...the sun always seemed to shine and I rode donkeys on the beach, roller skated and learned to ride a bike on the prom and the smell of hot sand and scorched salt and candy floss will always take me back to being 10 again and the sound of the slot machines from the amusement arcades, bingo, fish and chips on Red Bank Road and ice cream cones with a big flake.
Aaaaaah… Blackpool Tower wikipedia.org as a kid the first one to spot the tower got 50p. Probably just a game to distract from car sickness but it worked!
After wandering round Blackpool reminiscing on Saturday afternoon I decided to go chase away the chill with a cup of tea and a scone in the tower. I had been once before but was so young I don't really remember it and it's one of those things, if it's on your doorstep you tend to take it for granted, thinking you can visit it anytime and then never do… So I took the bull by the horns as it were and nearly fell over backwards when I got to the ballroom. It's where my Auntie met my Uncle and all my family went dancing there and it is absolutely spectacular… as my grandma says… "A proper sprung floor"…
It's so strange to see it in the steely grey light of January out of season and lacking in purpose. Blackpool is the home of the Variety performance. I remember seeing Ken Dodd and Les Dawson as a kid at the Winter Gardens and loving it. It seems to be having a renaissance thanks to "Britain's Got Talent" and "Strictly Come Dancing"... if only we could get our arses off the sofa and head for the North Pier... where tonight the Sheffield "Everly Pregnant Brothers" are recreating songs by the Human League and Pulp... ukulele for the masses.
The famous Illuminations was always the beginning of the excitement leading up to Christmas (yes I know they are switched on in September. I must have been an over excitable nightmare) I remember being determind to stay awake to make sure I saw the whole series of trams that were decorated specially in lights; a rocket, a train and a missippi paddle cruiser among them... I remember being swaddled in scarf, hat, gloves and a duffle coat watching the lights distort in the raindrops on the windscreen of my grandad's mini, squashed in the back between my mum and dad.
The Blackpool tram system is one of the oldest electric tramways in the world and is the only surviving first-generation tramway in the UK. My dad used to be a conductor on them and I think the heritage trams are really beautiful and am at a loss to understand why something as iconic and as quintessentially "Blackpool"as the tower, is being replaced, at great expense, with a hideous sounding "Flexity".
Perhaps my passion for Art deco started here...
Blackpool rock; as iconic as the "Kiss Me Quick" hat. When my grandparents first moved from Manchester to Blackpool there were two Blackwoods in the phone book; themselves and R D Blackwood the rock maker, who is still going strong and still makes it by hand... yes even the lettering! Say it with a sweetie
