I’ve just been to Blackpool

Blackpool, United Kingdom

Oh dear. We have done it again. We Brits appear never to excel with our seaside resorts. You see, I have just been to Blackpool, one of the benefits – if you might call it that – of being a lecturer and asked to motivate intelligent but hungover audiences the morning after the night before.

By the sound of things, I was lucky to have anyone sat in the auditorium at all as the conference dinner, which I had – clearly wisely – declined to attend had finished at 4 a.m. Being an early bird I had gone for a run along the sea front. Boy, was that spooky. The way might have been lit but there were still hoody-clad figures hanging in the shadows, and at one point I saw a young figure dash down the road at a pace that screamed guilt. I stayed in the middle of the almost empty road at that point, preferring to jog on the darker pavement only when forced there by a passing car. Outwardly the place could, I am sure, look good. However, the reality was me feeling distinctly uneasy.

I should know better, of course, having been brought up in the seaside town of Portsmouth but clearly I had forgotten. On the face of it, Blackpool could be good. Piers, a tower, plenty of hotels, but it does have a ring of poverty about it. Perhaps the result of cheaper European holidays attracting the masses elsewhere.

It was a simple run; left out of the hotel and down the sea front I staggered. Fifteen minutes later it was time to turn around and return. Yet isn’t it astonishing how different places look when you see them back to front, as you run in the opposite direction? Before I knew it I had taken a wrong turn and was heading down some shadowy seaside road sporting numerous “Danger” signs, warning folk away from the temptation to go nearer to the sea.

Yet by then imminent exhaustion had lowered my guard, so I plodded on regardless, looking left, looking right and occasionally looking behind me. Looking backwards is not easy on an early morning run but I did, and what I saw made me run faster. Under some overhang of a once fancy, pillared structure I saw a hooded, shadowy figure rise to its feet. Then the figure started to run, heading fast in my direction. That was all the encouragement I needed to break from my geriatric stagger into a far-more-youthful sprint. I was not about to ask the hoody the time of day, nor to seek direction. I was out to leave him – possibly even her – as far behind as I could. For a moment I thought I would outpace my follower but as I ran I could hear the sound of shod feet thumping on the tarmac. I was losing, that much was clear. There was not much I could do other than keep running, so keep running I did. The thumping came closer, steady, purposeful and threatening. I knew not to look behind. That would slow me down and my would-be assailant, for that is all it could have been, would be on me in a heart beat.

Then, for no obvious reason, almost as soon as I heard the sound of breathing upon me, came a clearly male, “Oi! Bugger off then!” and the thumping ceased. I dared briefly to glance behind to see the hoody lower an outstretched arm, then bend forwards, straight arms now on knees, and throw up forcefully on the tarmac. I had beaten him by a whisker. Near-miss apart, I smiled as I continued, and jogged the remaining few minutes to my hotel.

At least I suppose you can call it a hotel. It was a Hilton, well past its sell-by date, and seemingly constructed during that 1960s period when Britain was hell-bent on digging up its history. An era when everything had to be square, transient, friendless and uninviting. I should have heeded the warning the previous night when I had first arrived. I was joined in the lift to my seventh floor room by a female in a dress so incredibly tight that nothing – and I do mean nothing – was left to the imagination. Remarkable really, how some females can be dressed but can still appear naked. This one had it to a tee.

The lift to the seventh floor did not actually go the whole way. Hotel renovation work – badly needed by its appearance – demanded I disembark at level five and complete the journey on foot. With relief I saw the lady of the night turn right, I assume towards a customer. Meanwhile I turned left and headed through a maze of corridors and up two floors at one end by the grey-painted concrete stairs of the fire escape. I mopped my forehead, fumbled for the key card and the door to 760 clicked open.

The room – oh dear the room. Seventh floor, reasonable view over a featureless sea and a car park, plus an interconnecting door so thin that I might as well have been positioned directly in 761. Every sound, every squeak, every last decibel drifted through as if the door had not existed. And once again Blackpool left nothing to the imagination. Instinctively, I did what I wager most also do – surreptitiously tried the interconnecting handle to check it was locked and to be sure that my neighbours could not surprise me. I need not have worried. They were manifestly hard at it, so I blocked out the noise, screams and groans with my Sennheiser headphones and listened to Charlotte Church singing hymns. It seemed appropriate bearing in mind the occasion.

So Blackpool is sadly no longer on my wish list of places to visit. Perhaps I saw it on a bad day, perhaps that is all it can offer. Hungover audiences, dressed-cum-naked ladies in elevators, seventh-floor passion and would-be muggers on the street, all within a 12-hour period. Oh yes, and it was raining, too. Perhaps I am spoiled and maybe deserve nothing different. Yet, please Great Britain, if Great we are, surely we are able to do better?