The post adolescants drift in for their sausages, beans, bacon, tomatoes and eggs, 2 toast and tea. The girls bovine, large buttocked, dental braced, hunting in packs of six.

The lads pimpled, lager fumes, blue collared, a little soiled round the edges and fingernails, once away from the wind. Liverpudlian laughter - committing Tom and his foolery to legend.

Dogends are stubbed out - sly looks, innuendo abounds, Sunday in Blackpool. Two dozen Madam - this and that's - tell fortunes, each one the real thing - with forty year old Coronation Street stars shaking a congradulatory hand for the camera - stapled to the bill boards outdoors. A fading dogeared snap of a very young Tom Jones, looking not unlike the boys in the breakfast cafe, with a little stick of Blackpool rock. The wind from the North sea ever present, ever frozen.

The Gypsy horse and owner stand stiffened by 20 years of hardship, his face
red with whiskey, blue with cold. I feel for the horse.

Blackpool, Sunday.

© 2000 Graham Brazier