Andrew Martin: The Blackpool Highflyer

The other waitress hadn't heard, so I'd been left sort of dangling.

My waitress might have been Yorkshire, and she might have been Lancashire. Even though I suppose I was quite broad myself I couldn't always tell the difference. I sometimes had the notion that Lancashire folk had lower, darker voices that bent like liquorice. They would say 'Lankeysheyore', or 'Black- pewel', putting as many curves as possible into a word. What the two had in common was loudness about the mouth.

'Eve!' the serving girl had yelled across again, 'have we got a one for this gent?' Then she'd whispered, 'He's come in by his sen!', and I'd been minded to say that I was a married man, and not just some funny bit of goods that couldn't be fitted into an eating house. And not only that, but a fellow freshly promoted too.

I'd wanted to see Blackpool because, after a short time on goods, I'd been put up to the excursion link at Sowerby Bridge Shed, and Blackpool was the excursion magnet. It was the great demand for holiday trains that had left the Lanky short of firemen, and, seeing my chance to return to my home county I'd snatched at it, after all the complications I'd struck while firing for the London and South Western.

'Eve!' the serving girl had bawled, 'for crying out loud!'

That had done the trick, and I'd been led to the table near the window that I'd had my eye on all along.

I'd ordered six oysters, bread and butter, bottle of Bass.

Then I'd asked for salt and pepper, and the waitress had said, 'Condiments ha'penny extra.'

'Ha'penny extra?' I'd said. 'It never is… is it?'

But that was Blackpool all over: the wildness of the waitresses, salt and pepper a ha'penny extra – and Worcester sauce and a slice of lemon another ha'penny on top of that.

I hadn't minded, though. I was on velvet: going forward in my work (firing at present but with the job of driver in my sights), and happy at Sowerby Bridge Shed, which was just a mile outside Halifax.

I was newly wed, settled in Back Hill Street, Halifax, with three rooms for me and the wife, and a room upstairs to let, all ready and waiting with bed turned down and a spirit stove for making tea. Marriage suited me very well, in a roundabout sort of way. I liked being with the wife, and I also liked being away from her, for a little while at least.

My oysters had arrived and I set to. A woman at the next table leant across to give me the news that she 'could sit by this window, supping tea all day long'.

'Same here!' I said, turning to look out again at a paddle steamer going between the piers. Of course, I thought, they're not real sailors out there, the ones that meddle with wind and wild sea and darkness, but they were coping with quite a swell, for all the brightness of the day.

I then took from my pocket my Railway Magazine, to read of high dividends on the Furness Railway, new wagons on the North Staffs; and, after calling for the bill, I fell to marvelling for the umpteenth time at my Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway footplate pass.

The Lanky was run from Manchester. Fifth by size of the railway companies, its territory stretched from Liverpool in the west to Goole in the east, but the millions in between made it number one in population per mile. Every new engine was painted black for weeks on end, and that was because it was going to go to work. The Lanky was 'The Business Line' – cotton, wool and coal – but a lot of northern towns now had their own 'wakes' or holiday week, and the Lanky was all for that, because then people wanted to pack up, and they wanted to be off.

It was the johnnies in Central Timing in Manchester who planned most of the excursions. They would sit over graphs that looked like sketches of long grass bending in the wind: these were train movements, and the fellows would be squinting along the lines looking to see where the holiday specials could be slotted in alongside the ordinary trains, and if they could be they would be. Many of the excursions were put up by the Lanky itself but a good many more were dreamed up by clubs and societies, who would ask for a train to be laid on, and usually found the Lanky out to oblige, for it was all money in the bank.

One queer thing about wakes was that it was mainly a Lancashire tradition, but Halifax had its wakes. Halifax was honorary Lancashire really – a mill town like so many in Lancashire, and close to the county boundary. It was one of the things that made it foreign-seeming even to those, like myself, from other parts of Yorkshire.

Stepping out of the dining rooms I didn't bother to look at the top of the Tower, knowing it would crick my neck. I continued along a row of shooting galleries and oyster places, coming to a yard with swinging boats. The swings were on frames with scissor legs. There were four going, each with two ladies in. They all swung at the same rate, and I stood there thinking of them as governors, regulating the mighty engine of Blackpool.

There were plenty about on that Sunday, the last in April, but the Ferris wheel hadn't yet been set turning, and the twenty-three excursion platforms of Blackpool Central – the busiest station in Europe, come summertime – were sleeping in the sun.

Further along, on the seaward side of the Prom, I struck a weird-looking building: like a great brick pudding with fancy white icing into which were carved in curly letters the words 'The Seashell'. It was a music hall of sorts. There were three lots of revolving doors and beside each one a potted palm dancing about in the breeze. How they kept them going in that windy spot was anybody's guess.

As I watched, a little fellow walked up, carrying a carpet bag and a long stepladder, heading for the middle door. I thought: now what's his programme for getting those ladders through those doors? But instead he set the ladder down between two of the doors and climbed it, bag in hand. He was the man who changed the bills, and there was a whole alphabet in his bag. I was quite a one for music hall – I had seen Little Titch at the Tivoli just before quitting London – so I hung about to watch.

The fellow with the ladder had just taken down the letters spelling out the bill-topping turn 'Three Jinks in a Jungle', when I spotted a little bloke watching alongside me: dirty boater and hardly any teeth.

'How do,' he said.

'How do,' I said back. Then: 'What's "Three Jinks in a Jungle"?'

'Concertina band,' he said.

A tram went past just then, making a noise of a piano, kettle drum and a baby screaming.

'Where does the jungle come in?' I asked, and the man shook his head, as if to say: Blowed if I know. But it hardly mattered, since the Jinks were coming off anyway.

Then I watched with the toothless fellow as the new ones went up. First came an M, then O, N, S…

'Exciting this,' the fellow said.

Next came I, E, U and R, and the man on the ladder climbed down, being able to reach no further across. As he moved his ladder, Toothless tapped me on the shoulder.

'French,' he said, and I nodded. 'Glorious day,' I said, and the fellow nodded back.

I would have gone into the Seashell and watched the show, but I'd promised the wife I would be home before tea.

Clive had the rattlers jumping behind us now. We must have been up to seventy miles an hour, and the engine had more to give yet. I wanted to see how much, so even though I'd put nearly a ton on since Halifax Joint, and my shirt was well nigh soaked through with sweat, it was no trouble to keep going with the shovel.

Clive kept looking through the spectacle glass, along the length of the high boiler, aiming the engine. I wondered whether he was looking out for Blackpool Tower, like any tripper.

Presently, in a kind of dream of speed, I moved over to the side and forced my head out for a bit of a blow. We were between the villages of Salwick and Kirkham, flying through a simple world of grass and sky, with all signals dropped.