First published in: City GENT Issue 122. February 2005
BLACKPOOL
‘There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That’s noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son. ’
By: Marriott Edgar
It is almost impossible for anyone who has been to Blackpool to be neutral about it. You either love it because it is utterly unsophisticated and unpretentious, or you hate it because it appeals to the unsophisticated and unpretentious. It may Chavpool-by-the-Sea but it has been hoovering money out of the pockets of millions of Britains for well over a hundred and fifty years, and that suggests that it is bloody good at what it does. People who get snotty and say things like: ‘The Golden Mile is all brought from London in plastic sacks!’ Need to wake up to the fact that people with only a little spare cash can spend it on having fun, and it’s nobody else's business if they choose to spend it in Blackpool.
Bradwan likes seaside towns out of season. They are melancholically empty, cheap to stay in, and there is a good chance of dramatic seas. Because Blackpool is the biggest seaside town in Britain, Brighton has long since turned its back on the sea, it has more happening summer and winter than the rest. The Pleasure Beach will be shut when we play here but all the pubs will be open, there are other things to see, and bed & breakfast vacancies should be plentiful and cheap; unless there is a Pet Shop Boys and Village People convention; or there is a special offer on hen nights. Hen nights! The only thing more frightening to the average man than playing in a mixed hockey team.
The Beach
Seven miles long and, unlike Southport, not so wide that you cannot see the sea when the tide is out. Blackpool beach has always been big, and now it’s clean. The days are long gone when you could flush the toilet on the Promenade and, if the tide was out, run down to the sewage outlet and watch your contribution to bio-mass float off into the Irish Sea.
Many years ago one of the Bradwan team was paddling along the sea’s edge at night, looking at the stars and the illuminations, when three teenaged lads with caps loomed out of the darkness: but instead of dishing out a kicking, as anti-Blackpoolers would expect, they asked him if he was going to kill himself. He was quite touched, especially as he had no desire to kill himself (see Peterborough).
The Golden Mile
This is the closest Britain got to a 24 hour city over the last century. A hundred years ago you could eat, drink and shop almost 24 hours a day in any large English town, as long as you had pennies to spare. We are now almost back to that position, after we lost our right to booze thanks to Lloyd George’s perfidy, and Lord’s day gibberish and commercial incompetence shut the shops when people were actually free to shop. However Blackpool’s Golden Mile showed that if enough shops in one place decided to stay open all night then they could.
Dr Who Exhibition and Museum
This is on the Promenade and we think it is in the same place as the Laurel and Hardy Museum used to be. Bradwan’s M.D. saw the first ever Doctor Who, and watched the Daleks from behind his dad’s armchair because he was so scared (Do any children hide behind armchairs anymore, unless they are breaking and entering?).
Dr Who started in November 1963, at a time when the BBC were producing well written, enjoyable family entertainment. Your only hope of seeing that today would be if this museum had a working Tardis, and if it is working you could also travel further back in time and visit Huddersfield when they had a massive football club.
This museum should be open when we play Blackpool, but seems to cost NINE Quid! That is the problem with private museums, if takings don’t cover costs they will be exterminated, just like the Laurel and Hardy museum was. In fact this is the second Dr Who museum in Blackpool. The first opened in 1975 and lasted only ten years.
Stanley Park
This is a very good and very varied park. Public parks and public libraries are two of the greatest and longest lasting Victorian contributions to civic culture. They were marks of pride, purpose and self improvement. In these days of parasitic self interest our libraries are being exterminated by tax eating Daleks who hate books and use lies like ‘Multi-cultural information retrieval centres’ to force libraries to throw most of their books into skips and offer free internet access to terrorists and people who do not pay Council Tax. Parks are harder to kill but they are only slightly more safe from bribery and cretinism than all the listed buildings in Bradford that got instantaneous dry rot, or caught fire, just before a new road was announced. A well kept park is still a credit to a town, and Stanley Park is one of the best kept.
The Grundy Art Gallery
This is a very good gallery, with natural lighting. The collection has a good representative selection of British painters from the mid 19th to mid 20th Century, including Paul Nash, one of Bradwan’s favourites.
Grundy Art Gallery
PETERBOROUGH
Peterborough was once an island in a marsh; and the astonishing cathedral was built on a raft of logs, and used to stand proud above a low, windswept, brick and stone built country town. The wind and cathedral are still there, but it is now surrounded by a Thatcherite 80’s new town. So there is more chance of you finding the chain stores that abandoned Bradford years since, if you like that kind of thing.
Cathedral
Over the years Bradwan has written less and less about churches. Like real ale pubs people who are interested in them will already know all about them. There is also the fact that very few of the towns we have visited have a church worth trying to persuade the slack jawed to visit, but Peterborough Cathedral is well worth seeking out.
The east front is one of the best in Britain and the length is astonishing. It also has a rare painted monument to a grave digger, one Old Scarlett, who buried Catherine of Aragon and Mary Queen of Scots: although we cannot discover if he was the one who dug her up again when her son, James VI or I, had her moved to Westminster Abbey.
'Bye Bye Peterborough'
Does anyone else remember this banner at the end of Bradford City's last game in the 4th Division? Does anyone remember the times we lost here (see the bit above about wanting to commit suicide, especially as we may be joining the Posh in the P very soon).
|
