The southern areas of Blackpool are growing in my affection. The north may have the history, the red brick, the 'classic' pier and our house but the south has the dunes, the big sky, rollercoasters and wider streets. Separating Blackpool from St Annes is St Annes Old Links golf course. This course is over one hundred years old and is used as the qualifying course for the Open. Apparently it's challenging, windy, bouncy and wet. Here's a view from the 1st tee looking north:

The golf course is directly on the dunes which shelter it from the Irish Sea. Sitting on top of the highest dunes this hot summer has been a pleasure. I found it very tranquil and calming staring out across the vast flat sands at low tide.

Even the planes taking off from the nearby airport didn't dent my contemplations. In fact, they lent the sunny scene a retro feel as they thundered over the roofs of Pontins Holiday Camp (I imagined it was 1972 and the holiday-camp crowds looked skywards and waved at the 3pm daily flight to Spain and secretly wished they could get pissed on sangria instead of warm beer).

Big windows looking out onto the busy street and excellent chips (yes, I know the street doesn't look busy in my pic but believe me it was a real conveyor belt of 'colourful' characters). One of the fish fryers is super-handsome. Palma (Majorca) was a sophisticated destination in the 1970's (just like Le-Pool-Noir now) when this orange plastic sign was created. Three lunches out of seven were savoured here.

Off to Blackpool tonight. Back in a week.

That's me posing in the middle of a concrete maze in Oslo. The maze was part of an outdoor art installation which also featured a huge wooden see-saw which would have Health And Safety officers reaching for their notebooks were it in the UK. Here's a pic of me on the rickety dangerous see-saw.

Liberte, Egalite, Farternite


Saturday was all about culture. We visited the temporary modern art installations at the university before hiking up to the Palace to watch the changing of the guards. Here's Darren in front of the palace and here are the guards in their Phil Oakey style hats. We spent the afternoon at the National Musuem for Art, Architecture and Design and learned everything there is to know about Per Spook (he liked using sequins).
Our planned late afternoon boat cruise was cancelled by us once we saw the boat, it's hard seats and our noisy fellow cruisers. Instead we got more ice cream from McDonalds and bimbled around Akker Brygge, the old industrial quarter on the harbour now 'transformed' into expensive shops and apartments. Dinner in this area would require a small mortgage so we strolled back to the main drag and 'splashed out' on burgers and beer at the Hard Rock cafe (we could have fed six folk at the London branch for the price we paid here!).
Across the street from our hotel was The London Pub (Oslo's premier gay bar!) so, as it was Saturday night and my BF is gay, we paid a visit for a cocktail or two. We had one beer and fled. Like Frommer said; unpretentious, glum and depressing. Back at our hotel we kept the piano player company in the deserted lounge (it's Saturday night! where is everyone?) where we drank more beer and hummed along to Billy Joel tunes.

Oslo was sooooooo expensive. Their standard of living may be exceedingly high but boy do they pay for it. After checking into our hotel on Friday afternoon (The Bristol, old-school luxury, very gentlemens-private-drinking-club type of atmosphere) we bimbled around town and ate dinner at Peppe’s Pizza (an Oslo institution and very nice but very pricey (for pizza)).



We walked dinner off by strolling towards the harbour through Akershus Fort via a little park where we saw the police handing out syringes (pre-loaded too!) to addicts. A lovely tree lined street under the fort serves as the main catwalk for Oslo’s prostitutes and we bid them "good evening" as we sauntered past and entered the fort. As we climbed to the top of the ramparts we were pleasantly shocked to be serenaded by Mark E Smith and his band The Fall belting out their hits from the stage at the Oya music festival nearby (we missed Morrissey by 24 hours). The view from the fort over the harbour and down to Oslo was lovely and the warm evening and prospect of a good nights sleep (up at 4am this morning) granted us good vibrations. We climbed down from the fort as the sun was setting and then sat by the waters edge people-watching before buying ice cream at McDonalds (!) and heading back to the hotel like a couple of OAP's for an early night.

Blur were right, modern life is rubbish. We just got back from a weekend in Oslo hence the photo above.
Thursday
all day
chaos at Heathrow, flights cancelled, angry mobs, check British Airways website for departure info every ten minutes, worry Darren’s birthday present will need to be cancelled, worry some more
midnight
BA website indicates our flight tomorrow NOT cancelled! pack, go to bed

Friday
4am
rise and shine, drive to airport in record time, wonder where the stranded mob of passengers are, sail through check-in AND security in just ten minutes, buy coffee, window shop, board flight
8am
sit fuming on plane while baggage belonging to morons is unloaded (why didn’t everyone leave early for the airport?) apparently by 8am the security check lines had reached a two hour wait so passengers who had checked-in were left stranded while their bags were loaded on the aircraft
10am
bags located and off-loaded and flight departs
noon
arrive Oslo, start doing fun stuff (details later)

Sunday
9am
breakfast at hotel (huge buffet, *pats belly*), receptionist informs us all BA flights from Oslo cancelled today, swear and cuss (we had a full day left and a 9pm flight booked), pack, head to airport
3pm
finally reach front of line (after four hours) to be dealt with by lone BA representative
4pm
board flight to Prague!
6pm
land in Prague!!
7pm
flight to London delayed 2 hours, swear and cuss, buy chocolate
9pm
board flight to London (discover we are in business class so cheer up a little)
11pm
land in London, collect car, drive home, decide to buy a caravan and begin weekending in the UK.

Borat welcome but not the other one...

Saturday 5 August 9pm somewhere in Yorkshire
(from a speeding train hurtling towards London)

Quick jaunt up to Newcastle yesterday to hand Edward over to my Mum for his summer hols. We're off to ******** next weekend for Darrens birthday (surprise for him) and I don't like to put him into kennels (the dog, not Darren). I had a whole first class carriage to myself on the return journey and I drank too much free tea and ate too many free shortbreads (gotta get your moneys worth).
Darren is in the Channel Islands working this weekend so I'm rattling around the empty house bored. The TV would usually be booked for the most of the day (F1, football etc) if Darren was here so I grasped the opportunity and watched Fried Green Tomatoes and cried buckets (favourite guilty double bill: Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias). Big fat gayer!

But I Didn't Shoot The Deputy
The Lily Allen album is very catchy. Damn her! She swears a lot but my warped morals tell me it's ok for posh girls to be potty-mouthed while po-white-trash should be shot for just uttering "blimey". The Razorlight album is scissor-kickingly great and The Rifles album is a little bit mod, a little bit ska and a lot like your favourite comfy 10 year old Fred Perry polo top. The Upper Room failed their A level poetry exams so started a band and now they're hot on the heels of Keane. Bow Wow Wow made some great singles dint they? C30 C60 C90 Go! Malcolm McLaren is currently in a Hellmans mayonnaise advery on telly. My new phone lets me use MP3's as a ring tone so I downloaded Strictly Business by EPMD from my laptop and now when my Mum calls me I get a nice blast of "I shot The Sherriff". Green Gartside is back on form with his band Scritti Politti and their new album, White Bread Black Beer is lovely summer stuff. My tip for the top this month is Poni Hoax (I have a shockingly bad track record at this kind of thing so ignore me). I'm still playing and loving the Gnarls Barkley album 3 months later.

Allah Towers
Welcome to integrated Britain! Alton Towers, Englands premier theme park is having a 'Muslims Only' day in September. No smoking, no alcohol, no gambling and only halal food served. Males cannot sit next to females on the rides. Only visitors who have bought tickets from Islamic Leisure will be granted entry on the day and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee declared it "a day exclusively for our brothers and sisters". I mean, it's not as if Muslims are refused entry to the park whenever they visit. Whatever next? A day for the gays? Hurrah! Ah, but, entry on the 'Gay Day' is open to everyone regardless of their orientation whereas the Muslim Day is highly exclusive. Can you imagine the stink if a 'Christians Only Day' was organised.
UPDATE: Muslim Day has been cancelled due to 'poor ticket sales'. Absolutely nothing to do with the barrage of complaints on the fan-forums I suppose. The main complaint seems to be that Alton Towers post their opening dates for the entire year on their website but this 'closed' event was taking place on an 'open' day. All this fuss could have been avoided if Islamic Leisure had booked the park for their event once the 'official' season was over (British Telecom do this every spring for their employees).