Great…Fat…Britain!
I apologize as i’ve been lagginga bit on the blog. I am going to get you all caught up right now and let you know what was going on the past 2 weeks or so. Im going to take you back to Manchester.
Please note: due to the different keyboards where i am now please excuse any spellling mistakes. The z and the y have been switched…damnit why can’t they keep it all the same.
So the main reason for my visit to Manchester was to see two young ladies I met in South Africa, Natalee and Lucy. Natalee was on my 2 week overland tour and I met Lucy in Coffee Bay while backpacking up the coast. I stayed at Natalee’s for a few days, ( see roller disco entry.) The weekend of the 20th of October I went and stayed with Lucy. (Mom, i know what you are thinking so please send any comments and questions you have to me directly via email.)
During the weekend me and Lucy took a ride up to Blackpool, it’s about an hours drive from Manchester. It lies northwest of Manchester on the coast. I know in the past i’ve made references to Hampton Beach, which some of you may or may not understand. Hampton Beach was, and still probably is, a white trash playground for New Englanders. A chance to let their hair (mullet) down and their guts out. Perhaps a white trash version of the Riviera. It’s a great place for mullet hunting, seeing someone beat their kids in public and seeing the most amount of keystone light and milwaukees best consumed by the locals, usually in paper bags. Hampton Beach also turns into a teenage getaway during the hot summer months. It gives these local hoodlums a chance to show off their new rims and pump their new stereo speakers in their beatdown camaro as they just drive in a continous loop up the strip and then back around. I can’t say many good things about Hampton Beach. They have salt water taffy, descent seafood, fireworks, a casino and some B list performers every so often.
Now on to Blackpool. I honestly think you could switch the two places and not one person would notice…then again, what do you notice when you have fried dough in one hand, a hot dog in the other and a mouth full of cotton candy, while your kids are screaming and tugging on your “I don’t have an eating disorder, I was born this way” T-shirt:
“Mom…Mom…Mom…I’m hungry…I wanna play arcade games…wah wah wah wah.”
Lucy pretty much warned about what I was going to see but i still didn’t believe it when I saw it. This place was absolutely hilarious. One long street full of fish n’ chip shops, video arcades, a theme park called “Pleasure Beach”, a casino and yes, you guessed it, loads and loads of white trash families doing white trash things. I’ve taken alot of grief in my travels about Americans being fat and lazy, most of this coming from the mouths of people from the U.K. Perhaps these people never looked out their own doorstep, i don’t know. What I do know however is that this whole town could sink into the ground with all the weight trampling down upon it.
We walked up the street and did some fat people watching. My game viewing skills were still intact as it wasn’t too long since i’d been out of Africa. Now in Africa i didn’t see the Big 5, i missed the ever elusive Leopard. In Blackpool big game was everywhere, and sometimes I felt like it was more dangerous and more volatile. I’m not sure if I would be more afraid to take a piece of meat off a hungry lion or a piece of Fried Dough from a fat person, that’s a toss up.
So we walked on and Lucy informed me that I hadn’t been to Blackpool until I had some fish n’ chips. When in Rome, right? Out of the 1 million fish n’ chip shops in Blackpool we (Lucy) somehow managed to pick the most disguisting one. Apparently we must have mistakenly ordered ten extra layers of grease on the mighty piece of fried fish. We were both hungry so we ate it but I swear my heart aged about 10 years in about 10 minutes. For the rest of the day my stomach gurgled and groaned and I felt like the fat kid in Stand By Me…Boom Baba Boom Baba Boom Baba!
In the afternoon the skies opened up over Blackpool and rain came pissing down or as they say in Blackpool, ” it was absolutely lashing out.” We happened to be right in front of a candy and souvenir shop at the time. We took refuge as the rains poured down and had a look around. I have to say that I was quite amazed at what this shop had. One, it had fat people and screaming kids, i guess that goes without saying. It also had loads if gifts with pretty undiscreet sexual references. I won’t go into great detail as I want to keep it fairly clean but this is where the similarities between Hampton Beach and Blackpool end, or maybe i’m wrong. Giant penis’ made of candy everywhere. Hats and t-shirts with pretty raunchy references that kids were wearing…unbelievable. I guess we are much more censored in the states so perhaps that’s why it comes as quite a shock. We also sat and watched as they made the famous “Rock Candy.” We saw the guy roll it out and put it through the machine. As it came out of the machine he pulled it and they rolled it out into long thin sticks as the fat people, “oohed and aaaahed.” Is life not worth living when this is the best part of your day? Rock Candy pretty much looks like giant candy canes without the hook. They sell them in various flavors and colors. It has a no teeth back guarantee. Basically if you eat it and your teeth don’t fall out within 3 days you get your money back. Sorry, i cant do much more to sell you on it.
Once the rains let up we finished the day trying to see one of Blackpools more famous attractions, Illuminations. The Illuminations is a seasonal light show. Once the sun goes down all the lights hanging above and around the streets light up in a colorful show. We attempted to get in line behind the other cars to view the lights but made it only so far down the street due to the traffic before we headed off.
I don’t know if i’ll ever go to a place like Blackpool again, perhaps for my Honeymoon if i ever get married, but it was definitely worth a laugh.
I really enjoyed my time in Manchester. Manchester was definitely a place I would go back to again, I guess if i ever had a reason to go back. I have to thank Natalee and Lucy for putting up with me for the week, it’s not easy.
So after Manchester I flew to Austria on the 25th of October.
Tags: England, Manchester
Gagnonius
By far your best post.