Brace Yourself!

Every year, since we've been able to do so, my wife and I have bought Senior Citizen Railcards with the intention of "seeing a bit more of this country, this year", and, every year, just like clockwork, we realise that we're coming to the end of the Railcard's natural life and that we haven't done anything with it.  Panic sets in and we hunt about for possible locations for a day out, which will go some way toward justifying the expense of the Railcard in the first place.  This is a long-winded explanation of why, a week or so ago, you could find us heading out to the east coast for a day by the seaside.

Where did we go to?  Well, to a certain extent we were retracing the steps I've described in 'The Curse of the Jolly Fisherman' albeit with better weather.  I don't want to upset the City Fathers unduly, so let's utilise a cryptic crossword clue:

1 (across) Confused eg. SS Kens

 Yes, that should save any red faces.  Therefore, we were not going to Mablethorpe or Chapel St. Leonards, despite the undisputed attractions of those rival resorts.

It's been quite a few years since I've been to this particular resort as a destination.  I've passed through it and by it on numerous occasions but haven't actually aimed to spend the day there.  I can now understand why not.  Here are a few observations:

1.  I've Got Wheels!

It must be the mobility scooter capital of the world.  I have never seen so many in one place at one time.  Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with mobility scooters and for some, they're an essential part of living a relatively normal life.  However, the majority seemed to be employed in moving the morbidly obese from one eating venue to another. What amazed me was not the number but the sheer variety.  As well as the conventional scooter there were also monstrosities bedecked with chrome and faux exhaust pipes that looked like miniature U.S. Interstate Trucks. Some sported trailers, in addition to the scooter itself, containing shopping or dogs or, on one memorable occasion, a full sound system belting out C&W hits.  Often there was a panoply of rear-view mirrors, in the manner of Mods motor scooters, although these clearly had no functional purpose because it is your role, as a pedestrian, to get out of their way, not for them to be aware of you.  There was even a Sinclair C5, albeit pedal-powered only, just think how differently it might have turned out for Clive Sinclair if he had just thought to add on an Interstate Trucker option?

2.  The Smell of the Briny

It isnt there.  We took ourselves to the end of the pier, which is as close to the sea (when the tides in) as you can reasonably get at this resort without getting your feet wet.  My wife remarked that she usually enjoyed the smell of the sea but that this was conspicuous by its absence.  Actually, it might well have been there but, if so, it was completely overwhelmed by the overriding aroma of hot fat.  Deep fried fast food being the principal diet in these here parts.  I imagine that, if you were a vegan, vegetarian or just someone committed to a relatively healthy diet, you would die of starvation here.  As we walked down to the sea front, the eateries were largely focused on variations on a theme of the good old English Breakfast, with small breakfasts, large breakfasts, sausage cobs and bacon rolls predominating.  Then, as we got closer, fish and chips became the order of the day with any number of venues competing to be the best in town (allegedly).  By the time we got to the sea front proper our nostrils were assailed with the dubious combination of doughnuts, burgers and more fish and chips.  Every possible nook seemed to contain a deep fat fryer and griddle and a queue of people eager to partake of something, anything, deep-fried.  There wasnt a lettuce leaf or a vegetable in sight.  My wife expressed an interest in pizza and I told her that she was probably being wildly optimistic, which proved to be true.  We settled for fish and chips.

3. It's a State of Mind

Clearly the resort meets a need, otherwise it wouldn't exist in the form that it does.  As I was wandering along, I tried to imagine just what state of mind you would need to adopt n order to get the most out of the place and I came to the conclusion that you would have to be one of three things:

a)  Intoxicated

b) A child, or

c) Intoxicated and childish

As I've been all three of these at various points in life, I can see the possibility of an attraction and I'll bet it gets interesting late at night when deep-fried anything coupled with a go on the fairground rides, always seems like a good idea.

Overall, it's not the resort's fault that it didn't find favour with me on this particular day.  At another time in life I might well have greeted it like a long-lost friend and looked on it as akin to Disneyland.  Perhaps I should view it in the same manner that I might view an attractive but outrageously clad young lady - as someone who might well have been a dream come true 40 years ago but wouldn't fit the bill, now?

It would seem that we were not alone in our judgement, either.  Having arrived at 13.00 with the plan to head home atound 19.00, we came to the conclusion that we had exhausted the resort's charms by 15.30 and rushed to catch the 16.10 train home.  We were met by a long queue of like-minded souls which threatened to fill the two-carriage train back to Nottingham. 

We left the resort to the whir of mobility scooters and the enjoyment of Groups (a) (b) and (c) and headed back to the relative tranquility of the East Midlands.

We Need To Talk!

I seem to have been going through a phase in which I've been giving up quite a few things that used to occupy my time and now I'm left with quite a bit of spare capacity and no real idea of how I might usefully use it.  After quite a bit of mental arm-wrestling, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the things that I could do, I don't actually want to do, if I'm being honest with myself, so there seems little point in setting myself up to fail (yet again).

I've tried to analyse what I've enjoyed about the various things I've done in my life, and what I haven't and I've come to the conclusion that what I've really enjoyed (and what I miss the most) is the performance aspect.  When I was a lecturer, I got a real kick out of talking to the class and trying to come up with entertaining ways of conveying information about a subject (HR) which can be quite tedious at times.  I may not have always succeeded, but I did enjoy trying!

I had a sort of 'Damascene' moment regarding this at a 'Poetry and Puddings' evening the other week.  Each member of the audience was encouraged to read a poem of some sort before and after the main event of descending on the huge range of delicious puddings on offer.  I was chuffed to bits that my choice of 'The Lion and Albert' went down really well and caused quite a few chuckles.  I realised that this is what I had missed.

When my first book ('Steady Past Your Granny's' - available as a Kindle edition and soon to be available again in print) came out, I was pleased to be invited to give a talk or two based on the content.  The problem was that I hadn't really done any research into what people expected from a 'talk' of this nature and so I just winged it.  As such, I must offer my profound apologies to the massed ranks of the Burton Civic Society who were the first to suffer.

It was a very well-attended talk and the front row was largely comprised of my friends and family who had dutifully turned out.  I didn't have a script for my contribution, just a list of topics I wanted to cover.  This would be fine except for the fact that, when I'm thinking furiously about what I'm trying to say, I have a tendency to pace and I spent the whole session striding up and down the front row so that they began to resemble the crowd at Centre Court during a particularly energetic rally.  I had no visual aids, so the audience were reduced to watching my stroboscopic image darting madly from side to side as I droned on.  It would be fair to say that I was received politely, if not enthusiastically and I was disappointed to note that one or two of those present had actually dropped off.

After that debut, it was somewhat of a surprise to be invited to do the whole thing again but this time as an after-lunch talk to the Rotary Society in Burton.  You would think that I would have learned my lesson from the previous performance but...I still had no visual aids and no script.  The only saving grace was that, pinned in by my fellow diners on the top table, I couldn't stride about like a mad thing.

The third and final time I was asked to give a talk was to Burton's Probus Society.  This time I decided I would try to learn from my mistakes.  Winging it was clearly not my forte.  I prepared my talk in advance and rehearsed it night and day.  I also took the precaution of preparing a PowerPoint presentation of some appropriate pictures which acted as an aide-memoir to me and gave the audience something else to look at, other than me.  This time I managed to resist the temptation to stride about manically, I stuck to the 'script' and managed to get some laughs.  Admittedly one person was sound asleep by the end of it but, given my previous record, I deemed that a success.

That marked the end of my appearances on the 'talks' circuit.  Pressure of work and other commitments meant that I couldn't really devote any time to it and, to be fair, I wasn't exactly besieged by invitations.  I put my PowerPoint projector to one side and that was the end of that.  Except that now, five books later, I'm hear with quite a few stories to tell and I think I've got some better ideas about how I might tell them.  Obviously, I've still got a lot to learn but the only way to do that is to practice, so I'm putting myself back on the market, as it were. 

If you're in Staffordshire or Derbyshire and you think that you might be interested in hearing what I've got to say, perhaps we could give it a go?  You may have to nail my feet to the floor, of course ;-)

The Column Inches...Away!

Some of you (not many, I'll give you, but some of you) may have been wondering what has happened to the monthly Derby Telegraph column in which I have been rambling about my somewhat chaotic start to my career history?  For the record, the last column appeared in April and it was this one 'The End of the Paper Trail'.

The simple answer is that the Derby Telegraph, in their wisdom, have changed the format of their Bygones page so that, as from 1st May, the daily page is no more and has been replaced by a 250 word insert with a photo.  The Bygones supplement, published each Monday, carries the longer articles written by contributors like myself but, as it's only five pages long, it's somewhat restricted as to content.  As all the former monthly contributors are now funnelled through this supplement, and two pages of it are given over to a local history article by a local historian and one page to a sort of 'On This Day in History' type article, there really isn't a lot of scope for one of my articles to appear, other than once in a blue moon.  The end result is that an unbroken series of monthly articles, stretching back more than ten years, appears to have come to a rather unfortunate end.

I can't complain because I've had a really good run and I can clearly recall the joy of getting my first article in print, never expecting to still be churning out memories from my early years ten years later.  Still, I'll miss the discipline of producing a monthly article and the memories it evoked.

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read about my exploits and if you know of anyone who is in need of a columnist - I'm cheap and available ;-)