Another plus for the Tower building was the collections of moving tableaux machines, on all the broad staircase landings. For just one old penny, you could see firemen rescue a baby from a burning building, the Hanging of Dr Crippen,At the Haunted House, In the Haunted Graveyard, the Drunkard’s Nightmare, Father left Holding the Baby, each one a miracle of Victorian, automaton engineering.
I suppose someone eventually decided that the maintenance costs were far too high, and required a standard of craftsmanship, which was otherwise an extravagance on the wages bill. Also each machine took at least a minute to earn one penny, and when a punter had put a coin in one, no one was going to put money in any of the others. They’d all watch the first one until it finished, before someone stepped up to squander a penny on entertaining everyone to another show.
So they were probably all replaced by those big, shiny cranes, which dipped into a pile of shunkly jewellery, and picked up nothing, for a tanner, in less than 40 seconds. The next step was bigger, shinier cranes, dipping into bigger piles of jewellery, and picking up nothing for a bob, in less than 20 seconds.
Along the front was another marvel of automaton engineering, but on a bigger scale- a subterranean boat ride.
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Fairy
Grotto
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Each boat took maybe a dozen punters, and the boats were propelled along a little canal, via a chain drive, through a dark tunnel, onto which opened, at intervals, little illuminated caverns, on either side. In each cavern was a tableau of moving figures. The one I remember in particular, was a pond, in which floated several large lily buds, among their pads. The passing boat would trigger the mechanism, and each bud would open to reveal a crouching figure which slowly uncurled, stood up, one leg raised, and pirouetted- a fairy spreading her arms and wings, all seemingly of a celluloid construction, and lit from within.
On a business trip to Blackpool, in the early 70’s, I sought out the building again, and against all the odds, I found it. It was a ‘Doctor Who’ exhibition. Did all those fairies finish up in a landfill site? I very much fear that they did, and to my mind, that would constitute a crime approaching mass murder.
Another bolt hole, in wet weather, was Madam Tussaud’s Waxworks, where Jane once had a nice chat with a rather shy and retiring policeman, sitting on the bench, beside her. She couldn’t get him to speak at all. He was as quiet as…well, as a waxwork.
At some time, as we were mooching our way down to the beach, first thing after breakfast, Charlie would find a souvenir shop with an extensive, exterior display of saucy postcards- the Donald McGill originals- and he would persist in reading every one, (me too) much to the displeasure and embarrassment of Jane and Betty, but we never bought one. It was one of the best free shows of the holiday.
Eventually, we would make it to the beach, where I was obliged to enjoy myself, whether I wanted to, or not. I was always pressed into having a ride on a donkey. Despite being repeatedly assured that I would enjoy it, the donkeys were still bigger than me, inscrutable, very indiscriminate with their bodily functions, they smelled, their coats were coarse and dusty to touch, and they had no safety handles to hang on to. They had no interior springing, so when they walked, or even worse, ran, one was in great danger of biting one’s tongue, by dint of the wild, excessive bouncing up and down. Last but not least, there was the consequent, tenderising effect on the junior botty. All in all, I would just as soon not have bothered, and saved somebody 6d., but no, I was on holiday, and one always had a donkey ride, when on a seaside holiday.
Another dubious pleasure on the beach was bathing in the sea. It was a lorra laffs. I had a woollen bathing cozzie; not just trunks, but body and shoulder straps. Even when dry, the garment was like wire wool next to the skin, while the garment itself was shapeless and heavy. When wet, its weight quadrupled and that’s why it had body and shoulder straps- because without them, on the first immersion, as I bobbed back up, the cozzie would have harkened to gravity and stayed underwater.
The actual process of getting it wet was a sort of masochistic danse macabre. I would walk slowly into the water, jumping over each wave as it approached. The water gradually deepened with my progress, as each wave got higher. The inescapable climax came (waitforitWAITFORIT! Who’s telling this story?) when I encountered the one wave that I couldn’t quite clear, and the full, icy weight of the Irish Sea hit my winkle. Yes, as a child, I had a winkle. (At some point in my developing life, I decided that if I was ever blessed with a son, he would have a chopper, and he did. At nappy changing time, for lubrication, he had a choice of Khyber Cream or Goolie Grease. I even made him a travel pack, with a little pot of each, with the contents engraved on the screw-top lids). The icy assault was like the blow of an axe. Of course, as the wave dropped, the loins were burdened with several clinging pounds of soggy, icy, stretchy, wire wool. The sensible manoeuvre, now, was to step back a couple of paces, into slightly shallower water, and to sit down. That may sound a bit reckless, but the wet and the cold were unavoidable, whereas, underwater, there was no wind to bump up the chill factor, or freeze factor might be more appropriate. After the ritual immersion had been endured for an acceptable period of time, there came the drying and dressing ceremony. Although by this time, the whole body was wrinkled and numb with cold, it was amazing how the application of a towel, dressed with a little damp sand, would reactivate the pain-registering nervous system. Betty would shroud me in the towel, and tell me to pull off my costume, while assuring me, repeatedly, with-
“It’s all right. Nobody’s looking at you. Nobody’s looking at you”, but the more she assured me that no one was interested in seeing my little, pink marshmallow cluster, the more I became convinced that every eye on the beach was focused on me, and that on a pre-arranged signal, everyone would point and laugh.
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| You Will Enjoy Yourself! |
The donkey rides, and the bathing, I could cope with, because, un-enamoured as I was with them, I suspected that I just wasn’t doing it right. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it so, and I felt that, if I applied myself, I would eventually get the hang of it. So I was always prepared to give it another go. The salad was a different matter.
Mrs. Blood’s full board consisted of cooked breakfast, mid-day dinner and high tea, and one day of the week, the tea consisted of cold meat salad, usually boiled ham. I used to dread the day we would arrive back at Hornby Road at teatime, and on stepping into the hall, I would smell the salad. The ham I liked; lettuce I could cope with; beetroot was manageable. Tomato and cucumber I found vomit-inducing. I couldn’t possibly eat either. Just the smell of them made me heave. Jane and Betty made the ordeal worse for me, by slopping Heinz salad cream all over their plates, though Betty did relieve me of the tomato and cucumber. In retrospect, she would have done better to request, in advance, a jam sandwich substitute. Jam sandwiches were half my diet, at home.
I always survived the ordeal without actually throwing up. I never disgraced myself. This was a double bonus because, although not overly affected so, when it did happen, it was of a class called ‘trajectile’ by those who study such things. It’s the difference between a dripping tap to be regulated at will, and a pressure hose on sporadic, and uncontrollable full bore. So no one ever knew what a miracle of junior self-control was visited, annually, on this ‘Famous Seaside place called Blackpool, note for Fresh Air and Fun’.