Last Night in Great Yarmouth

Friday 23 August 2002. It was our last night in Great Yarmouth. Tomorrow would see us leave after breakfast and a morning coffee in our favourite beach hut cafe.

There was still a long row of amusement arcades along the seafront road, but sadly gone were the days when you caould find half a dozen or more pinball machines in every arcade. I think we only found two such machine the whole week and predictably one of them wasn't working all that well.

Instead the arcades were full of video games which simply required a good memory for the sequence of challenges rather than the skills to aim balls at various targets through an understanding of the laws of physics. Crane machines full of overweight stuffed toys and pushers with far too much weight of coins to be pushed forwards made up most of the other machines. Miss Franny armed herself with coins and spent the night trying to increase her haul of Winnie the Pooh keyrings. She came home with five...

Our childhood was spent playing the pinballs of the 1950s and 60s, the earlier ones with wooden rails before steel began to be used. They had weak 2-inch flippers that often didn't have the power to send the ball further than halfway up the playfield. The earliest had no flippers at all and targets were just a nail with a surrounding coiled spring that completed the circuit with the nail when pressed against it. The early machines also had gobble holes which scored - but you lost your ball down them for good.

The 1960s were a heyday for pinball players. Rows and rows of them would fill an entire wall of amusement arcades. Spinning score reels replaced the system where bulbs would light in different places on the scorefield to show your score - rows of ten bulbs for millions, 100 thousands, 10 thousands... You had to add them up to get your score. The space created on the back boxes (backflashes) of pinballs by score reels allowed animated features to be added - a lift door opening to reveal the passengers, or a small bagatelle firing tiny balls to signify the launch of a space rocket...

It would be another decade before pinballs became computer controlled, two decades before Gorgar became the first pinball to talk. Elvira - Scared Stiff was the pinball to go to this week and was a good game.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

The Golden Mile in the 1970s

When I came to do the index page for Blackpool's Golden Mile, I was sad to see just how few dedicated posts there were to it. So I'll sort out a few more as we go along! Actually I'll be doing that for most of the index pages and not just the Blackpool ones!

This one was taken in 1975 from the pedestrian bridge over the Promenade. The Golden Mile Centre was the first of the purpose-built large amusement arcades and at the time a section had been taken over by a large exhibition of puppets, props, costumes and models from the many Gerry Anderson TV programmes from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. THey started with Twizzle, Torchy the Battery Boy and Four Feather Falls and then went through all the favourite futuristic series: Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet etc. all the way through to the live action shows, UFO and Space 1999. The rest of the Golden Mile amusement arcades were still inside the old original buildings, hotels and somewhat ramshackle sheds built onto the front of them. They occupied what had been a row of gardens at one time.

As the more unsteady buildings were demolished, small temporary spaces were soon filled with kiddies' rides and roundabouts, until building commenced on the next modern project. This photo was taken in 1976 and a helicopter roundabout, a version of an octopus ride and a full dodgems ride fills the space next to the Golden Mile Centre, extending from the Promenade right back to Bonny Street.

To 1977 and inside the arcades, Fran's brother Bob with our nephew Chris playing a Peppy the Clown puppet game.

Fran herself was into fruit machines. It was around this time they started to get more complicated. With the old ones, you simply pulled the handle and hoped. Then as electronics came along the Hold feature came along, swiftly followed by Nudge and then a whole host of jackpot options until you needed a university degree to understand how to play...

1978 and still not a single video game in sight! Pinball machines (it was an American phrase that was just taking over - during the 1950s and 60s we had called them Pin Tables in the UK) were my favourite coinslot obsession. The best machines would have a queue of people waiting to play. A row of sixpences or shillings lined up along the side rail of the machine would secure your place in the queue.

A glimpse inside the newly opened Coral Island in 1978. With sumptuous carpets and neon lights and a couple of life-size mannikins swinging from trapezes up in the ceiling, it was a step change from the arcades we were used to.

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Blackpool's Golden Mile Index Page

A series of articles looking at Blackpool's famous Golden Mile through my photographs from the mid-1970s onwards.

Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.

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Coin Slot Machines

A series of articles dealing with my memories of coin-operated machine in seaside amusement arcades, on station platforms at enthusiasts meetings and at home.

Each of the articles can be read by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.

Fourth 1977 Blackpool Photo Album, 2: The Golden Mile

Blackpool's Golden Mile features on today's flashback to 1977, with reminders of the Dr Who Exhibition, Lewis's department store, the building of Coral Island and the Golden Mile Centre.

I start with the Lewis's store as the only shot that is less oriented towards the holiday maker. Though it did draw them in their thousands of course. The store, which opened in 1964, is still fondly remembered in the town and added considerably to the aesthetics of the Promenade with it's turquoise tiling and backlit frontage. In 1977 it carried red, white and blue ribbons for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. It closed in 1993.

Another fine sight on the Golden Mile, though a brand new use for the building, was Ripley's Believe It Or Not Odditorium. Celebrating the startling and freakish amongst both nature and achievement, it was fun to visit and brilliantly stand-out at night when the large signboard lit up with bright red neon. A short time later Ripley installed a glass tube that fed water from a pool below to a huge tap that, as the water cascaded from the tube seemed to be flowing from the tap. The water then obscured the pipe so that the tap seemed to be suspended on a column of falling water. It was very effective. Sadly I have no photograph of it.

An out of season shot of Ripley's, also showing the Golden Mile Centre.

This was Blackpool's first large purpose-built amusement arcade. It would eventually become Mr Bee's and today houses the Sea Life Centre.

Together with Ripley's it dominated the Central Beach area of the Golden Mile. The bright blue and yellow of the Silver Jubilee commemorative tram passes by and the two port-a-cabins towards the left are the Lost Children's Centre (white) and a first-aid post in blue. There's a Wall's ice cream kiosk on the beach and I think the other one is selling seafood type rubbish for the southern visitors...

Why anyone would eat jellied eels and whelks is beyond me, though the practice of putting unidentifiable pap on meals and sandwiches is sadly spreading northwards. When people in the south say "we'll eat out" I invariably hear it as "we'll eat owt..." The number of times I went to London for work and had to point at something on a buffet saying "what the hell is that???" doesn't bear thinking of. But for all their culinary short-comings (they seem never to have heard of a crust for instance), the people are remarkably likeable!

For a couple of years the Golden Mile Centre hosted an exhibition of models and puppets from the Gerry Anderson TV portfolio. Twizzle, Torchy the Battery Boy, Four Feather Falls, Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray (Whoopee - colour!) (Waah! We still had a black and white telly!), Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, UFO, Space 1999... I used to go in and just lap up pleasure until it got dark and they threw me out...

An early season shot before they installed a massive and animated ogre figure over the end of this building to advertise The Horror Crypt. My goodness gracious, that steamed up a lot of people in the council who shouted their disgust and distress loud and clear, ignoring the fact that it was carrying on a great tradition of the Golden Mile. Farther into the distance are the green girders that would later hold up the roof of the new Coral Island centre, due to open in 1978.

The Devil's Den was a short-lived exhibition next door to the Brunswick which has opened a self-service fish and chip cafe. Self-service in those days meant you got a tray and slid it across rails whilst you gave your order and then waited for it to be plated before sliding the tray to the till. It wasn't too many years since this would have been unthinkable - that your order wouldn't be taken and served by a waitress in black with starched white apron. "What do I do? What do I do???" muttered people helplessly as others sat at empty tables, fuming because they had been there half an hour without anyone taking their order... The same people a few years later let food go cold in MacDonalds whilst they searched for cutlery...

The old-style open sheds full of flick-ball games, Ber-o-Mat one-armed bandits, pinball machines so old they didn't have flippers etc. were in their last throes. The old houses and hotels behind them that they were built onto had been neglected so long that they were in danger of collapsing. Nothing above ground floor level had been in use for decades.

The kiosks at the front of the arcades were the last bastions of those oh-so-scrummy hamburgers (which now had to be called beefburgers due to advertising law) which were fried on a griddle and then propped up in a row on the back of the griddle plate amongst a pile of fried onions that kept them hot. Asking for lettuce (even though it would have been lettuce and not some sort of weird-looking "salad leaf", then still correctly thought of as inedible) or pickle or a slice of tomato would have earned you guffaws of hysterics. Only recently was it becoming acceptable, though not yet the norm, to ask for a slice of cheese. You had your bun, a burger, lots of fried onions and it was normal to put ketchup or mustard or possibly both on it.

Youngsters have always wondered why old people get so grumpy. And I can now say that for every generation it's because everything that has been familiar and comfortable and good seems to get swept away by following generations. To those youngsters who read this I can say with all surety that you will feel like this yourself when you get older. Sadly though the generation between mine and yours is doing their best to ensure you will never get chance to do this yourselves because they are destroying things for you already, having got into power and now looking after their rich chums whilst dancing with their fingers in their ears in case they hear something that might prick the last remaining vestige of conscience they might have. Robin Hood, we need you back more than ever...

The other reason older people are grumpy is that it is, actually, quite good fun...

Down at Chapel Street, opposite the Central Pier. At the end of the building is an exhibition of props and costumes from Dr Who. The entrance is the Tardis itself, which can be seen halfway down the side of the building. Another of those bits of Blackpool's past that seems to be lovingly remembered. Incredibly almost, we were still only on the fourth Doctor at the time. Tom Baker played the Doctor from 1974 to 1981, lasting not quite as long as did the exhibition which lasted from 1974 to 1985.

As I write it is New Year's Eve. Tomorrow will be 2016, so a Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope it will be / is / was!

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