millionreasons | Oct. 5th, 2011

Oct. 5th, 2011

I've never arrived in Blackpool by train before - it was always by coach or car - and hopefully never will again. I didn't think anything could
make Virgin Trains look good, but First Trans Pennine Express have a pretty good go at it: a three carriage train holding twice as many people as it should and no toilet for a 75 minute journey (85 as it turns out) which seems cruel when you consider Blackpool's visitor demographic (children, the elderly). "We apologise for the over-crowding, this is a popular train" they witter. If it's a popular train, then why not make it an 8 carriager? The illuminations are as popular, if not more so, than the summer season.

Anyway, dear reader, you know my reports always start with complaints about appalling travel conditions. We walk through the town, past the "gay quarter" which I've never traversed before (I'm not sure my grandparents knew of the existence of the neon-brash Funny Girls). Up the Queen's Promenade to North Shore where our quiet B&B is located. The guesthouse gate sports a knitted Pacman and the lounge is Elvis- themed but our bedroom goes for comfort rather than quirk.

When I booked for the first weekend in October, I thought it would be foggy and rainy. The weather is brilliantly hot (seriously, I've been warm in Blackpool before, but never hot) but it's working against us. Everywhere is PACKED. We take a tram down to the town (looking out for the place where Alan Bradley was killed) and eat sarnies in the sunshine in a new-ish paved area behind the Winter Gardens - Blackpool's version of continental style cafe culture, complete with public art and funny shaped streetlights that, later on, project patterns onto the pavements. Take another tram down to the Pleasure Beach and the South Shore.

Blackpool is doing something to the trams - there are new weather-proof shelters, ominous roadworks, nothing going north of Bispham. I hope beyond hope that they don't dump the old trains - I love the fact that, unlike the supertrams in other cities, they are all different: old ones, new ones, red ones, yellow ones, green ones, single decker, double decker, 1930s heritage ones.

The conductors are all cheery and call everyone "duck" and seem particularly pleased when you buy an all-day ticket: "Super, smashing." I
look out for things I remember, things that have changed. Coral Island is still there, but Louis Tussauds seems to have been taken over the
actual Madame Tussauds entertainment group.

At the Pleasure Beach, we have a bit of a shock. Once upon a time, you could wander in freely, and unlike at Alton Towers, buy tickets for one or two rides, rather than spend the whole day there. Now you have to pay £5 just to get in. Inside, it's still the same restless, sparking, loud bundle of expensive fun it ever was. I'm devastated that the log flume has gone (now a Rugrats themed ride), but pleased that childhood faves, the creaky old Ghost train, runaway Gold Mine train and Alice in Wonderland rides are still there. We endure the queues for the goldmine, traverse the Chinese water maze where gutters and dragons try to squirt you, and ride Valhalla, a Viking themed fire, ice and water ride. Lots of water. Outside, in the long long long long queue, people who have just finished offer us their polythene rain capes. The spirit of the Rochester Co-operative movement lives on (I was shocked when I first came to London and people'd want a quid or so for giving you their used travel cards). Afterwards, we dry out in a walk-in dryer, like being in the middle of a Dyson airblade. Finally, go on the River Caves, another watery ride opened in 1904 (I think they have kept the original mannequins) which travels the world in a faintly racist and definitely inaccurate way.

Seven hours have mysteriously passed and it's dusk as we get the tram up to the Tower. I've been to Blackpool 30 or 40 times and have never been in the tower. Too expensive, according to my parents but it's actually free to get in. They don't advertise this, but you can just wander in, walk up the stairs, sit on a settee, admire the beautiful interior, look at the miniature version, even watch the ballroom dancing from the balcony, look at the fresco on the ceiling. We have bought tickets however (I thought I should get in free as my great-grandad Edward Stevenson* allegedly helped build it) in order to go to the top. First, we have to watch a 4D film which I thought would be tedious, but was very well done, with water squirted at you as the 3D spray hit, snow falling, bubbles, glitter and gusts of air. Then we're finally allowed up in the lift to walk on the glass floor and darkness has fallen and wow the illuminations have been turned on and woh you can see all the way down the south shore and up the north shore and the piers and the wheel and it is, to use the vernacular of our pampered youth, totes amazeballs.

The top of the tower lights flicker on and off lighting us green, purple, pink, white, blue, yellow, red. It's so very strange to be in the place I've looked at so many times, the centre of the town. Anyone looking up at the lit up top will see us. It is loads better than the Eiffel Tower.

Back down again, we walk along the Golden Mile to the end of the illuminations. I thought there might be a golden hour between the kids
going home and the hen and stag parties going out, but it never happens because the kids are still out at midnight and the hens and stags
started early. On the train, the man opposite laid out his cans of gin and tonic and lager: "I don't usually drink this at home, so I thought I
should while we're away". Some of the hen outfits are quite inventive: there are the usual matching t-shirts and glittery pink cowboy hats, but also Alice in Wonderland costumes and construction worker outfits. The boys are less creative, although we do see one man in a dress, standing outside a Wetherspoons shouting crossly into his mobile phone, cut adrift from his fellow cross-dressing stags. We're back on the more refined North Shore by 11.30 and maybe it got a bit messy (in doorways) by 2a.m., but the the atmosphere is friendly rather than threatening. It's definitely no worse than Doncaster of a Saturday night or indeed Leicester Square on a summer's evening. It has the same air of unreality as the west end, and interestingly, some of the same multiculturalism. Earlier, I wanted to take a photo of the traditionally-dressed Muslim family taking it in turns to pose in "the gaol cell" outside of the Goldmine ride and send it to the next Tory MP who says that multiculturalism has failed. I also wanted to make a joke about Cowboys and Indians, but decided against it. One would think Blackpool would be the last place that strict Muslims would want to be, but there are plenty of families still milling around after closing time.

A woman yells: "Who wants this melted slushie?" An elderly lady wheels two Scotty dogs in a shopping trolley. "Oy, Rhianna, come here!" another woman shouts. Amanda and Rory walk past, she has his name tattooed on the back of her neck, he has hers. A man has CRAIG in Gothic letters on his arm, to remind him of his name in case he gets really drunk? Another woman has a tombstone inked on her
back with "Mum" and dates, and then below, a second gravestone and "Dad" and his dates. Horses trot past, some yer traditional pony and traps, but other pulling pink Cinderella carriages. The air smells of marijuana and manure, sugar and vinegar. A tram dressed as ship sails past and when it beeps its horn, it's not the poot-poot of a tram but the PARP of an ocean liner. What a wonderful town this is, to illuminate a tram and then make it PARP. It all feels so joyous, magical.

The next morning looks like a hangover. Rain, grey sea, the north pier looks small and unimportant. The town is weather-aware, there is covered area under which you can walk up the Prom almost all of the way to the train station. Which is PACKED. Once again, the weather has worked against us as the rain convinces people to leave early. I was expecting to see people sleeping on the beach - our landlady
tells us she was fielding calls from people at 11 p.m. We manage to get seats in the same carriage as some Liverpuddlians sponsored by the Scouser Tourist Board to maintain stereotypes of Scousers across the land (fat, loud, laughing at unfunny jokes). I've often thought that London tourism should do the same. There are already heritage routemasters and red phone boxes, why not actors dresses as Bobbies who just give directions and tell people what the time is, or businessmen in bowler hats, carrying briefcases and furled umbrellas. Pay Jeannette Charles to wander around in full state costume.

Arrive into Manchester as the Unite march outside the Tory conference is gaining force. In the train station, killing time, I wander up to the
Network Rail information board about the upcoming electrification of the North West line and a woman collars me. "Are you here for conference?"she asks. I have never been so insulted in all my born days.

We have a sandwich and a cake in the Pop Cafe. I'm thinking of setting up a website similar to 5 Minutes Away but instead of motorways, I'll recommend places to eat 5-10 minutes walk away from a train station so that people don't feel obliged to eat in Pumpkins whilst waiting for a train. Maybe I'll call it Gem Squash.

And that was the last sunny seaside visit of the summer.

* This might be family myth and legend. He was 22 when the construction began, and he was a labourer living in Blackpool, but according to the 1901 census, he'd become a furniture dealer, so it's possible he'd already started in that trade by 1891. He was Mayor of Blackpool 1939-1940, so maybe I should've played that card for free entry.