Same old time

Well, here we are on our holidays.

We are in Blackpool, and it has been absolutely magnificently splendid.

We did not start the day here. We started the day in Manchester where Lucy went for her police medical. The police know perfectly well that she is fit to be a police officer, since she is one already, but they have got to check again because it is a new job, presumably in case she has started taking drugs or gone deaf or developed epilepsy in the meantime and nobody has noticed.

This was considerably more interesting than one might expect, because the police station in question was in a part of town where all the families were Jewish. We don’t have separate areas for different races of people in Windermere, and so we were absolutely fascinated. All of the men wore clothes so similar it might have been a uniform, with hats and black jackets and white shirts. I do not know if you are not allowed to wear a yellow or pink shirt  if you are a Jewish man but it looked like it. Several of them talked to us, and were very kind and friendly, and I was dying to ask questions but obviously I did not. I would have been very interested to find out whether it was a religion or just a shared sense of fashion, and whether it was supportive and helpful or just miserably restrictive to live all together in the same streets.

I wish I was brave enough to ask these things but of course I know that it would not be polite and so I suppose I shall never know.

Obviously Lucy passed her medical, since she is not suddenly deaf or epileptic or smitten with drug abuse. We had managed to park right outside the front gate, so when she strolled out we turned around and headed straight for Blackpool.

Blackpool was harder to manage than we had been expecting because they have built a new multi-storey car park over the nice place where we have always parked. This would not have fitted the camper van in it even if it had been open, which it wasn’t, so we had to find somewhere else. It turned out that we could park in the coach park for almost nothing, which was jolly kind of Blackpool, so we did, and although the notice said sternly that we were Not Allowed To Camp Overnight, we did, and we are still here now.

Dogs are not allowed hardly anywhere at all in Blackpool, and so we had to let them belt around the car park for a little while before imprisoning them in the van with the cats. We were sorry about this, but not very, because it is always a bit tiresome in new places, when they are fascinated by everything and want to keep pegging off to sniff new things, and we have to keep bellowing at them to Stay At Heel.

We rushed off towards the Tower.

After that it was just brilliant. We were almost there when we met Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law. This was not a surprise, we had known they were there, although they had sensibly not told us where they were staying just in case we turned up. I do not blame them for this, because they were going to have a special romantic date night tonight, and we thought it might be very funny to turn up and sit at the next table, but of course we didn’t.

Instead we explored our way along the seafront. It was not really exploring because we have been there so often we know exactly where everything is, and it was like visiting old friends. I wanted a tin crab stuck all over with plastic diamonds, because mine has broken his leg, but the man in the tin things shop did not have any left. I nearly bought a tin owl studded all over with plastic rubies, but I thought I had better not, if anybody is wondering what to get me for Christmas you could remember. Instead we ambled on to Central Pier where we looked joyfully at the Tower and the Golden Mile, and the donkeys on the beach and everybody having a lovely holiday, and thought how splendid it all was.

I am not exactly sure that Number One Daughter thinks it is as splendid as I do.

We had cheeseburgers and chips for breakfast. I think it is the first time in my life I have ever done this, and apart from tomorrow, think that probably I had better not do it again.

When we were feeling just a bit full and uncomfortable, we went to the Old Time Portrait Studio on Central Pier. This is always one of my favourite things about Blackpool, we do it every year. The kind lady dresses you up as old fashioned people and takes your photograph in brown and yellow, just like a real old fashioned photograph, and it is a little bit of pretending to hang on our bedroom wall, and laugh and remember. You can see Oliver getting bigger and bigger in each one, from the very first one where he is about eight, to today’s, where he is taller than I am.

This year’s photograph was special because Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law were in it as well. I was sad because Number Two Daughter and Mrs. Number Two Daughter could not be there. Number One Daughter said that she would ring her up and tell her what a lovely time we had had. We did have a lovely time but it would have been nice if they could have been there as well.

We went to the shell shop and bought a new soap dish. This is made of a single beautiful shell. We bought some shells glued together to look like an owl as well, so I did not mind about the plastic rubies one any more. Number One Daughter was going to get some eyelashes glued on after that, so they buzzed off, and we went to Waterstones.

We always do this as well.

After that it was evening.

We had a very happy evening. Lucy and Oliver had a competition to try and throw chocolate buttons into one another’s mouths. They were not very good at this, and Rosie got quite a few of them, but it was very funny.

We watched an American film about it being nicer to be kind than wealthy, with which we all disagreed, quite vociferously, when it had finished, and then it was bedtime.

I am very happy.

We have done everything we always do, and we still like doing it.

It is being a lovely holiday, and we will still be here tomorrow morning.