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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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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Third Blackpool 1977 Photo Album 1

I've dug out another of my photo albums from 1977. This one will include quite a few shots of Blackpool after dark, as it features both the Illuminations and a look around the Pleasure Beach at night. There will also be a visit to Blackpool Tower and some more shots of the Pleasure Beach by day including another shot of the building of the Steeplechase ride.

For this first article we'll take a look at the Golden Mile and the Illuminations on a busy October night! Ripley's Believe It Or Not Odditorium near to Louis Tussaud's waxworks was the first Ripley's to open in the UK. The huge red neon sign made an excellent addition to the Golden Mile at night.

Heading down towards the Central Pier along the frontages of the many amusement arcades in the seventies meant listening to the voices of Bingo callers, snatches of music and the mechanical clatter of the arcade games. As yet there were few electronic games filling the air with whoops and swooshing noises, not yet even the slightly out of tune Donkey Kong (1981) music or the white noise of electronic drumbeats. The simplest Pong tennis games and Breakout had been invented but were very scarce as yet. Most arcades had at least one jukebox to play music, but the videos with their incessant sound effects would soon see them removed.

Burgers were still a meat patty with only fried onions, mustard and/or ketchup to accompany them. You would have been laughed at if you asked for lettuce or tomato... Chicken could be had in a basket... Barkers could be heard shouting "Hot Dogs!" to which my father-in-law, were he out with us, would always add "and cats!" in a loud voice! You would see one or two actual cats sitting expectantly on the pavement in front of a seafood stall, waiting for someone to drop a tasty morsel or the stallholder to toss the occasional prawn their way.

It was a magical time for the Illuminations in the second half of the 1970s. Cars formed solid lines even during the week. At weekends the Promenade was made one-way only from south to north until it was found this was actually illegal. The Promenade and pavement of the sea front would be filled with walking couples and small parties. "Mum can I have a candy floss?" asked a small boy walking north past the Metropole towards the Gynn. "When we reach the next pier..." came the reply.

The weather made little difference to the numbers of cars. But the number of walkers would drop down a bit. A shame really, because the lights were and are seen at their best when helped out by a highly reflective wet floor. Well that's the first two or three pages of the album. Next time we'll have a look inside the Tower and take a trip up in the lift to look at the Illuminations from 500 feet up!

The photo album. Not a photo of Blackpool...

Just a Tram at Twilight...

September 1985 - doesn't it take me a long time to write these blog entries? Anyway on one warm evening we had gone for a walk up the Promenade and went up to the North Pier to capture a few of the illuminated trams coming out to play.

If I were asked what was my favourite of the illuminated trams it would be hard to choose between this and the western train. But I've always liked this 1950s vision of what a space ship would look like. The tram had a body raked up at 30 degrees - the only one of Blackpool's fleet to have such an arrangement. It rejoiced in the name of Tramnik 1 - by the end of the 1950s the Americans were only just getting thinking about space travel. The Russians though had managed to put a satellite called Sputnik 1 in orbit in 1957. It orbited the Earth every 96 minutes and stayed up for three months before it burned up in the atmosphere falling back to Earth in early 1958.

Tramnik 1 did slightly better, retiring from use in 1999 after 38 years. It was capable of being driven in reverse but this was not a sophisticated arrangement and today's Health and Safety regulations would require extensive work before it could ever be allowed to run again, but the external lighting was rewired and the tram displayed on the Gynn Square roundabout for the 2012 illuminations.

Tram 761, one of only two Jubilee trams built, seen at Central Pier. It was built on the chassis of Balloon tram 725. The tram was elongated and had doors fitted either end for use as one-man-only operation. It first ran in 1979 and due to its high passenger capacity was used throughout the year mainly on Fleetwood runs. It later acquired all-over advertising - something I (and most tourists I've spoken to) hate - ending up bright orange, advertising Wynsors World of Shoes. It was withdrawn in 2011.

I love night photography but the best shots seem to come not when the sky is black, but at twilight when there's still a hint of blue in the sky. In this case, some cloud turns the sky a patchwork of blue and dark adding interest to this shot of Standard Tram 40, closely followed by a Balloon tram travelling south past the Golden Mile.

They are worth another look. On its way back to the depot, Standard 40 has only a few passengers and I suspect some of them may be workers at the end of a shift.

I'll finish with a daytime shot. There never needs to be an excuse to show either Lewis's store or the Dreadnought tram!

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1977 Blackpool Photo Album 5 - Amusements, Pastimes and South Shore

We're turning the pages of a photograph album full of photos of Blackpool taken in 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee Year. This is the fifth instalment and there will be at least one more, possibly two before we come to the last page - and look for another album!

Coffin trams Nos.3 and 13 caught side by side at Manchester Square. These were Corporation-built for operation as One-Man-Only vehicles, without the need for conductors. Passengers are queuing to enter tramcar No.3 at the extreme left, a slower process than normal because of the need for each passenger to stop by the side of the driver and exchange cash and tickets. Also at the extreme left we can see the sun lounge of the Craig-Y-Don Hotel. By 1977 most but not all of the hotels on the Promenade had sun lounges built onto the exterior of the outside front wall, creating a room for visitors that afforded views of the Promenade and sea that was warm in all weathers and sheltered from wind and rain. They were starting to creep up some of the side roads also. It only needed one hotel or guest house to go this route and the others would have to follow suit as visitors who had come "on spec" i.e. without booking accommodation before arriving, would naturally head for the ones with modern sun lounges.

The addition of what was in effect an extra room created all sorts of opportunities. Some hotels used this as their dining room giving visitors the chance to watch early morning activity on the Promenade. Many used them as a lounge, with entertainment and a bar. Some used them to create mini waterfalls... flat roofs, you know...

In 1977 much of the Golden Mile was occupying buildings that had existed for many decades. Originally hotels or houses with gardens, earlier occupants had quickly cottoned onto the fact that the garden space could be used or sub-let to hold attractions and stalls to draw the passing visitors. Teas and coffees, amusement arcades, shops selling items for the beach including balls, buckets and spades and stalls selling sheet music. These were particularly popular in those days when almost every front parlour had a piano and would often employ singers who spent the entire day singing the same song, drawing huge crowds who soon learned the chorus to join in.

By 1977 most pianos had been replaced with radiograms and stereos. The sheet music stalls had gone and in their place were markets and mock auctions where crowds would be whipped into a frenzy by barkers and well-placed cronies who would "buy" a bargain and excite the crowd even more until they began to push and shove each other into buying what might turn out to be at best shoddy goods and at worst a box with a brick in it... They were closed down regularly and sprang up again just about as regularly.

Here we see The Washington pub in the background (now Uncle Peter Webster's, although the tiled name still exists). A shop at the end has toys for the beach, postcards and offers developing and printing of photographs in these days of film cameras, long before the digital cameras we have now. Having a film developed and printed could cost up to three pounds fifty pence. This is almost 40 years ago so you can probably easily multiply that by ten at least. You now see why most people didn't take as many photos as you do now! I did, mainly because I was selling photos to magazines during the seventies and eighties.

Next door is an ice cream stall and there are plenty of those left with us today. Again though, times were changing. Walls had introduced the Italian-style Cornetto and the wafer cone it came in had a different taste and texture than the lightly baked biscuit (loaded with "e" numbers to ensure they were all the same colour) cone that was more traditional. People were divided into two camps - those who preferred the new, darker more brittle cone and those who stuck with the lighter and less crumbly traditional cone.

Pastimes Amusements takes up the right hand side of the photo, a typical rectangular box filled with flashing lights and tinkling bells from the row of pinball machines that lines one wall. These were still electro-mechanical. They relied on banks and banks of relays rather than computer chips. Scoring was shown by reels of numbers spinning round. They were sparse of special features and much easier to understand than their counterparts ten years later. So too with one-armed bandits (we call them fruit machines these days). Most were still operated with a mechanical grab bar at one side which was pulled down to compress a spring mechanism which when released would set the reels spinning. You could find a few with a hold feature, but nudge was only starting to be seen, and there were no complicated systems requiring hours of play before you twigged what you needed to do.

Penny pushers were popular and race and roulette games were common. Rifle ranges were plentiful - either with real rifles (usually air powered, but some featured live .22 ammunition) or as a single replica gun attached to a cabinet with moving targets inside. Those ranges with rifles firing projectiles had the rifle muzzles chained down so they could not be swung away from the confines of the range targets, but it wasn't unknown for a range operator behind the counter to feel a sudden pain if he hadn't warned players not to shoot as he moved about! Bizarrely, the arcade advertises that it gives Green Shield Stamps... I suspect these were a feature of bingo games rather than one-armed bandits...

The site of all these stalls and the arcade is now occupied by Silcocks' Fun Palace.

A little further south is the Carousel arcade. This had a brand new large machine which showed film footage of western characters on a large screen and had a stand with a holstered gun which you drew against the film characters. The gun shot a light at sensors behind the screen and depending on your speed and aim (though shooting pretty much anywhere as long as it was at the screen would do) the film gunman either shot you and then looked somewhat apologetic, or you shot him and he would tumble backwards or (towards the end of your five duels) would tumble forwards off the roof of a saloon. This machine also had a push-button "professional" option where cocking your gun before the flash of the gunman's eyes, which was your signal that he was about to draw his gun, would disqualify that shot and whether you were quicker or not, you were shot by the gunman. In real life you would probably have shot your foot off anyway... The Carousel also gave Green Shield Stamps.

The Leisure and Pleasure Arcade was around the area of the Brunswick on the Golden Mile proper. Stalls sell Blackpool rock and cigarettes. Many people still smoked. Though cigarette adverts on TV were banned in 1965, they were shown in cinemas until 1986 and new brands kept appearing during the 1970s. With the growing realisation that smoking could cause disease and even death, many brands such as Silk Cut came out claiming to be "mild". Milder they may have been, but good for you they certainly weren't! Smoking has reduced considerably these days. Many people still smoke but bans at work and in public buildings has forced most smokers to reduce their habit. I was working in Cash & Carries at the time and with long 12-hour days, including overtime, had been smoking between 40-60 Players No.6 cigarettes a day. I gave up smoking at the end of 1976 when we were expecting our daughter. As an added incentive the price of a packet had leapt up to 30p for a packet of 20!

Whilst we are talking prices; from the arcade signs we can see that a game of Bingo with two cards cost 5p, a stick of rock was 6p but you could get 12 sticks for 50p and (what a bargain!) that was the same price as the previous year!

Passing in front of the arcade are a Mini Traveller, with the woodwork reminiscent of a bygone age of shooting brakes, the forerunners of estate cars. To the right, the rear end of a car, either a Morris Oxford or Austin Cambridge is heading southwards towards...

South Shore. Here we are looking from the gardens, across the roadway to the South Pier. The magnificent horse's head sculpture still exists I think behind the ugly modern facade which is a testament to the tastelessness of recent owners. In 1985 it vanished behind a pink and white confectionary of a tent-like structure and awaits someone with a bit of sense to uncover and restore it.

The Beachcomber amusements arcade at the entrance to the pier had for a good decade featured a forerunner of The Carousel's quick draw game. This machine though, instead of film, had a life-sized mannequin of a gunslinger, dressed all in black and with a single photo cell in the middle of his chest. You had to seriously aim well to beat this hombre! Mind you, there were no sensors that disqualified you from cocking the gun early, or even from drawing it and taking a bead on the photo cell long before he shouted "draw!". On this word, the gunman's own gun arm would swing mechanically and somewhat slowly and stiffly upwards. If you were asleep, or were simply a poor shot, you paid the price upon which he laughed at you and challenged any onlookers to have a go. On the off-chance you beat him he said "Ugh! You got me!", but refused to fall down, never mind tumble off a saloon roof!

The gardens in 1977 had a Crazy Golf course. This was just one of several in the town. There was one right down at Squires Gate, one on the southern half of the Pleasure Beach, one in the sunken gardens just north of the Metropole hotel... Some had plastic obstacles, some had wavy lines and bends obscuring the line from tee to the hole. This one was built with concrete obstacles. The players remind us again that the seventies was a good time for knitwear...

Here the telephoto lens has brought the end of the South Pier close enough to have a good look at the facilities. A giant slide had been bought from the Pleasure Beach and installed on the end of the pier. The theatre was still in existence and The Black Abbotts comedy group, led by the popular Russ Abbott, headline with comedian Roy Walker who would have a long spot, bringing the first half of the show to the intermission. There were two shows every night, the first and second "house". The wooden structure of the bar advertises William Younger's Scotch Ales. Visitors from north of the border were frequently incensed at the common use of Scotch instead of the correct Scottish. "Scotch is a drink!" they would say in a fierce tone.

On the landward side of the Promenade just north of the gardens near the Pleasure Beach was the Lucky Star. As I write, it has just closed and awaits a final fate to the great sadness of many in the town. I remember the business in the late 1950s, selling trays with pots of tea for visitors to take across the road to the beach. A deposit secured the safe return of trays and pots. It operated out of a tiny hut, which was added to at intervals until my favourite incarnation in the mid 1960s had a small amusement arcade attached to a cafe with seating and a jukebox. The arcade was destined to grow into the dominant side of the business. Eventually, this purpose-built two-storey building swept aside the wooden structures and I remember it with great affection a couple of decades later as being the last arcade with any decent selection of pinball machines.

Our final photo this time shows the old Open Air Baths opposite the Crazy Golf course. Opened in 1923 this was a popular venue into the early 1970s but, with the proliferation of central heating, folk were becoming less hardy and the pool was filled with unheated sea water. The sea at Blackpool is not known for being particularly warm and you had to be willing to put up with some discomfort if not outright muscle seizure to swim here! It had been for many years the host site for the Miss Blackpool beauty contests with summer season celebrities acting as judges. Its popularity continued to wane until finally it was demolished and the Sandcastle water park venue built in its place.

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1977 Blackpool Photo Album 4 - When The Tide Comes In

Continuing our series of photos from my 1977 album of Blackpool. We are still mooching up and down the Promenade, but today the tide is in so we'll have a look at what holiday makers would do when the beach was off limits.

Use of a telephoto lens has played with the perspective a little here. I was standing underneath the pedestrian road bridge whose shadow crosses in the foreground. It appears as though there is an army of poles standing sentry, leading towards the North Pier and holding up the tram wires and the same goes for the line of lampposts on the central reservation between the northwards and southwards lanes of the roadway. On the right a crowd of people wait to cross the road to the Tower, reminding us of a time when there were kerb stones...

Next to the Tower is the blue-green honeycombed front of Lewis's store, a true landmark of the Promenade. I must have been in there countless times, yet all I can remember is that marvellous front facia and an arcade of window displays that was accessed from the Promenade.

In the foreground a proud nan pushes her grandchild who is wearing a smart navy blue cardigan or jacket with white piping. He or she is bent down to admire the tiny wheels of the ground-breaking MacLaren baby buggy. Every single baby in 1977 had one of these. They were all the same design, there were as yet no imitators and they were available with deckchair-style material of either blue and white or red and white stripes. They folded down to a hitherto undreamed of small size and were great for taking babies on buses or in cafes and restaurants where the old style baby pushchairs took up too much room.

A little further on and a family are walking to catch the Fleetwood-bound tram. To their left an elderly man is wearing a suit for his stroll along the Promenade. All through my childhood in the 1950s and 60s, people wore their best clothes when out for the day and even by 1977 the tradition was slow to disappear, particularly amongst the older visitors. People still dressed up to go to a show whether it was at the poshest theatre or at the end of the pier. Whether a formal suit or a more flamboyant style (this was not long after the glam-rock era after all) people would go out looking their best. Alas; punk rock would break into mainstream during this year and "looking their best" came to include bin bags held together with safety pins...

As we walk along the Promenade, past the end of the Tower, we take a quick glance up Victoria Street. This street would undergo radical change over the next five years as almost every building would be replaced, narrowing the street which became closed to traffic and obscuring much of this view of the Winter Gardens Coronation Street entrance. A fine display of blue denim flares is marching past the corner of the Tower Lounge.

The impressive looking tower with its tiled roof on the left hand side of Victoria Street belongs to The Little Vic pub. A sign advertising Steaks sticks out from the Majestic Grill. This street was choc-a-bloc with cafes and restaurants at one time. There was the Egg and Bacon, Granville's Restaurant and Milk Bar, The Mirabelle Grill, a Wimpy, and Stanley's Restaurant which had a magnificent frontage to rival The Little Vic.

We start to head southwards, passing the front of Blackpool Tower. In true seventies style the fantastic decorative brickwork of the Tower building is obscured behind plastic and tiles. Several noteworthy mosaics though make up part of the building's front and although these have disappeared subsequently, some at least are preserved and displayed inside.

The Tower Circus is billed as Circus Fantastic and features the familiar face of Blackpool's beloved clown Charlie Cairoli, who is in his 38th year of performing in the ring at the Tower. In early 1939 Charlie and his wife had performed in a circus in Munich in front of Adolf Hitler, who presented Charlie with a watch as a memento. That September with the outbreak of war, Charlie had walked to the end of the North Pier and flung the watch into the sea. He would perform at the Tower to 1979, clocking up a record-breaking 40 years before retiring due to ill health. He is remembered with great affection in the town.

Over on the seaward side, the tide has come in and sunbathers are forced off the beach. Keep Out signs have been chained across the stairs leading down to the sands which are totally covered in crashing waves. Watching the waves crash up at high tide is a time-honoured pastime, if not always a sensible one. When the sea is at its most spectacular it is as well to remember the weight of a full bucket of water and reflect that some of those crashing waves are made up of a hundred such buckets. Quite enough power to knock someone down and drag them through the railings.

Not so powerful today though and a father and his two children, with yet another of those MacLaren buggies, stands to watch. Perhaps he is looking over towards the pier jetty in the distance and thinking that the fishermen standing on it are somewhat close to the waves!

On a sunny day the sunbathers are not put off by such a small thing as a few feet of water. They simply move lock stock and deck chair up onto the Promenade and set up camp there. On a windy day the brightly striped canvas wind breaks, usually held up by thrusting their feet well into the sand, are wedged into the tricky woodwork of the deckchairs and if they lean a bit, well no one minds really! Buckets and spades, still a feature of a childhood holiday have to be abandoned for a while, but comics, books and newspapers come out. There are no personal stereos or Sony Walkmans yet - the prototype would not be developed for another year and it will be 1980 before they appear on sale. A few people may hold transistor radios to their ear, but in general, anyone playing music loud enough to annoy others would be frowned on and most people respected the right of others to a bit of peace and quiet. Many people would spend their entire holiday on a crowded week in a little oasis of either sand or concrete with their neighbours' wind break just a couple of feet in front of them!

Good Lord! What is this?!? A monstrous ogre has appeared on the facia of an amusement arcade on the Golden Mile. As people watch, it turns its head slowly from side to side, glowering at the passing throngs. Most of them seem amused rather than alarmed. Not so the great and glorious worthies of the town. The local Evening Gazette's letter pages and news columns have never seen such outrage! "Is this the sort of thing we want on the Golden Mile?" scream the headlines. Councillors indignantly debate the abomination. "Lowering the tone of the Golden Mile!" they cried, conveniently forgetting that the Golden Mile was built on such things and far worse. Indeed what a shame that new advertising laws forbidding any false descriptions have swept away the two-headed giants, women with disembodied heads and living, breathing half-human, half-animal creatures from the Golden Mile. You knew they were all done with smoke and mirrors but they would now have to be described in advertising as illusions and that would not draw the curious in quite the same way.

The mermaids returned to the sea, the giants slouched to conceal their height and the women carried their heads off with them to where... no one knows... Eventually the ogre disappeared too. The Council chamber gradually subsided and the staff editing the letters page of the newspaper breathed a sigh of relief.

At the other end of the same arcade and attracting much less notice was a visiting display of replicas of the Crown Jewels. Bits of coloured glass and paste were displayed with pomp and subdued lighting. And all for an entrance fee of - wait for it - ten pence!

Looking back northwards from the Promenade in front of the Golden Mile. We can see the Tower with its silver top and flags for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, the Woolworths store, still occupying its site with the clock tower on the corner, the pedestrian bridge crossing the roadway, and on the left hand side near the bridge, one of the boats that used to take visitors on a half hour sea cruise off the beach. Sea cruises from Blackpool were less than spectacular. The coastline has no great rocky outcrops like Cornwall, though there are a couple of chunks sitting on the beach or just under the waves up near Bispham. And boats can't sail round into a nearby bay opening up new vistas and scenes to look at.

At Blackpool, the boat simply sailed away from the coast with Blackpool becoming a thinner and thinner line of buildings until it was time to turn around and sail back. There were no seal colonies and visiting whales are so few and far between that they make the newspaper headlines whenever spotted. As exciting as the boat ride, was the journey on a World War II vintage lorry which took you down to the water's edge from the beach and from which you walked the plank onto the boat.

A glance at the people walking towards us reminds us that the seventies was a period of renaissance for knitwear...

And I'll finish this time with this shot taken from the pedestrian bridge. The tide is going back out and the sands are starting to become visible again. The keen sunbathers, eager to get their spot are already sitting on their deckchairs close to the slope of the slade with the receding waves occasionally lapping at their feet. Someone else is heading down to join them whilst others are quite comfortable on the Promenade and showing no signs yet of moving their deckchairs.

A pretty young mother is guarding her pram with a baby just a couple of months old. Time for me to go and give her a cuddle, because she's waiting for me to hurry up and take my pictures!

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