Whilst we wait for normal service…
It’s hard to explain precisely why, but I just love British seaside towns off peak. Sure, they may come alive when the tourist throngs are milling throughout the streets, camping out on the beaches with their sand ridden sandwiches and deckchairs spending a small fortune on tat and ice cream - but you really can’t beat the feel of a town just going about its normal business.
When I was much, much younger than I am now - I used to visit Southport regular with my grandparents. I remember it pretty much like it is today, the long, long walk down Lord Street amongst the shops and tree’s, the park with the lake, the beach that stretches for miles. Only, in my minds eye - it’s a beautifully kept place where the blue paint of the bridges is vivid and bright, the huts a relic to a time long past - reserved as resting places for families and pensioners alike, the water sparkling in bright sunlight as ducks glide across searching for crumbs.
Whether there was a time when it looked like this, or it’s just the reflection of a childs wide eyed fascination with somewhere that wasn’t the drudgery of an industrial town pumping cancer inducing chemicals into the air, pavements covered in rubbish and dog shit and the grim brick and corrogated iron combination of the nearby bridge that ran down the centre of the main town drag - well, I don’t know.
Southport today, in 2007 - just isn’t. The park and promenade look like they haven’t seen barely a sniff of paint in the time since I last visited many years ago. Windows on the huts are put through, walls covered with graffiti and the remnants of take aways litter the park, scattering paper in the wind.
The old theme park come fair now resembling something from the Batman Graphic Novel “The Killing Joke”, wrecked rides in the car park, kicked in doors… close your eyes for a second and you could well believe The Joker is inside commiting some sort of atrocity.
Yet, I still love it. I don’t love it for the memories of what it used to be or how I remember it (aided from a few photo’s stashed away with other childhood memories).
I love it because there’s something distinctly British about it.
It may be a faded shadow of its former self, and no longer the postcard-esque ideal of a seaside resort, but none of that really matters. There’s something endearing about the decay, something very natural. Something that can only really be appreciated when the place is free from the international rush for fish, chips and novelty postcards, when you’re free to roam whilst barely meeting another soul outside the main shopping drag.
But you know something, I don’t think I’ve ever, in all my years of visiting, seen the tide come in at Southport. I’m assured by a taxi driver that it does, as it should, come in two times a day without fail. But damn, I’m not convinced that faint blue line on the horizon ever gets close to the promenade.
Until I see it with my own two eyes, I’ll sigh and just assume it’s a myth…
Bah
Bah, bah and thrice bah.
At the moment myself, Mrs Bob and c4 are all stuck in the same room. Whilst the builders are in we’ve got very little in the way of a downstairs right now - unless we fancy living amidst a building site, and it looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a few more days now until the electrics are sorted out.
With the back bedroom and the garage being filled with stuff from downstairs there’s precious little room to move about never mind set my computer up. Luckily, I’ve managed to wangle the modem and router downstairs so on those moments where the electricity hasn’t been turned off - I’ve still got some internet access via Mrs Bobs Macbook.
I dunno, I don’t think I’d have it in me to become a bonafide MacWanker, I’m so used to the way Windows works that the dark arts of Appledom are a little befuddling to me. Coupled with the fact the lappy isn’t mine so I’m having to be careful what I install on it (IRC, a messenger client, Oids and Cave Story being the extent of my hard drive filling to date…).
Needless to say, I missed the TIGS competition due to the upheaval in Chez Bob leaving me no time to code and G-Force and even RR are currently on the backburner (RR is running on real low power at the moment with Caff away on holiday and me taking a backseat). Building work should be done by midweek providing no major disasters then we’ve a week or so of decoration before things start getting back to peace, quiet and normal. In the meantime, it’s trips out with baby and wife most mornings and a rapid decline in interesting places left to go. Which considering so far my travels have taken me down the canal, Ormskirk and Southport - none of which could really be classed as remotely interesting in anyones sensible books, that’s saying something. Still, at least I’m getting to indulge in a tour of bookshops in the North West so neither myself, Mrs Bob or baby are currently short of reading material. (Currently wading through the rather excellent Bollocks To Alton Towers myself, punctuated with the occasional break for some Oliver Jeffers for baby)
I’m also idling around transferring some of the games to their own pages in readiness for the next iteration of MR, so don’t be surprised if the odd new page crops up in the sidebar on the right over the next couple of days.
So, apologies for not really being around blogging, looking after MR/RR or anything else right now. I’m not ignoring the replies to posts previous, just with intertron access being intermittent I usually have other more urgent things to do - y’know, calling someone a cunt on IRC or something… 
Be back soon!
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