May Project 365 Round-Up

"Woah. What's going on here then? You can't post a round up of May's Project 365 photos before May's even finished!"

Well yes I bloody can. It's my blog and I'll do what I want to. Especially when I have blogged every. single. day in May and am feeling fatigued and need an easy post.

If today and tomorrow's photos are really amazing, I'll give them a post all of their own, I promise.

May

Clockwise L-R: Blackpool baby yeah; Rosie on a wall; crocheted elephant; Coke bottle with my name on it; Lily cat; Hull 10km that wasn't

26th May - Oh I do like to be beside the seaside! Especially when it involves eating fish and chips, gawping at people, getting accidentally burned, freezing my feet in the Irish Sea and drinking a bucket of gin. Read all about it here.

1st May - Rosie is a funny old one. She doesn't really enjoy being on four legs you know. She can always be found up on her hind legs at the kitchen counters, up on her hind legs asking for a hug, and here, up on her hind legs on the wall that overlooks the castle when I took her for a walk.

13th May - I crocheted an elephant everyone! Aren't I a clever monkey. Not the people who wrote the pattern they're not clever at all, but I am the clever one for following it correctly and producing an elephant. That doesn't stand....but let's not dwell on that.

8th May - "Oooh look at me, I'm all sneery and so sick of seeing Coke bottles with people's names on them" - is something you will hear me say never. I think it was a great idea and it makes me smile and I don't even feel bad about it. Instead I feel bad for the souls who cannot find the joy in anything in life. The one drawback to Coca Cola's idea? People like me who are a bit weird and now can't buy the bottle unless it has either my name on it or someone who is connected to me's name on it. I don't want to drink Amy's bottle of Coke, that's just weird.

18th May - It is hard to get a photo of Lily where she doesn't look either deranged, massively overweight or as if she's descended from bats. It turns out the secret is to take a picture of only head, from side on so you can't see the size of her ears or her crazed eyes. I like to think this is how they take pictures of Kate Moss too - I bet she looks deranged from certain angles too.

19th May - How could I not include this photo? Let us all revel in the delight that was the Hull 10km that actually wasn't a 10km. I've pretty much given up complaining about it now, mostly because I've run out of people that haven't heard the story. However this t-shirt is wonderful - it's a good size it's a nice colour and doesn't make me feel all gross when I run. I'll take my good t-shirt with lies written all over it and go and run a 10km somewhere else thank you very much.

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This is quite the achievement. Not only have I got to the end of May and managed to blog every day - I've also managed to make it 5 months taking photos every day when I actually haven't got a life at the moment. 

High five!

All Project 365 photos can be found here on Flickr. Don't let the new layout throw you out and give you a headache like it did to me.

Beside the Seaside

You know what's good about living in Preston.

Besides parks that have hills you can roll down obviously?

It's only a wee 30-odd minute train journey from the mecca that is Blackpool.

Bank Holiday Sunday was full of the sun again and The Person and I know not to look a sun-horse in the mouth and took ourselves off to Preston station, paid our £8.10 and headed off to wonderland.

I hear a lot of bad stuff about Blackpool and some of it may be true. I have yet to experience a night out in Blackpool which is probably what colours a lot of people's notions about it. But for me it is glorious.

Stay right by the front, don't bother crossing the road (except when you need to visit all the Poundland shops to buy a pair of sunglasses because you left yours at home) and just delight in walking along by the front. It is clean as a whistle, and with the sun shining and the smell of fish and chips in the air I have absolutely no idea why anyone would have a bad word to say about the place.

It's been a long while since I've been to Blackpool - almost three years in fact. The biggest addition is the Comedy Carpet which left me absolutely gobsmacked. I'd heard about it, but had no idea just how big it was. We spent ages, wandering over it, laughing, beckoning to each other to come over and read something we recognised - it was a brilliant idea and whoever was in charge of commissioning it should be given a round of applause.

Just ever so slightly less new is North Pier which we took a stroll down a couple of times because once just wasn't enough. As the old-time songs wafted past our ears from the speakers and we looked at the sweet old couples sat on the benches, The Person came over all romantical and told me he loved me. I'm putting this down here because he will deny it ever happened and I will show him this post and go HA. YOU LOVE ME. and then we will go about our ways.

Some of it was naff. In fact a lot of it was naff, including the guy who beckoned us over to the stall where you throw darts into playing cards saying "Come and have a go and win your girl a teddy". That nearly made the feminist inside me rise up and bite - I was tempted to take up the darts and throw them myself but remembered at the last minute that I can't throw darts and probably wouldn't prove a point worth making.

As we wandered along The Person said to me "This is funny isn't it? Because we're enjoying it in an ironic way and also, just enjoying it."

And enjoy it we did. The Person is blase about the sea because he grew up with it literally at the end of his street. I grew up about an hour away from the sea (let's say it again in case some of us are new and some of us have forgotten - Hull is not on the sea. It's on an estuary. Trust me, you don't want to go swimming in it.) and hence behave like an excitable Jack Russell when I get near it, immediately wanting to get in it and paddle about and feel the sand between my toes.

How I know I'm a blogger - I take photos of my feet in water

The Person feels this need much less. When the sea is on your doorstep you know you don't need to go in it at all costs - especially when it's the end of May and the Irish Sea is approximately -3 degrees. Whatevs. You lose all feeling in your feet after a while when it's that cold anyway.

We also found the holy grail on our wanders. A bar that is literally on the sea front and isn't tacky. The Beach House was lovely and although we didn't eat there (why would you when you can get a chippy from a stall?) the food did look lovely. The Person drank his pint and I drank my bucket of gin (seriously. Put cucumber in your gin and tonic. It will change your life. Also. Drink Hendricks gin. It is out of this world.) and yeah it wasn't the cheapest round I've ever bought but it was worth it to sit and look at the sea and gawp and judge people's bad parenting skills.

We took our frazzled little, slightly sunburned selves back on the train and collapsed on the sofa for the rest of the evening.

With Bank Holidays like this it almost makes it worth working for a living.

By the seaside

Everybody has a list of things they want to do before they die. For some, it might be a bungee jump. Others might want to take a trip on the Orient Express. Me?
I wanted to go to Blackpool.

I have vowed to be more interesting and do more things. I’ve become stuck in an incredibly lazy rut of never doing anything on weekends. This is fine every so often but not every single weekend going. First on my list of The Girl Does Interesting Things was Blackpool.

Or more specifically, a certain place within Blackpool.

I love a bit of theme park/funfair action. I think it comes from growing up in Hull and the appearance of Hull Fair every year. I love the rides baby. I will jump on any chance to go to Alton Towers (still haven’t been since the new ride 13 opened, I want to go right now please) and I seriously just cannot get enough of the thrills. And we all know what Blackpool Pleasure Beach has?

The ultimate, the mack-daddy of rollercoasters, The Big One. (Or to give it it’s corporate title The Pepsi Max Big One).

It’s the first thing you see when you step off the train and the first thing you hear is the wisps of people’s screams as they plummet to their death down the initial 205 feet drop. I nearly had apoplexy when I saw this, I needed to go on it. Immediately.

However. I am well-versed in the ways of theme parks and the thing to do is not to go on the biggest and bestest straight away. What would be the point? Everything would be dull in comparison. You must warm up. You must go on a mini rollercoaster first.

Luckily the Pleasure Beach has everything you could want in the way of rollercoasters and more. It has ridiculously old wooden ones, it has ones that don’t have tracks, it has ones that spin you round a loop, it has ones that I still do not understand how they got past health and safety. There is so much there. And more.

And here is where it smacks Alton Towers into oblivion (YES. I totally did a theme park based pun there.) To get your chance to go on one of these rides involves a wait time of at most about half an hour. Yes I’m serious. Hardly. Any. Queues. Maybe we went on a ridiculously slow Saturday in the middle of July, maybe it gets worse, but I still don’t think it would compare to the hell on earth that is Alton Towers every day of the week. I have never been to Alton Towers during the school holidays. I’ve never even been on a Saturday. And yet still I have become used to upwards of an hour queuing time for rides that last less than a minute. NO MORE! I have seen the light. The Pleasure Beach is the way forward.

Ok. It’s not quite as slick as your bigger theme park. And when I say “not quite as slick” I mean really not quite as slick. It’s all a little faded and a little outdated and in some parts, just plain random. I’m sure it all made sense when it first opened. Even the Pepsi Max Big One is looking a little grubby – although this could be because it’s 16 years old. How has it taken me this long to go on it?! – although in comparison to the Wild Mouse ride that was built in 1958 it’s somewhat gleaming.

The thing is if you took away the tatty bits or even spruced them up then it would lose all of its charm, the slightly tattiness of it is what makes it so brilliant. I genuinely don’t mean that as a criticism, I genuinely love this place, I just cannot get over how great it is (and don’t get me started on the fact that it costs a fraction of the price to get in to Alton Towers) and cannot believe I haven’t been before. I need to go back there. Really soon. There were so many of the rollercoasters we didn’t go on (mainly because we were supposed to be there early doors and didn’t get there until lunchtime while people dithered about whether or not it was going to rain.)

And let’s not forget that Blackpool has a beach people. So many people get blasé about the sea when they’ve grown up with it or lived near it. I don’t understand this, the beach is still a massive source of amazement for me. I freakin’ love it and want to run down immediately and bury my toes in the sand and get over-excited at the waves. Unfortunately the stupid tide was in and there wasn’t really any beach for me to play on but we did sit on the steps (on a front that must have been very recently renovated, it’s marvellous, well down Blackpool City Council or whoever it was that paid for it) and I admired the sparkliness of the sea.

I wanted to go to the Tower but it was really far away and rollercoastering takes it out of you. Next time though...

In short. Blackpool’s brilliant. Yes, fine, it’s not the most upmarket of places and yes, fine maybe it’s a bit of a hellhole on a night out (I counted approximately 12 billion stag and hen parties) but the Pleasure Beach? You have to go. You just have to. No excuses.

I think it’s clear that...

PS If you go on Valhalla. You will get soaked. And I mean to. the. bone. No exceptions. Make this the last ride you go on so you can go and sit on the front and dry off. Seriously. You get wet. Maybe take your make-up off before you go on it as well.


PPS And the Big One. Oh. My. God. Go on it. Now. Get your shoes on and just go.