The centre of Blackpool is a strange place. There are almost no natural features at all. No hills or trees, no grass even, nothing but the long empty stretch of sea which runs alongside the town centre, licking at the straight line of the prom and drawing your eyes out towards the straight line of the horizon. There is really nothing much to see here at all. No wonder people immediately start looking around when they arrive, “seeking for further amusement” as the Ramsbottoms did in Marriot Edgar’s old monologue. It’s as if somebody, a very long time ago, thought to themselves this place is a bit dull, let’s spice it up a bit-see what we can come up with to keep everybody happy. And they built Blackpool.

So what did they come up with? When I arrive on a grey weekday October afternoon my first impression is that I have wandered into a nightclub at two o’clock in the morning when they have just switched the lights on to encourage everybody to go home. There are the dregs of something which has already happened all around me, but I am here too late to have seen it. Half closed bars, a few chip shops open, a bored bouncer standing around in a doorway talking to his friends, leftovers from the night before drifting around the pavements, and hopeful thumping music drifting out of a pub doorway. The giant roller coaster is flinging itself around the track with too few people on board for me to hear the screams. A few hardy souls are still partying in their bunny ears and L plates as if they haven’t noticed that they are the last ones still standing, but most people are just picking their way through the wasteland, eager to get somewhere else.

At night, when the lights come on again, the tattered paint is hidden behind lazers, neon, fibre optics and over a million lightbulbs. This is when the tiny human termites appear out of the darkness and crawl into the light to comfort themselves in the pleasure mounds which have been carefully made for them. They are loud and relentlessly cheerful, intent on being noticed.  They jostle their way down the prom in their hundreds, arms linked, spreading noise and movement through the lighted space. Long into the hours of darkness they scurry, watched with contempt by the waiting sea.

When I leave Blackpool a couple of days later my taxi driver tells me that they have clubbing all year round in Blackpool now. People come out of the nightclubs at two o’clock in the morning on a winter night, no longer able to think straight. They stare out across the blackness of the sea and decide that it would be a good idea to head out into the darkness for a swim. “They really shouldn’t do that,” he explains. “The water temperature kills them very quickly.” He shakes his head sadly. “You don’t see them again”.