It is nice to be on holiday and to have time to converse with one another.
Breakfast this morning was occupied by a long and detailed consideration of what we might do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. This is a topic which concerns Oliver quite a bit, and in the end we thought that perhaps we would be best to go to the farm and build a large fence, so if it ever happens and you are not zombies already you might want to come and join us.
After that, whilst we digested bacon and eggs and drank coffee, we planned our day ahead.
We were united in thinking that we wanted to have the complete Blackpool Experience, and now that I am at the other end of the day I think I can safely say that we have done that.
To our colossal joy the day had dawned as bright and beautiful as we could possibly wish for, with just enough of a breeze not to be stickily hot, and perfect for riding bicycles.
We put on our large sun hats and cycled up the promenade to the tower. Even at that time of day, which was early by our standards, although possibly not yours, Blackpool was full of people.
It looked exactly like a 1940s postcard. The beach was packed with happy families, as well as a couple of grumpy ones, building sand castles and splashing in the sea. You can still ride on donkeys on the beach, and the donkeys were standing patiently in little groups, or plodding along with their tack jingling: and children shrieked and ran about and splashed one another, and it was perfect.
I wanted to go on the Pleasure Beach, but the children didn’t, because they think it is dull, and in fact our first call of the day was to Waterstones.
I am not sure why we have developed a family tradition of making a trip to Waterstones a central part of our Blackpool visits, but we have, we save up for it, and it is our biggest single holiday expense, and one we look forward to enormously.
We were there ages. We roamed happily through the shop and examined one another’s choices and recommended books for each other and sat on the stairs commenting and discussing until everybody’s decisions had been satisfactorily concluded.
Oliver bought some books about zombies, and Lucy bought Japanese anime books and I bought all sorts of books for which I have longed for ages, and Mark bought the new Harper Lee and something about the war.
We staggered out weighted down by rucksacks laden with books, and stopped outside next to a soap-bubble vendor to blow enormous bubbles in the wind and to get ourselves decorated with glittery tattoos. Mine is a fairy.
After that we went in the tower, to Jungle Jim’s, which is Oliver’s favourite, and then cycled on to Central Pier.
Central Pier is ace. It has got every imaginable happy pastime installed there, you can ride on Dodgems and the Ferris wheel, you can slide down the helter-skelter, there are roundabouts and shooting galleries and doughnuts and hot dogs, and when you are done with all of those you can gaze dreamily out to sea or down on to the sands below, where everybody is busy turning pink.
We had our photograph taken and shot at targets on the shooting galleries, and ate melting ice creams and Oliver went on the bouncy castle. Lucy had her fortune told by Gypsy Petulengro. She is going to do very nicely in life and marry a barrister from a long family of lawyers, have two children and be wealthy enough not to have to work if she doesn’t want to.
Mark was relieved to hear this, and the gypsy gave Oliver a lucky charm and told us that Mark had to be careful of his blood pressure. He takes buckets of tablets for this, but when the children grow up into their good fortune probably it won’t be a problem any more anyway. Anyway, she said that nobody would die young and that no dreadful events were in store for anybody, but that a big surprise would happen to us all in three months time. Watch this space.
Afterwards we had pasta and red wine for dinner at a gorgeous little outside restaurant, and sat in the sunshine on the bright square at the back of the church, watching the pigeons and thinking that it was every bit as good as being in real Italy.
We ended the day with a visit to the circus.
It was magnificent.
We had popcorn and candyfloss, and there were trapeze artists and a man riding a motorbike on the high wire. There was a man who threw knives at a lady on a spinning board, and strong men and jugglers, and we clapped and clapped and gasped and cheered, and loved absolutely every single minute. Honestly, if you haven’t been then you jolly well should, it was truly ace.
We cycled back in the dark, and we are about to watch tonight’s episode of A Game Of Thrones, from our huge bed which is easily as big as our whole bedroom at home. The children have got beds of their own but we could quite easily all have fitted in this one and not squabbled before the morning.
We are having the most glorious time.
We are exhausted.
See you tomorrow.
