Opening Up.

At 8.36am on an August Saturday morning, beach-sanded, ageing and patterned amusement arcade carpets in the seaside resorts of Bognor, Blackpool, Lyme Regis, Weston-super-Mare, Scarborough and Skegness are simultaneously vacuumed by cleaning staff.

Stray coins are retrieved from underneath games and change machines.

Spray polish hisses onto glass panels and chrome edges, and buffed lavishly,

with soft yellow dusting cloths.

Laminate arcade toilets and café floors are slopping bucket mopped.

An Arcade Attendant stands on a ladder to reposition a wonky suspended ceiling tile.

The polystyrene tile drags and squeaks on its way back into its supporting metal grid.

At the same time, a bin in the style of a smugglers’ barrel is emptied of its ice-cream wrappers and chip paper cones, a fresh bin bag flapped open then secured around its metal rim.

Around 9.30am, multiple crane grabbers are restocked

with a few extra small soft toys from China and Taiwan.

Topped up and propped up,

their fluffy fabric shuffles over pools of balls and pastel coloured loose fill polystyrene

ready for another day’s pensive silence.

Clinking keyrings and mini plastic figurines are laden over enclosed two pennies.

An interior neon amusement arcade toilets sign in Southport’s Silcock’s Funland is turned on and begins its lowly daily hum.

Fingers flick multiple switches.

Amusement arcade lights and jingles begin, electrically and sonically scoring the coastline.

At 9.45am, a coin-operated boat ride with Iggle the Piggle from In the Night Garden jerks into motion at an amusement arcade entrance,

rocking and automated-lullaby-singing to an eager morning child.

By 11am, seaside amusement arcades from Penzance to Arbroath pulse and vibrate.

Sticky ice-creamed old coins are stuffed into shiny metallic slots activating kinetic sounds,

scratchily cascading into chrome trays.

It’s a September evening.

It’s a September evening.

The air is warm and salted. Intermittent cloud cools the descending sun.

Arriving at Blackpool North train station, I walk down Talbot Road towards the seafront. Past the familiar Sainsbury’s orange glow, the illuminated signs of restaurants and bed and breakfasts, the neon names of back street adult arcades, and dimly lit pub windows. I emerge onto Blackpool’s promenade at The Golden Mile stretch. Looking to my left, the Illuminations are on. Glowing at dusk, a network of connected shimmers strung out into the distance. To my right, the tail end of the Illuminations; an assemblage of older, folk creations scattered towards and beyond the Imperial Hotel, intercepting the familiar modernist patterning of street and traffic lighting. Blackpool’s illuminated landscape has evolved over time into a unique convergence that incorporates the functional and the fantastical.

Directly across the Promenade is the oldest of Blackpool’s three piers, The North Pier. Its roof design resembles something between a curved glass Victorian pavilion, and a traditional Romany wagon. Its name ‘The North Pier’ dances cheerily above the main entrance in a typeface that conjoins wild west folklore with traditional fairground signage; the tops of the capital letters pinned upwards like old fashioned tarpaulin tents. The sign is painted in vibrant turquoise, yellow, blue and pinky red that are deepening in tone as the sun sinks. Circus swirls of lightbulbs, some lit, some dead, surround the pier’s painted name in a lustrous, punctured border.

A small number of establishments populate the North Pier’s entrance building – a bar, a fish and chip shop, a gift shop, and an amusement arcade. The amusement arcade has multiple open doors and small children’s coin-operated rides spilling out onto the street at the front and the pier at back. The arcade interior mirrors Blackpool’s broader lightscape, combining enticing, artistic light to capture and disorientate, with directional, instructional light forms to guide. Diverse illumination, animation, colour, glow, interaction with other materials (reflection, sparkle) and popular cultural references are some of the key ways in which light and dark work together to contribute to the arcade’s unique atmosphere, blending the imaginary and the real, the extraordinary and the banal. I meander and linger amongst the strange and familiar commodities.

An enormous plastic ice-cream glows in pastel colours.

A spaceship flashes then jerks into motion.

I remember seaside arcades from the 1990s, Great Yarmouth, Lyme Regis, Hunstanton, Scarborough, Blackpool, and feel some of that childhood longing for teenage abandon that their loudness still conjures.

Out of the back entrance of the arcade, onto the pier, strings of light bulbs and Victorian streetlamps reconfigured from gas to electric warm the wooden walkway. The evening has grown gloomy since I went inside the arcade and the sea soaks up the darkness and expands around me, deep and mysterious. I imagine the murky lurky underbelly of the pier beneath the gappy wooden slats of the boardwalk. Along and over, the fairground of the Central Pier motions and yelps. At night time, Blackpool possesses a high contrast between colourful, electric light and the thick, expansive darkness of the sea.

The big wheel rotates slowly and reflects into the water.  

Walking and Listening along the Golden Mile.

 Power Ballads persistently soundtrack The North Pier’s views via its Tannoy speaker system

Cinderella carriages along the south promenade; horse hoof clip clop

the regular clinks, swooshings and screams of The Big One rollercoaster

a bench with a view: huddled joyful conversation, voices drifting from the beach

a pint: clinking glasses in a seafront pub garden, drunken cackles

“smiiiiile” (for the photo)

a bag of chips: ketchup spurt, rustling paper

cellophane unwrapping a stick of rock, slush straw neon flavour suck

a fairground ride: whirling yelping, humming petrol generator

an amusement arcade entrance: coin operated ride, 1990s dance chart music

man with a microphone – ‘hook a duck’ ‘hoopla’ ‘you playing today?’

Lengthy family ice-cream van orders are placed

buckets and spades slapping sand into crumbly shapes

a donkey ride: donkey huffs underneath a quiet, tense child

on windy days, booming water on steel stilts echoing under the pier

thin layers of dry sand skimming over wet compact sand

a fortune told: a quiet, soft velvet waiting chair, the jangle of a beaded curtain

hushed whispers of respect for the memorial plaques at the end of The Central Pier

trams hiss to a halt

Mum with buggy sings.              

Red and Gold.

Amusement arcades, in red and gold. Regal. Royal. Luxurious. Old.

Womb warm. Windsor Castle room. Big and bold.

Red neon signs and strip lights soften edges and welcome you in.

Low watt halogen bulbs warm walkways, seats and suspended ceilings.

Gold tinsel curtains dangle, adding working men’s club glam and glitz.

Reflections of red and gold mingle in polished screens of machine Perspex.

Worn carpets in classy crimson with tiny gold flecks,

reminiscent of ageing towny royal theatres.

Furr coat, no knickers. Gin and tonic in your whiskers.

Chrome reflects red and gold, glowing in coppery pink and brassy hues.

Glowing flowing metallics. Surfaces melt and mush.

‘Elvis’ is studded in red LEDs. Plastic buttons cheekily blush.

High stools flushed in scarlet velvet flatten under your old tush.

Coins.

The materiality and sensuality of coins become more apparent in an increasingly contactless society

dulled royal mint patterner and grubby royal texture

the earthy copper colour and metallic tasting smell of 1 and 2ps

mined nickel, steel and silver.

The sounds of coins, when you drop them or rummage through them.

The weight of coins in your pocket and the way they heat up when held in your hand.

Coins are representative of industrial currency

manufactured and distributed

circulating and ageing.

Weighing down purses

pick them up for good luck

encounters with vending machines and charity boxes

those slow coin collections in big whiskey bottles.

The seaside amusement arcade has frequent interludes

of old monetary bumps and grinds

the victorious sound of coins converting from pounds to coppers

cascading victoriously into change machine chrome trays.

Coins escape from pockets in seaside arcades

transforming from notes and contactless payments via change machines

eagerly scooped up and assembled

into plastic and paper arcade coin cups with colourful, collaged designs.

Briefly caressed before clinking into slots

activating movement, light, sound, colour, play

subsequent invitations to touch buttons, leavers, joysticks.

As their economic value drops their old games machine value remains.

Nostalgic and analogous coin actions.

Abandoned by players

the mechanical waves of coins resting on

the relentlessly oscillating penny pusher platforms occasionally

ever so slowly

nudge some of themselves over the edge.

Clattering, scratching and mounting into dirty, tantalising heaps and mounds.

Periodically emptied and collected from machines by the bucket, by Arcade Attendants.

Sweet things.

In your face

Sweet things

sweets add pops of colour and texture to The Golden Mile

displayed under amusement arcade glass and clear acrylic screens

spread out over coins and stacked up in prize counters

bought or won; their wrappers discarded once their contents is gone.

Special techniques honed for consuming each kind of sweet

handling them, rummaging through them

tearing and twisting them open

winding them around sugary fingers and tongues

worked with keen mouths: rock sucks, lolly licks, hard sweet crunch and gulp.

Transformative and magical

violet and toffee scented

glooping, stretching, oozing centres

swallowed, ingested, dissolved, embodied, incorporated

from sugar into glucose and fructose

inflaming gums and guts

Love Heart forevers, dream girls, love bugs

raising heart rates

working their way into an amusement arcade frenzy

creating accelerated and lulled moments

kiss me quick.

Slush Cup.

Florescent shades of slush

forever churning in Perspex tanks

luminating piers, seafronts, and arcades.

Crushes ice, sugar syrup

in pineapple, red cherry, purple sour plum,

tangy apple, blue raspberry, and pink bubble gum.

Rotating propellors agitate the situation

keeping the water from block frozen

mixing ice and flavouring with kiddy hedonism.

Dolloping, slopping, running into cups,

colouring young tongues and lips

suck the ice clear, get off your tits.

Left behind in the city

an unpleasant, persistent seaside reality

brazen and sickly

stirring a quiet, snobby uncomfortability.

Package it up in a TV commercial past

alongside pop tarts

a multicoloured imagined blast

of a Blackpool holiday class.

At the end of the day.

 By 4pm, daytime tipsy karaoke renditions of Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ spill out from Blackpool’s amusement arcade Karaoke booths.

Rubber duck prizes squeak in little sticky hands

Strong man hammer plays sync into one determined, topless thud

Afternoon footsteps slowly, daydreamingly tread and soften on carpets, out of the sun and rain.

A bingo caller enigmatically warbles historic lingo into a microphone

A bottle of reinvigorating pop hisses open

A child’s sugared heartbeat accelerates

Smart phones vibrate in pockets, nagging and beckoning back to the outside world

Leaving the arcade, crumpled anoraks and puffer jackets are pulled on to warm bodies from the evening chill.

By 10pm, arcade front doors are concurrently locked and games machines are switched off and stop sounding, one by one.

After hours,

the familiar, tumultuous arcade soundscape ceases for the day.

I draw parallels to experienced end-of-nights in night clubs,

when the music and flashing lighting stops,

body cease to dance and move amongst each other,

and bright white overhead lights go on.

A strategically jarring moment,

this shift in sound and light reveals the limitations of a room/space,

an underwhelming end to the wondrous escape of a

temporally disorientating alternate sensory experience.

At the end of the day,

quiet and darkness descends on the arcade.

Only café fridge hums now and wind whistles through weathered door cracks.

When this happens, things revert.

The arcade’s tenacious reverberating bubble bursts,

it stops sonically spilling out into it surrounds

and instead, outside sounds creep into and linger inside the arcade space.

Seagulls and passing traffic.

Late night spattered conversations and exchanges

drifting from the beach and pier.

Resting awhile,

the arcade resigns to listening to the night time whispering sea.