Funland

My mother is a serial mover. She reminds me of Vianne in the movie Chocolat who leans out of the window and lets the winds of change ruffle her hair. It’s time to move, the winds tell her. I hated those stupid winds.

I especially hated them when my mother announced that we were leaving our cosy, sleepy village, deep in the English countryside, for Blackpool, a town that always registers highly on the UK’s list of worst places to live. Where once the glowing sun and sand drew eager holiday makers, the beaches emptied as soon as Brits got a taste of Mediterranean glory and Blackpool became ‘the most unhealthy place in England’ and ‘a dumping ground for the socially excluded’. You could imagine my excitement at the prospect of living there.

We moved in Winter, and the first thing that struck me, quite literally, was a razor-sharp hailstone that took a slice out of my cheek, urged on by the ferocious sea wind. So much for the warm welcome. I hoped that the unfriendly winds would whisper to my mother, urging her away from this place. They didn’t. Nope, we settled into a house that appeared to have been decorated by a grandma on acid and which featured an array of kitchen knives embedded in the wall. I repeat, there were knives embedded in the wall. It was to be my mum’s project, the first house that’d she’d bought thanks to the low prices in the town, and so there was no getting out there.

Several streams of tinsel, a cinnamon-scented candle and a crate of bucks fizz later, we could just about ignore the knives, the grotesque wallpaper and the howling winds outside to enjoy a festive family Christmas, followed by a few weeks of hibernating before I fled back to university and didn’t return till spring.

This time, I was met with a soft, salty sea breeze that floated up the hill from the beach and made me inhale deeply. The sky was a work of art. Streaks of orange, pink and purple swirled around the flaming golden coin that slipped towards the perfect, straight edge of the watery horizon. It was the most incredible sunset I had ever seen. I hugged my family quickly after eight weeks apart and demanded that someone accompany me to the beach.

My sister and I raced through the endless grids of terraced housing and pound stores that glowed in the light of the sunset, until we broke through a line of mansion-like hotels that stretched on as far as the eye could see, along the coast. Each one competed with its neighbour to stand out more, brightly painted, fancy balconies, pillars straight from a Greek temple and neon lights that pulsed ‘Vacancies.’

The real attraction was what lay before us. A vast sea shimmering in the sunlight, a long promenade covered in shadowy sculptures that demanded investigation, a glowing Ferris wheel on a wooden pier that stretched out into the water. Excited screams drew our attention to a gleaming rollercoaster that hurled cartloads of people over a sky-high hump, before our eyes shifted to where the scent of chlorine blasted from a waterpark, slides slithering in and out of the bright blue building.

As the sun was quickly eaten up by the horizon, the promenade became a party land of lights. Everything was lit up with colour, as if Blackpool came awake at night and sought the attention of aliens in distant galaxies. Now we saw even more. A great big tower flashed in the distance, a beacon that called anyone looking for a good time onwards. Come and dance in the lights, it screamed. A giant disco ball spun before the sea, casting glowing speckles over the prom and demanding that we come and play. When my sister and I could eventually tear our eyes away from the possibilities before us, we turned to each other with a grin and set off towards the disco ball. Our merry exploration was almost halted when we discovered that our traffic awareness had never extended to trams before, a silent, glowing party bus that crept along its tracks with barely a whisper. It was coated in neon lights, like every other surface in the town, which allowed it to subtly camouflage with its environment and hide from our dazzled eyes. We noticed it just in time and hopped quickly over the tracks and out of its way.

We danced under the disco ball. There was even music drifting out of mounted speakers, just there, out in the open. Passers-by joined the party, as if their usual evening stroll down the prom often ended in an impromptu disco. The energy of the place sizzled under the lights and I was starting to change my mind about our new town, until we noticed a shadowy figure lurking by a gap in the sea wall, watching us under the lights and behaving oddly. I made assumptions about what that shadow was doing of course, I could have been wrong, but our night under the lights was over with a sinking feeling and I whisked my sister away, returning safely home. Blackpool had its murky reputation and I had to remember that, but I wasn’t about to give up on it. There was so much to explore.

Summer was a time where Blackpool shined, literally. I had never experienced so much sunshine in England. My mum said that Blackpool had its own micro-climate, a hailstone-lobbing windstorm in winter but a haven in summer. It was a fantasy land for everyone. My sister and I invited our friends over for wild nights partying in the bubbling club district, followed by lounging on the beach, building sandcastles and eating fish and chips (a famous British delicacy). ‘Watch out for the seagulls’, I warned, giggling, after the Blackpool Gazette reported on a hungry seagull snatching a sausage roll straight out of a poor woman’s mouth. We danced, performed karaoke, gambled away our two pence pieces in the arcades, threatened to push each other off the piers, screamed on the rollercoasters and the water slides, drank cheap alcohol, devoured Mr Whippy ice creams, climbed the iconic tower to peer nervously down through its glass floor, got locked in the dungeons, held starfish at the sea-life centre, marvelled at the ‘funny girls’ performing cabaret, baked under the sun whilst laughing on the comedy carpet and cooled off in the not-quite-freezing sea. Yes, there was occasionally a washed-up condom, human faeces down alleyways, street fights, broken teeth from biting down too hard on Blackpool rock, a temptation to graduate from the arcades and onto hard gambling in the casino, and an almost constant hangover but you can’t have an endless source of entertainment without a few consequences. That was the life and soul of Blackpool.

We stayed for three years, during which time I never got bored, even in Winter when I started to laugh at the wind that tried to push me over, knowing that it would be powerless in summer. There was always something to entertain: music, shows, festivals of light. My mother slowly transformed the house into a paradise, but I finished university and it was time for me to grow up and relocate for work. The winds of change whispered to my mother soon after and our family never returned to Blackpool. We hear about it; each time new rankings appear for the worst place to live in the UK or a wild rumour emerges that a kebab shop in Blackpool is serving human meat. I always smile, thinking of the bright lights and glorious sunshine that filled that odd time between the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood, where I learnt not to believe everything I hear, but to discover it for myself. I owe a lot of joy to the town I now call Funland.