I WAS so tired last night in Hell's Waiting Room, New Brighton, that I lay out flat out on my back on one of the burgundy-coloured, leatherette banquettes and smoked a Silk Cut blue.
It was very relaxing and I didn't for a minute take seriously the threat from Dixie the Jazzman that he was going to sit on my face and fart right there and then.
But it is quite dangerous to lie on the benches in the Waiting Room - as I know to my pain, cost and embarrassment...
For about six months ago I lay down on the padded benches and lazily let my arm dangle in the narrow gap between the seat and the back support panels.
It was a daft thing to do, as it happens, because I got my arm well and truly jammed.
The more I panicked about that, the more my arm swelled up.
After a great effort, involving assistance from several sensible types from the pub's "back passage" bar (the St Helen's Posse and Tall John), I was eventually liberated from the fixed seating arrangements.
My arm had to be liberally lubricated with washing up liquid and twisted and manipulated this way and that before I could be freed, red-faced, to hobble home.
But in recent nights I've had a generally agreeable time in the pub, though, as usual, there have been one or two minor kick-offs. Must be this insufferable heat we've been having, making everyone up-tight.
One person who never seems to get uptight, however, is the Waiting Room's landlady, Eleganta Chignon, who's been coolly sashaying about in her Capri pants.
And on one recent night there was a kind of magic in the air as Welsh Jack and the equally Welsh Dr Ricardo sang several lovely ballads in the Welsh tongue, including Myfanwy.
I've been following the advice of Hell's Waiting Room regular, Dr Ricardo, by the way, about how to treat my sore foot.
He told me to eat Halibut oil tablets and vitamin B6 and the pain would go away. And that advice has worked ... the pain has gone entirely.
Consequently, I have been able to go out running along the cliffs, the Noses and the Promenade from New Brighton to Wallasey (Harrison Drive) Beach and back home.
Last night, between 9.20pm and 10pm, I made that run against the phantasmagoric backdrop of a classic Wallasey sunset.
A mackerel sky of the rosiest hue I've ever seen over-arched Liverpool Bay. Beneath it the sea glittered like a giant ruby. Pure poetry.
It made me think how beautiful this part of the world is, and what a shame New Brighton has been allowed to decline economically by the political pygmies of Wirral Council, who are supposed to be responsible for our heritage and civic life.
When I first moved to live in New Brighton some 20 months ago, I remember going for a great carvery lunch in the Hotel Victoria. I sat in the bar alongside a merry Christening party and gazed out over panoramic sea views.
Some weeks later I went back there, only to find that this gracious old hotel, which incorporated an historic reading rooms complex, had been demolished quicker than you can say "Wirral Council planning department only cares about Birkenhead".
I was amazed. In a matter of weeks a grand structure, sacred to the memory of so many New Brighton lives, had been reduced to two huge piles of rubble. Soon even the rubble was taken away, again quicker than you could say "Wirral Council doesn't give a stuff about Wallasey".
The relentless destruction of New Brighton's built heritage and its replacement with soulless blocks of flats for commuters and retirees depresses me greatly.
While I've been living in the town (i.e. in less than two years), a hardware shop, three pubs, two cafés and a sub-post office have closed down.
And the once impressive Grand Hotel on the seafront has been flattened, just like the Hotel Victoria.
What's going on? Is New Brighton cursed? Though I love the place I'm beginning to wonder...
History has not been kind to this once thriving resort.
And - boy! - the place was absolutely jumping with life just 50 years ago.
The Tower, the Tower Ballroom, the ferries, the Pier, the open air swimming pool, loads of nightclubs and dance halls ... all of them now gone.
All that is left of what was once the North of England's greatest resort is a tiny funfair and a few amusement arcades, chippies and greasy spoon cafes.
Will the place ever regenerate? Well, only if the Neptune project for a supermarket and the development of shops etc and a refurbished Floral Pavilion is eventually allowed to go ahead.
And that bold plan faces formidable opposition from a bunch of wealthy old farts who live in old merchants' houses yet spend their money elsewhere.
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Kay ~ wrote...
"History has not been kind to this once thriving resort.
And - boy! - the place was absolutely jumping with life just 50 years ago."
Aye lad, and the summers were warmer in those good old days too, and the food more wholesome. Does everything really get worse as we grow older ~ or do we just long for the past because that's when we were further away from the box that awaits its grizzly load?
Time went slower as well; we were without a care in the world ~ and they really knew how to make proper music in those days.
Worst of all is the film industry ~ they haven't got a clue how to act like in Basil Rathbone's day.
REGAN REPLIES: Thought-provoking stuff as ever from Kay ... if a little tinged with cynicism. Kay lives in Yorkshire, if I am not mistaken. And as is the case with ALL small Third World nations, they are STILL living in the past over there.
Posted by: Kay ~ | July 12, 2006 12:27 AM