Life in quaint little Blackpool

Blackpool is the name of the town in UK where I spent two years preparing for my GCE A Levels. Although famous as a glitzy British seaside resort town, it proved to be a kind host to this eighteen year old kid, and successfully saw him grew from being a mere teenager into a young adult.

The Malaysian government started sponsoring students to study in the UK beginning the early 1970's, and Blackpool received its pioneering batch of eleven students in 1975. This continued on until 1982 giving a total of about 150 students altogether who had made Blackpool their kampong away from home.

Located in Lancashire County, on England's northwest coast, Blackpool is some 43 km north of Liverpool and 64 km northwest of Manchester. Blackpool town had a total population of about 140,000. But that did not include the outer lying small towns which together made up Blackpool Greater such as Lytham St. Annes, Thornton, Cleveleys, Poulton-Le-Fylde, Staining and Little Singleton.

With over 12 million visitors  each year, Blackpool was Britain's undisputed number one holiday resort.  Many came for its two main attractions, which was the amusement park, aptly named Pleasure Beach Blackpool, and the Blackpool Tower – a 518 feet tall structure inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 

Aside from these two, the town also featured numerous other visitor attractions. For example, it had the three town piers. Many seaside towns like Brighton and Southend also had piers. But Blackpool was the one to have that many. It also had numerous amusement arcades and funfairs, eleven kilometres of beaches and pedestrian promenade, and a vibrant nightlife. Then of course, there was the Blackpool Illuminations light show with its riot of colours, all ten kilometres long.

During summer, there’d be huge crowds in town particularly on the promenade, beaches, and at the amusement park. The streets would be lively with novelty shops selling gifts such as key rings, Blackpool rock, as well as candy flosses and the notoriously popular saucy post cards. The many fish and chips shops which dotted the streets would be thronged by hungry holiday makers refuelling themselves with chips taken with piping hot haddock or plaice. The three long piers would always be crowded with people relaxing on deck chairs.

In short, Blackpool was a much happening and flashy little town which one would not in the least expect some government-sponsored students to be sent to study.

For all its thrills and fun, though, Blackpool still retained its quaint outlook and did present a calm and peaceful living environment, conducive for us students to pursue our main job of studying.

I arrived in Blackpool by coach from London on a chilly, grey-skied September afternoon in 1979. I was together with fifteen other students. We were the first batch out of a total of twenty-five new students from Malaysia for that year. On arrival, we were taken straight to our college at Ashfield Road to report to the Overseas Students Coordinator.

Formalities at the college over, we were brought to the Marlowe Hotel, at No. 12, Pleasant Street about six kilometres from the college. Located overlooking the promenade with direct views to the sea, it was actually a bed and breakfast establishment, which was a small lodging that offered overnight accommodation inclusive of breakfast, traditionally found all over Britain. We stayed there for a couple of nights before moving into our own rented flats.

My first flat was at No. 4 Cheltenham Road very close to town centre with a monthly rental rate of £28 per person. Safi, a chap from Terengganu and Hussain from Banting, Selangor were my flat mates. But from Cheltenham Road it was such a hassle to get to college by bus every morning. Sometimes we’d miss the green and yellow double-decker bus at Dickinson Road – a good ten minutes’ walk away from our flat – and ended up being late for classes. So, after only one month, we moved to another flat in Norbreck near Thornton-Cleveleys.

Norbreck was about 5 kilometres to the north of Blackpool town centre. It was a nice and quiet residential area with small roads lined with red brick, terraced and semi-detached houses. A bonus for us was that it was within walking distance to college. I remember clearly Apak expressing his approval of this move to Norbreck in one of his letters to me because it meant that I could save on transport cost. While the others had to take the bus every day, all of us guys who stayed there were could leisurely walk to the college for classes. Some, like Ghani and Mat Noji, bravely chose to cycle. On the flip-side, our errands to buy kitchen produce would be a tad more demanding. We’d have to take the tram all the way to town centre and back. Sometimes, if the shopping goods were too plentiful and impossible to carry onto the tram, we had to hail the cab.

Shopping was usually done at the Fine Fare supermarket, or sometimes the Co-op Stores, both on Talbot Road. The Fine Fare was one of the very first places introduced to us by our seniors. Why? Because aside from selling just about everything one could ask for under one roof, it also retailed rice in “big” 500g packets, which was very important to fully feed our Malaysian stomachs. Halal meat for cooking was not available, though. For that, we had to go outstation, a good two hours trip away from Blackpool. But to satiate our cravings for burgers or beef pies, we’d occasionally frequent the kosher delicatessen located somewhere in town center.

There were ten or eleven of us guys who stayed in two houses, at numbers 20 and 22 Norbreck Road. Most other students stayed closer to town center at Hodgson Road, Buchannan Street, Warbreck Hill Road, Cornwall Avenue and Peel Avenue. But no matter where we stayed, getting around was never a big issue in Blackpool. The town was blessed with good public transport systems run by the Blackpool Transport Services Ltd comprising buses, as well as the trams in cream and red liveries which run along the promenade from Starr Gate all the way to Fleetwood in the north. For rail trips, there was the Blackpool North railway station at Talbot Road which conveniently connected Blackpool to the rest of UK.

One of our favourite pastimes those days was sports. Football was very popular. Occasionally, Malaysian students from colleges in other nearby localities would come over for a match. Badminton was more right up my street, though. We played badminton mostly at the College sports hall. Being Malaysians, we used to just wallop the English at it. Showboating and bullying them into submission were not uncommon. Sometimes, we whiled our time away at the Gynn Square with crazy golf, a variation on golf, played on a miniature scaled area. Definitely not one for the serious golfers, but great fun all the same.

Studies were our main pre-occupation, though. Five days a week we’d march or ride to college without fail come rain or snow, through winter or spring. We may have come from different parts of Malaysia. We had differing personalities, interests and styles of studying. But our conviction to succeed in our GCE A Levels and enter a good British university was clear. Of course there had been bumps and hiccups along the way. That made it all the more interesting and, in many ways, taught us to grow up and mature.

Despite the trials of living in a new, foreign place – or maybe because of it – we tended to flock together and we looked out for each other. For two long years, we managed to face all the trials and challenges, and together, we succeeded, bringing with it many fond memories.

For that, Blackpool will always be a part of our life.