpool Tower, which is much smaller and less impressive than I�d hoped, having bigged it up in my mind to Eiffelesque proportions. Ah well.

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After a miniscule and largely inedible dinner, we ventured back into the street

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Had a walk down the road

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And took a picture of a Lightstick Guy, selling�ummm�lightsticks.

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And sussing out how to get to the Pleasure Beach, which is where The Big One is!

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L�s wanted to go on that damn thing for ages. I�d already told him I wasn�t going on it. Its not really my sort of fun.

Off to a local workies in the evening with �the gang� (The No.1 Club � doesn�t it sound grand!), for more bloody bingo, interspersed with a very good singer (L gave him a business card as he�s down our way in a couple of months and needs to record some demos) and a shockingly racist comedian. I noticed we were pretty much the only people in the club who weren�t laughing. Im not sure what that says about us. Or them.

Next morning, hmmmmm, weather not ::quite:: so good � walked into town to see the sights. Here�s the war memorial

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You may care to notice that the sea�s not exactly flat at this point

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We stood on the prom looking north, clutching our coats around us and going �fucking HELL, its cold!!!�

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Remember that slipway I showed you earlier? Here it is again.

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Obviously, I had to relinquish the camera for a few seconds so that L could take a pic of me in woolly hat, looking bloody freezing posing seductively at the Tower

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After another hideously inedible dinner, it was back to the No. 1 for MORE bloody bingo, this time neatly interleaved with a slightly smarmier singer and a less funny, more racist comedian. On the plus side, we�d got talking to the steward and were now in with the in crowd, to the extent that we could spend a fair bit of the evening in the sports bar, despite being guests, and didn�t have to suffer the bingo bonanza in the concert room for too many hours.

Next morning � what a change in the weather!

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The South promenade has been extensively refurbished and they�ve put in a whole load of sculptures and installations to make the �wandering up and down� experience a whole lot more appealing.

There�s shelters which rotate depending on the direction of the wind, designed to look like giant fish tails

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There�s a strange spiky thingy which I found out (too late) throws a shadow at dusk of a Broken heart

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Oh, and there�s Europe�s Biggest Mirrorball! 45,000 mirror tiles rotating day and night and generally being really REALLY big!

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Not to big for L to pose with, in an Atlas style, of course!

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Some of the sculptures were billed as �better by night�. We�ll go back and have a look at this one a bit later, shall we?

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This one, at first glance, was just a big curved sheet of Blue-painted Iron

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Which, close up, had a load of random little slits in it.

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I thought it was a bit crap��.til I viewed it from far away, when I realised it was a swimming pool, viewed from under the water! I stared at it for ages. Its the coolest thing, I don�t think the picture really does it justice.

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It really was the loveliest day, and we strolled about in the sunshine, looking south along the prom

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Then back into town where we noticed previously unseen dinosaurs

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And horses, real��

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�.and artifical

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Before paying our 50p and venturing gingerly onto the spindly rusty iron

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Of the Central Pier

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There�s some lovely views to be had from the pier:

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I couldn�t help but notice, the overall�..shittyness of the place, though, and felt sad that it clearly wasn�t the grand resort that it once must have been. Feldman of Feldman�s Arcade must�ve been spinning in his grave that his once majestic premises were now not only ignominiously overlooked by that smug tosser Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, but also home to a nightclub with a �Naughty Glass Dance Floor� (seeing is believing, apparently.)

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Similarly, Robert�s Oyster Rooms. If it had still been there, we�d have gone there for lunch. I was sure fucking sick to the back teeth with fish and sodding chips.

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We walked back south, right to the end of the prom and found another fabulously deserted beach. Jooj and Treac would have loved this one:

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Looking Back to Black(pool)

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Sunday night we did the obligatory coach trip to see the Illuminations. Nice though they were, it all just seemed a bit half hearted and quaint in a bit of an �Awwwww, Blessssssss!� sort of way. Back to the hotel as all the old folks said it was too late to be going out (it was quarter to 9). Cyril proudly showed off a talking parrot toy he had bought which swung on its perch and said �a variety of hilarious sayings�. When it said �Polly wants a blow-job� and they all cackled like hyenas, L and I decided to forego the evenings entertainment (a singer, billed as �The FABOULAS singing sensation�. I didn�t want to hang around and find out what Faboulas meant. I was pretty sure it was nothing like fabulous) and sneaked outside and into a taxi. Back to the No.1 club.

Nothing going on in the concert room but friendly banter in the games room and a quiz in the lounge. As we were just about to run out of money, it was a jolly good job that the prize for winning the quiz was Beer Tokens.

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Slept fitfully on the coach on the way back home on Monday. When I wasn�t sleeping, me and L made out under a pile of our own coats like two teenagers. LOVELY!

We�ve found a much nicer hotel which we shall stay in next time we go. Oh, and remember that �so much better by night� sculpture? It was!

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Later
S
x

PS L never did get to go on The Big One. Still, there�s always next time.

PPS Its Dublin. Yep. Really.





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