34 - Sunday, December 11, 1994 - North Shore News

ritons play

THE MAPLE Seal on his back-
pack was enough of an introduc-
tion, so what brings you here, |
asked the young man at the bar
of Yates’s Wine Lodge.

{t turned out his dad was from the
North of England, and every summer
when the mill closed for the annual
holiday, the wakes, he used to take
the train to Blackpool.

_ His dad had come to Canada and
always meant to take his son to
Blackpool, but it never happened and
now he was dead. So here was the
son, tracing the family roots in a part
of England not many foreigners visit.

Not that Roger, the backpacker,
felt like a stranger here. He had
grown-up with stories of Blackpool
beach, the tower that soared over the
town (a copy of M. Eiffel’s in Paris),
Donald McGill posteards, the giant
funfair, the trams that trundied along
the promenade and the: formidable
landiadies who catered to generations
of ordinary folk escaping from the

David
Wishart

8 Wola is

TRAVEL TIPS

dark, satanic mills,

Amazingly, despite the British
penchant for Mediterranean vaca-
tions, Blackpool continues to thrive
and this year the tower celebrated its

as’. i i

tem.

-MACAU'S FRIENDSHIP bridge, the new four-lane span
between Macau and Taipa Island, at a cost of US$75 million
Is helping to relieve traffic congestion on the older bridge
and Improve access to Talpa and Coloane Isiands. The new
bridge will be the main access road from the Macau
international Airport to China and arriving passengers will
ba able to transfer directiy to China via a special transit sys-

i
cai? aie

Artists for Kids Gallery
North Vancouver

Alaska * Canada ¢ Greenland
Sapmi « Russia

Weekends only thru Dec.17

ag
ind

‘Presenting Arts from the Arctic

i

810 West 21st St.
987-6667

LOOth anniversary.
The resort, due west of Man-
ster, receives nearly 17 million
tors a year, more than Greece and

’ its islands, hardly an also-ran in the

holiday stakes.

Here are Britons at play, and at
Blackpool they play hard, The same
tourism statistics reveal that on a typ-
ical summer's day, 57 men will be
charged with drunkenness and will
spend the night in jail, and 46 people
will-miss their coach home, presum-
ably some of them guests of Her
Majesty.

On the train from London [ read
about Blackpool's landladies, who
welcome all comers, even slag par-
ties.

“Don't they get a bit rowdy?" one
was asked,

“Not wi’ me, they don't," she suid,
“Tclip them round the ear if they gel
out of hand. They don’t seem to
mind, they keep coming back.”

Only in Blackpool, the reporter
mused, could you find a hotel that
offers corporal punishment for
guests. :

Days are spent at the beach where
children ride donkeys and build sand-
castles while parents sit in deck chairs
(18,649 are rented in a typical day),
fall asleep, get sunbumied and maybe
hall-submerged when the tide comes
in.
Their Daily Mirrors get blown
away and go towards the 60 tons of
rubbish collected every day.

Liter the good times will roll with
amusement arcades, bingo halls, one
of the biggest funfairs in the world
and a new roller coaster that rivals
anything in America, all over-
whelmed with the sound of “705 pop
music and the smell of fish and chips
(Blackpool has been described as an
assault and vinegar course),

Live entertainment can be duz-
ziing. Stars at the Winter Gardens
have included Lilly Langtry, Charlie
Chaplin, George Formby, Arthur
Askey and Tony Hancock.

Be wamed that Blackpool humour
is not for the faint of heart. I saw
Michael Barrymore, who sang, told
stories and reduced the audience,
including me, to tears, with the linale
in which he invited a granny called
Doris onto the stige, sat her on his
knee, then held her in his arms and
crooned te her, He was funny, he was
tender, he tried to run his hand up
Doris’s skirt for goodness sake. He
embarrassed the bell out of Doris and
the aucience. and in the end there was
laughtey and more tears, and cham-
pagne and flowers for Doris. Ece,
she'd have a story to tell back at the
guest house.

Across the street at Yates’s | met
Roger again. We had a pint of
‘Thwaites's ale and he told me he had
been to the same show.

Loved it, he said. British comics
on their own turf were something
else. Just a pity his dad couldn't see it.

He did, I told the lad, he did.

TO MHIBIMIZE AIR
POLLUTION FRORA
YOUR WOODSTOVE:

Buy the right stove
for your needs. The
most common
mistake is choosing
a stove too large for
the area to be
heated. A stove that
is too large for your
home will have to
be dampered down
fo maintain a
comfortable
temperature, thus
creating smoke and
increasing alr
pollution.

A message from the

BRITISH COLUMBIA
LUNG ASSOCIATION

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from CAD

U Sydney, Brishane, 5
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wt 8002663-511

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Inclustve of: :
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* 1 night stop over in Amsterdam
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meg deh

THE WESTIN HOTEL

Seattle