Blackpool Tower, famously plagiarised by Gustav Eiffel, was today reported to be in flames. It turned out to be an orange net flapping in the wind. The best bit for me was the Daily Fail making a fool of itself with this
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Headlines here are that in a nearby village an elderly couple were sold last yearâs pompier calendar for âŹ10. A bit more shocking I feel.
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Very impressive, what with the the design of the Parisian Landmark predating Blackpoolâs half-size erection by several years 
I thought that the minimum amount?!
Yes, but not for last yearâs calendar.
Keep up Cat !
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Blackpool Tower has an interesting cultural history, knew a bit about it and much more after the history of the English seaside became part of an Open University Humanities module that I used to tutor. Contrast and compare with the evolution of the French seaside holiday resort could be the basis for an interesting book - but Iâve got more pressing things to do like posting on SF when I should really be editing another bookâs, but always harder when you donât have a deadline.
Brought back childhood memories of visiting the Tower Zoo and seeing the animals in tiny cages, even as a child I thought it was awful and thankfully it closed long ago. But maybe it also seeded many anti-zoo essays that I wrote when much older. My most downloaded paper is on the incarceration of African elephants in European zoos - it gets downloaded nearly every day by someone in the world, mainly by lecturers in architecture, so maybe itâs doing something positive . Unfortunately there are still zoos in Western Europe and around the world, even in sub-Saharan Africa where very large, mainly African animals are kept in unbelievably tiny enclosures.
As they warn on TV etc, âsome people may my photos distressingâ, but thatâs because they areâŚ
Blackpool tower has appalling memories for me, but rant over - hereâs a bit of back on thread light relief
But Blackpool has its famous Ballroom.
I was taken there to see something called the Dancing Waters.
Coloured fountains which moved to the music.
Also Blackpool Tower Circus with the famous clown Charlie Cairolli.
My monologue.
I also have a collection of Stanley Hollowayâs monologues on 78s.
Brown Boots, Runcorn Ferry, With her Head tucked underneath her arm etc.
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Did anyone else watch Eiffel on M6 just before Xmas? I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Incidentally yesterday (I think) was the centenary of his death.
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Blackpool has a serious drug problem. Letâs face it, anyone forced to live there would need to be heavily sedated as it makes Great Yarmouth look like Las Vegas.
Just the idea on being on a tram along the Blackpool promenade makes me want to inject fentanyl into my eyeballs.
Thereâs currently a 90 minute Eiffel doc on Arte - I watched it with French subtiles which was very helpful.
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Thanks, shall take a look.
New Brighton (once known in Manchester as âMerseysideâs Marbellaâ) in turn erected an even smaller version of Blackpoolâs tower.
On a nerdy local note, Capdenac Gare in the NW Aveyron has an early Eiffel railway bridge over the Lot and a little, known miniature Eiffel Tower bizarrely situated on the edge of a bleak industrial estate. Itâs even smaller than the one New Brighton had.
Is James Cleverleyâs wife from Blackpool?
On our 2021 âgrand tourâ viewing houses we stopped in a motorway service station that had a view over an Eiffel bridge, although for the life of me, I couldnât tell you where it was now and it certainly wasnât there.
Did you get an âeyefulâ? 
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What was that Ealing Comedy that featured models of the Eiffel Tower?
Blackpoolâs weird in so many ways - itâs obviously so hyper-artificial yet in autumn and winter the promenade still faces the incredible forces of nature when it can be a dangerous place to be.
Thereâs all sorts of places in the NW that have a serious drugs problem, Blackpoolâs is because itâs so obviously desperate, but there are other, more unlikely places like Penrith in Cumbria which suffered crack and smack junkies being dumped there on the assumption that being in a nice rural market town would somehow re-educate them, whereas in fact the reverse happened.
Not sure - maybe Passport to Pimlico?