Will Morecambe ever get Wise?

[Gary]

One thing I did this year was to take a trip to to Morecambe to see how things are panning out from a day tripper / holiday perspective since my last visit a few years back...

To me, Morecambe is a hidden treasure of a place that I should really hate since the demise of Frontierland but a place that I actually admit to liking..

It's a place punching below its weight, whilst at the same time financial prudence appears to be underpinning what any vision the council has..

It's a place in two minds..and yet a great resource just waiting to be tapped...The potential is enormous.

I have to say that the following article by Katherine Flett from The Observer published in 1999 sums up everything I feel about Morecambe in 2005....


Read on..


"For many years Morecambe seemed to be in denial about its ignominious slide in status - there is, of course, no longer any need for a glamorous gilded 3000 seat theatre in a town with a declining tourist trade, a place where the summer season artistes include a magician called Harvey Rush and Paul Wheater singing Jim Reeves and other country favourites'...

...The Labour council managed to get quite a bit done, enthusing the town with a bit of a 'vision', but residents lost faith after the premature announcement of an exciting revenue generating new tourist-attraction, a Noel Edmonds-endorsed Crinkley Bottom theme park

Mr Blobby-land soon went spectacularly, and very publicly, belly-up, however, and the local council is now run by a bunch of Independents.

...The ongoing £40million redevelopment is making a difference to Morecambe but it still feels like a town with one foot planted firmly in the past and the other poised hesitantly, waiting to step forward.

On the seafront, Gypsy Lee, who has plied her trade in Morecambe for 46 years ('my mother was here for 60') reads my palm for a tenner.

I'm going to live to a great age, apparently and although I've had a 'difficult few years, surrounded by chaos, things are looking up'. In fact, things look up rather faster than I expect as soon as I stumble across P. Brucciani, purveyors of award-winning Ice-cream, tea, coffee and snacks.

With its red formica tables linoleum and acid-etched glass Venetian scene, Brucciani's is a perfectly preserved slice of the 1930s...

If this were Brighton it would he abuzz with earnest conversation over Penguin classics and the fog of a million Marlboro.

But this is Morecambe and there is only me, six septuagenarians in Pacamacs and even though it is run by Italians, there is no espresso machine.

Despite this, it is heaven."

Kathryn Flett 1999