Ibbetson Family Singers

We woke up this morning – admittedly rather late – to glorious sunshine.

It was beyond wonderful. All the rubbish weather we have had and we go to Blackpool and that day there are clear blue skies and warmth, we thought it was an amazing thing to happen.

We always camp on the beach at Bispham, which for those unfamiliar with this part of the world is a little way further along the coast from Blackpool. You can camp right next to the sea if you ignore the signs telling you not to, which we always do, and so last night we went to sleep to the wonderful sound of the waves crashing on to the shore. I read everybody a story from Just William before bed, which I like very much, and which sent Mark to sleep rather quickly, causing him to spill his glass of wine.

When we got up, Mark and Oliver and the dogs went for a long walk on the beach whilst we got breakfast organised and the beds put away, and after that we went into Blackpool.

We went up the tower, as a sort of practice run for the Eiffel Tower in October, which was very scary indeed. Some entertainer has installed a glass floor at the top,which Mark and the children thought was fantastic, and which made me feel as though I wanted to eject my breakfast. I am not enthusiastic about being in high places, on account of the peculiarly unpleasant sensation of the ground rushing up towards me whenever I look at it.

Oliver was very brave about the tower, braver than me. If I am honest I was completely terrified, but of course you can’t go to Blackpool and not go up the Tower. We could see the Lake District in the distance but it was underneath rather a lot of clouds, and we thought that it was probably raining there. It was rather splendid, the trick, I have discovered, is not to look down.

After the Tower we went to Sea Life, where we peered into tanks of anonymous but interesting looking fish and tapped on the glass even though the sign said not to, to try and get them to do something amusing, but they didn’t. There was a particularly splendid giant crab and some sharks, which pleased me, I can’t see the point of an aquarium without sharks and piraña fish, preferably eating live children, also there were some prawns without sauce of any description, and some lobsters, which upset Lucy who was reminded of the savagery behind the scenes in the Chinese restaurant. I don’t eat them on account of the singularly unpleasant nature of their final moments, but they must taste really nice I think, because the Chinese like them very much.

We stayed at Sea Life until we decided that we were all fished out, and then went back to the camper to eat and empty the dogs, because the evening plan was to go to the Show Bar on the central pier in order to see the cabaret, which was some gentlemen singers pretending to be other singers.

I have never seen this sort of entertainment before, but enjoyed it hugely. Instead of a theatre it was a room with lots of tables with a little group of chairs around each one, and a stage and a microphone at one end. Our table was right in front of the stage, which was lucky. The idea is that you sit and drink and have a lovely time whilst they sing to you.

These singers were pretending to be Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury, which I am sure you will agree is a very tall order, and bless them, they tried very hard indeed.

It must have been very hard work because there were only a very few people in the audience, apparently it is the week between back to school and the Illuminations going on because last night was just a special treat preview one-off, which was magnificent good fortune, there are no Illuminations again until weekend.

Anyway, this meant that the poor singers were doing their best to entertain a depressingly small audience, so we helped them along by enjoying ourselves as much as we could.

In the end we were enjoying ourselves so enthusiastically that Michael Jackson invited us on to the stage to join in, much to our inexpressible pride and delight: so we leapt up and performed a sort of ungainly backing dance behind him, rather to the surprise of the rest of the audience.

Regular readers will recall that I am an inexpert but enthusiastic dancer, and we danced and sang until we were exhausted and hoarse. Oliver was invited to join in most, he did about four songs and Michael Jackson told Lucy that she was beautiful. We had an ace time, we could be the Ibbetson Family Singers if we weren’t old, fat and rubbish.

We danced home to the camper van, exhausted and thrilled at being suddenly famous. It has been the most brilliant of brilliant sunny days, perfect in every way it could have been.

At the risk of repeating myself, I love holidays.