THERE IS A TOWN CALLED BLACKPOOL

When I was learning how to be an aircraft engineer, I lived in a seaside town in the North-West of England, called Blackpool. Those of you from the UK will know it, and those from the rest of the world probably won’t.

It has been called the Vegas of the North, but from what I have seen of Vegas on the TV, that’s the equivalent of suggesting Hilary Clinton is Washington’s answer to Miss World. (Oh I know some of you will have the hots for her, but come on! Some of you voted Marge Simpson into FHM’s top 100 women list!).

Anyway, I digress. One of the features of Blackpool is that every year they have a spectacular light display, with the very imaginative title of ‘The Illuminations’. Six miles of tableaux, street and building decorations, using over one million light bulbs (and you thought your electricity bill was bad).

There I was, on my trusty Honda CB125, toddling along the promenade taking in the sights. Well why not? The illuminations are only on for sixty days a year so take the opportunity and have a look.

Now at this point I should mention Blackpool has retained an old fashioned transportation system, the tram. For those of you from across the pond, think street-car but with overhead electric cables. In the main, these trams run on their own section of the promenade, separate from the road, except in one place. You can probably see where I’m going with this by now.

One of the less attractive features of the CB125 is the narrowness of the tyres. As I came to this section of road my front tyre went down into one of the tram tracks and I wrenched on the handlebars and got it out again ….aha!…fooled you, … only to have it immediately drop into the adjacent track.

A major requirement for riding a motorcycle is having the ability to steer. Clearly, when it has taken on the characteristics of a train, that ability has been lost. To this day I remember the words ‘Oh Sh%@’ coming out in ultra slo-mo as I slowly toppled over to one side and slid up the road. Now as if this wasn’t bad enough, the Illuminations attract over 3 million visitors a year. I believe most of them were there that night, watching my one man stunt show.

One car driver stopped, leaned out of his window, looked down at me lying on the floor and asked,

‘Are you okay?

‘I think so.’

And with that he drove off.

I managed to pick myself up, and wheeled the bike to the side of the road. I spent the next ten minutes trying to straighten the bent gear lever, when all I wanted to do was go and hide somewhere. I do believe they missed an opportunity that night to save on the electric bill, as the glow from my face would have lit up the entire promenade with ease. At least I had the sense to keep my helmet on so no one would know who I was (shame my helmet had ‘Glen’ painted on it).