A RAINY DAY IN CLEVELEYS

Ah Cleveleys! Last week I ventured to Cleveleys. Cleveleys is on the Fylde Coast just north of Blackpool. I went there to check out a bookshop listed on the internet - Hammond Books. This turned out to be a domestic dwelling of startling ordinariness with a shed in the back garden stuffed full of rotting paperbacks. Out of courtesy I leafed through an amount of these and stained my fingers with some rare and no doubt highly toxic fungus. I found nothing of interest and thanked the owner - a stout old geezer with ill fitting pullover.

 I drove to the main shopping street and wiped my hands on some curtain fabric wafting in the breeze. It began to rain. The shopping street runs down to the seafront and terminates at the sea wall, alongside which runs a promenade walkway with splendid views along to the Golden Mile, Blackpool & north to the hills of the Lake District. Ahead is the sea, churning & brown, frothing & distracted, a cauldron of freezing foam.

 I entered a charity shop: Friends Of Small Unprotected Cuddly Kittens (FSUCK). A notice over the doorway read NO DOGS ALLOWED. I felt at home. I browsed the books - the inevitable odd volume of Osbert Sitwell's autobiography was sharing space with Mary Hock's 'I'm Busting Out All Over! : How to improve your bust-line without busting the bank'; a dozen magazines of 'Sewing Monthly' & some Cosmo's. I found a batch of old sepia photos comprising a whole cross section of portraits from the Edwardian era. They were only 50p each so I selected a dozen and later made up a montage of dead people.

 I drifted with the tide of shoppers and found myself in a little market area - no room for umbrellas here. Disdainful youths chomped on apples or fish & chips; elderly impistioni's fluked their berettas. At a small stall I sipped a sample of home made plum wine which turned out to be surprisingly potent. Zinged like a Zebra I unwisely purchased three bottles from a rapidly receding stallholder. She said something like 'click me mingies' to which I smirked uncommitally & reeled out of the market place clutching at dancing spiders.

 And thus to the seafront for a brisk stroll (lurching sideways at unscheduled points). The seabreeze invigorated me and I downed some more gulps of plum wine - the zebras still zinged and my bottom teeth became fascinatingly spongy and my tongue became a wet towel sloshing me about the face. Fellow sea browsers looked at me strangely. Since I still had a modicum of common sense I abandoned the idea of driving back to Accrington in the short term and took flight on a gaudily decorated tram towards Blackpool & thence along the Golden Mile (very ticky-tacky) to Starrgate, the terminus. Not finding the merest suggestion of a portal into another dimension I was tempted to complain shoutingly to passing motorists, but instead found myself irresistibly drawn to a sodden wooden bench overlooking the beach, where I curled up into a kittenish furball and dreamt dreams of a plummy universe where soft fruits of all descriptions could dance & sing & fornicate to their hearts desire.