Backwords: Roll Up! Roll Up!
Mike Shaw recalls the excitement of a boyhood holiday in Blackpool - and the boredom of an ice show.
The laughing clown was keeping up his non-stop glee outside the fun house at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Everybody chortled with him and the South Shore was the happy place it should be in the August sunshine.
There were war clouds on the horizon during that last summer before the storm broke. But six-year-old boys like me remained blissfully unaware of the troubles ahead.
It was my first seaside holiday which began with my first long-distance train journey from Marsden to Blackpool Central.
The steam loco plunged us almost immediately into the blackness of Standedge Tunnel. And instantly I found myself gazing hypnotically at the sepia photograph or painting above the seats opposite.
Long-haired highland cattle, standing knee-deep in the waters of a Scottish loch, stuck in my mind for years after my eyes were continually drawn back to them as the train took us across the Pennines.
Strange brick house - all those I had seen at home were built of stone - and huge cotton mills replaced green fields and hills.
Diggle, Mossley and Miles Platting were all left behind as we approached the metropolis of Manchester and a change of trains for the second leg of a journey that was beginning to seem interminably long.
Amid all the hustle and bustle in Manchester my good behaviour on the first leg was rewarded with a bar of chocolate.
It tasted so much better, I seem to remember, because it was a red-wrapped Nestlé’s bar from one of those then familiar platform machines.
Our Blackpool holiday, at the Squires Gate holiday camp, was memorable more for the evening entertainment than the daytime sun, sea and sand.
Mother was extremely keen to see the Icedrome spectacular, while my response was cool to say the least.
Inevitably, because she held the purse strings, Mum won the day. So I was dragged off to see young ladies, with long legs and almost equally long feathers in their headdresses, gliding over the ice.
I remained utterly and completely bored. What’s more, I must have made my boredom abundantly clear.
Several strong rebukes during the performance fell on deaf ears and there was a final warning of being taken back to the chalet and packed off to bed without any supper.
That might have been a lesser punishment than having to sit through the rest of the ice-dance spectacular. But my mother’s wrath was enough to calm any further rebellion.
From that day on I’ve given ice spectaculars a miss. And my self-imposed blackout of them was lifted only by the sheer artistry of Torvill and Dean.
But the circus has always been among my favourite live entertainments. And no circus was better than the one at Blackpool Tower in its heyday.
Our night at the Tower Circus - complete with its water finale - was the highlight of that first seaside holiday, and many more in later years.
