23 may 2010, blackpool

I'm not sure the name will resonate to many outside the uk, but the place is as much a part of my childhood as the lettering that runs through the rock whose distinctive but teeth-rotting characteristics are those of this once-thriving seaside playground. We used to drive up every single year in september to see "the lights", back when it was the only place that strung flashing colours along its "golden mile". It was somehow a highlight of the year to sit for hours in traffic watching humpty dumpty repeatedly fall off a wall. My parents had a wonderful trick: knowing the time the lights were turned on, they hurried me and my sister down a side street and we took it in annual turns to push a button in a wall, and then rush back, with unbridled joy to see the illuminated result. Quick to imitate the eiffel tower and to somehow always have the biggest funfair in the world, blackpool had a niche - but "breezy and bracing beaches" were never going to compete with spanish sun and sand once the northern classes got their hands on them, and so for decades now blackpool has given itself up to marauding hen and stag parties. Our one recent visit as a family was a "never again" day. Now though, the town has received some state money, some inspired leadership and, yesterday, an invaluable ticket to hundreds of thousands of visitors who would never go without the town's small team amazingly breaking into the football big time. Like when manchester first hosted the major party conferences, bringing glitterati hordes who had their eyes opened anew when forced to visit the place for the first time in 20 years, so the premiership presents a massive opportunity for piscine noire sur mer. Let's hope they grab it with both hands as probably their last chance to be bold, tear down the old edifices and build something much better and more sustainable.