Noted For Fresh Air And Fun

After reading my series of postings "A Short Treatise on Lamp Posts", someone remarked to me the other day "You really do need to get out more" (don't knock it, you don't get much feedback in this business, almost anything that helps keep to long, lonely nights a little shorter is welcome). So yesterday I went to Blackpool.

As my brother reminded me in an e-mail last night (or this morning or whatever time it is in Dominica) the famous seaside place called Blackpool is "noted for fresh air and fun" (if you don't know the full monologue, check it out). There was fresh air aplenty yesterday - as you can see from the enclosed image it was a breathtakingly lovely spring day. The sky could match anything my brother wakes up to each day in Dominica and there was a Harry Ramsdens fish and chip shop. Mind you they probably have those in the West Indies by now. Fun was in plentiful supply as well - or at least the word was. There were numerous "Fun Palaces", slot machines called the "Fun Penny Falls", rock shops advertising "fun prices". Almost everywhere was guaranteeing a fun time for all the family. But if the international standard of measurement of fun is a smiling face, somehow all these fun-delivery facilities (or FDF's as they are known in the leisure management trade) were falling short of their potential.

Besides myself, only a handful of other trippers had made it to the coast and these were the usual assortment of lost souls (and I include myself in this description). Ask yourself the question : who, on a bracing Thursday in early March, would take off for the day just to see the Irish Sea make war on the concrete defences of Blackpool promenade? Had these twenty or thirty other people also been instructed to get out more?. Is travelling to where the land meets the sea and surrounding yourself by flickering lights advertising fun (or in some cases where the neon had faded fu) a suitable treatment for mid-life depression? Or a fitting punishment?

I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy myself. I had a relatively pleasant day. Say what you want, but you can't argue that Blackpool isn't noted for fresh air. The jury is still out on the fun bit.