EULOGY TO THE MAGNIFICIENTLY GAUDY.
An American friend once described Miami to me as "Blackpool without the charm." Someone needs to say a few nice things about Blackpool. Well ! It's bright and almost always blustery. There is a superfluity of excellent fish and chip shops. It is the English seaside at its very best, and that genuine compliment applies even to its almost unparelleled bad taste. Advertising signs are higgledy-piggledy, overwhelming and garish. Retail stalls are unkempt, jaded and nigh on tumble-down. Junk food smells are everywhere. Ad boards outside the booths of gypsy fortubne-tellers tell of the visits of the famous, with signed photographs as proof. There is a fairgound ride so high that you can see America from the top. Its ironwork tower presents a crude one-fingered gesture to arty-farty-posy Paris. In short, if you have the sensibility to really enjoy the immediate then you'll know that brassy, gaudy, excessive, bad-taste, showman's Blackpool is simply magnificient.

A little to the South of Blackpool is Lytham, from whose shore you can clearly see Southport, perhaps four five miles away. A bridge has often been suggested to cut out the thirty-mile or so journey up and down the banks of the River Ribble. Lytham and Southport would make a wonderful twin-town administrative unit. Architecture, attitudes and a shared history of co-operation between lifeboat crews compel -- the Eliza Fernley disaster being an epic story in common, of tragedy and bravery, with wide-reaching effects at national and international levels.

A few days ago the family watched -- comforted by lots of tea and big sticks of sweet liquorice -- a promising programme on Pompeii and Herculaneum. The Radio Times magazine hadn't marked it as a "repeat." Now here's the cheat: within the whole bloody hour-long bore the same half-dozen already familiar facts were repeated ad nauseam. True, the presenter was filmed walking amongst the same objects but in varying directions and we were treated to a whole Roget's Thesaurus of pointless synonyms. Do you really need a Ph.D. or professorial chair to present such reception class drivel?

Two days ago we watched -- expecting something better -- the Worsthorne prog. on the royals and their medical problems. We should have noticed the crap was coming in the first five minute: "heading off" instead of "going"/ "I'm going to explain why"/ "explore"/"secrets of" and so on. Then we get the 'Hammer Horror Films' tudors. Professors from leading universities get their few quid from the BBC to tell us what we know already. No real medical stuff at all. Not a word about fat Henry's gammy leg, his paranoia and possible syphilis. Bloody Mary gets the usual stuff and on the almost equally bloody Elizabeth we get the usual whitewash job. No nuanced history, as ever. History on the telly -- from the Beeb even -- tends to be simplistic garbage. I'm giving it up -- except for Lent!

The language section is now heaped up with oodles of foreign language versions of English novels. Theology is overflowing with evangelical paperbacks. Bargain books -- at 50p or 5 for �2 -- are falling off the shelves in the yard -- even blowing off in the recent winds.

This site is well worth your time.

All lancastrians will find it delightful.

I'm told the site is doing well. Lancastrian expatriates are visiting in fair numbers.