of Barcelona and Madrid. Back then it was amazing. You got proper fish fingers and chips, and you could watch Del Boy on the telly – oh, this was so much better than Torquay.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Torbay or the neighbouring beauty spots of Paignton or Babbacombe. I have a lot of fond memories of those places, and I for one am over the moon that they are enjoying a revival of fortunes at present, it’s just that we’d holidayed there at the same caravan park for the last five years.
My parents weren’t the sort of people who waited for the designated school holidays, oh no, the Cobblers had their last game and then we were off – ‘Cornwall here we come, lock up your pasties!’ It was even known for Dad to take us out of school to go to the races. We were all in on it. I would not go to school, Dad would drive us to the race track and Mum would write the sick note. Due to her own experiences at school, my mother’s inherent contempt for teachers would often surface in these sick notes. Sometimes she would just write ‘Alan was ill’, leaving me to do the dirty work and choose an appropriate illness, which would be hard for one day. One day off is too long for a headache, yet too short for ringworm.
Once there, the races were so exciting, especially if you got near the front, and the horses would thunder past you, leaving you windswept and breathless. I enjoyed visiting all the different racetracks. I loved the buzz of the winners’ enclosures, and the flurry of the tic-tacking, but most exhilarating of all was being naughty and missing a whole day of school. Newmarket, Leicester, Ripon – by the age of 13, I’d visited them all. I couldn’t read, but I’d visited them all.
I remember being at York races on a school day, studying the form, binoculars around my neck, and bumping into Mr Knott, a teacher at my school. I don’t know who was more embarrassed, he or I. To be fair, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. I was only jeopardising my education by being at the races – he was putting his whole class at risk. Tut tut. We soon got over our awkwardness, especially after I told him about a dead cert in the 2.15, ‘Dancing Lady’, odds-on favourite. He’d be a fool not to bet on it.
* * *
In the summer of 1990, Northampton Town Football Club had fallen out of love with my father and he got the sack. Northampton Town had been relegated back down to the Fourth Division. My father’s battle to keep them up in the Third Division, struggling with no money to buy new players, ended unsurprisingly in disappointment.
The problem with having a job in the public eye, as I am learning now, is that everyone knows your business and wants to let you know their opinion on your business whether you want to hear it or not. When Dad’s sacking was on the front page of the Chronicle and Echo, the taunts of ‘Your dad’s shit’ were replaced with ‘Your dad’s been sacked’ – which is more of a statement than a put-down really, but each to their own. In fact they used to shout ‘Your dad’s shit’ even when he was top of the Fourth Division, so in the end these insults proved more exasperating than anything.
One neighbour knocked on our door saying that she thought it was a shame that we would be moving so suddenly. She had mistakenly assumed that our house in Overstone had been bought by the club and that we would be evicted now Dad was unemployed. This woman hadn’t said a word to us all through Dad’s years of success but somehow Dad’s sacking had awoken some kind of malice in her and she had come round to gloat. Cheeky bint.
However, much to our neighbour’s disappointment, my father wasn’t out of a job for long. Within days he was being wooed by Blackpool City Football Club and in a matter of weeks he was the new manager. Dad informed the family that we would be relocating up north to Blackpool. I would finish my schooling in seagull-shitting distance of the Golden Mile. I really had mixed feelings about this move. The excitement of living by the seaside, the Pleasure Beach just down the road, the dodgems, the Illuminations was undermined by a sense of ‘Here we go again!’ At least in Northampton it was better the devil you know. It was only the diehard bullies who still shouted ‘Faggot!’ and ‘Poof!’ – all the others had given up, bored that I never fought back. All they would get in retaliation was a ‘tut’ or at the most I’d twat them with my copy of Murder on the Orient Express.
The thought of joining a whole new school, friendless, looking as I did with this voice was simply terrifying. But Dad was unemployed, and so we had to go where the work was and that just happened to be the Vegas of the North – Blackpool.
Everyone has a place that seems to draw them back to it, whatever life choices they make, whatever they do. After a few years they can bet their bottom dollar they end up back there. My place is Blackpool. Like a piece of foil to a filling, I end up attached to it, which inevitably turns out to be a painful experience. Our move to Blackpool wasn’t my first time up there: Gary, Mum, Nan and I had gone on a weekend break with Dad’s friend Ted who, with some of his friends, drove us up in a minibus. The weekend was pretty uneventful. It was only a few years later, when Ted got arrested for running an unlicensed brothel in the next village and we recalled that all our fellow holidaymakers had been ropy women, that it dawned on us we’d had a weekend break with a minibus full of hookers.
It was a great weekend, to be fair. We had gone up to see the Christmas Illuminations. We had a fantastic view of them at the front of our hotel, and it was a real novelty to have the lights flashing outside our window. I suppose some of the girls would have been used to that.
The one thing that does spoil the whole Blackpool experience – apart from the architecture, food, cleanliness and quality of entertainment – is the weather. The wind is so merciless and bitter, it’s almost frightening. We had a jolly Santa swinging outside our window one night; he was shaking so violently in the wind that I thought his sack was going to come through the window and electrocute Nan.
The other time I’d been there was with my mates, and they’d booked us all into Thompsons Hotel. While most Blackpool hotels have a selection of pamphlets on the front desk advertising the Winter Gardens or the Tower Ballroom, Thompsons has the latest North West STD figures and a sachet of complimentary lubricant. Apparently in the summer of 2004 gonorrhoea was more popular than Bobby Davro. The place was basically a knocking shop, with no locks on the door and the smell of sex permeating every nook and cranny and, believe me, there are a lot of crannies. At least we didn’t have to be disturbed by the chambermaid in the morning asking if we needed teas or coffees; no, she could just refill the basket through the custom-made glory holes in the wall.
Of course, I was disgusted and outraged, but it’s funny, isn’t it, how after three bottles of wine and copious gins and tonics you get used to the minor design flaws and out-of-date curtains. That Sunday morning I woke up in Thompsons with the worst hangover I’d ever had. I didn’t have my glasses on, but even through my myopic haze I could see that the man lying next to me had special needs. Then I felt someone turn over on my other side, a man who looked relatively ‘normal’. Oh no! Please, dear God, please don’t tell me I’ve had an orgy on a Sunshine Coach.
The helper reassured me that it had been only him and that the special needs man had his own room, but sometimes he couldn’t sleep so he gets into bed with him. Although I couldn’t remember anything at all, I was happyish with his story and didn’t really want to pick it to pieces too much – yes, ignorance can be bliss. I thanked everyone involved, picked up my clothes and left Thompsons, got on a tram and went somewhere to have a wash.
* * *
Blackpool
