Time Travel Tower

Blackpool - an iconic and memorable town, its a bit like an inappropriately dressed auntie that sidles up to you at the xmas party, drink in hand, to smack wet kisses on your chops while pressing you to her ample bosom. At once pleasant and at the same time slightly uncomfortable. But after a quick swig of your favourite tipple and a bag of chips, that subtle magic is there again. The first time I visited the town was in the mid seventies, five of us crammed into a mini cooper, me and my parents were delivered onto the Golden Mile one summer evening. It was an experience ill never forget, staying up way beyond bedtime and all the shops open and enjoying a roaring trade. I came home that night with a Lunar Zoomer, one of those pieces of flexible hoover pipe that you whirled around your head and listened to it warble. I also stuffed myself with all kinds of sweets and pop and marvelled at the vast array of gift shops, sex shops and arcades, ranged along the front. There were some of the best toy shops ive ever come across tucked away in the back streets, stuffed with old toys as well as new. Even in the succeeding years, it was possible  to discover vintage space toys resting on the shelves, alongside hordes of cheap hong kong toys made for the seaside shops. The addition of  Dave Nightingales wonderful Thunderbooks store meant I could pick up armfuls of manga comics and japanese import kits too.

I visited Blackpool at the weekend and spent the day walking the front and watched the illuminations light the night sky. Between the donkeys, the stag partys, the candy floss and the shops peddling cheap rubbish toys along the front, the magic was still there. The toys had long gone and the old toy shops with them, but that frisson of kitchy, vintage fun was timeless and in its simple way, priceless.