Have you noticed how annoying it is trying to walk through Blackburn Shopping Mall?

As you try to go past certain places, people want to shove cards in your hands.  These annoying harpies infringe the Mall’s walkways, barging right into the middle in some cases.  This is to try and entice you into certain shops.  But there are also temporary stalls which keep springing up, gobbling up space on parts of your route.  These cordon off bits of the walkway with chairs and tables, despite the growing number of empty premises throughout the Mall.

Many Blackburn people must like shopping in the Mall.  The sheer numbers passing through indicates decent footfall, whether they’re buying anything is a different matter.  But to some of us shopping is an unpleasant ordeal.  Things are not helped by approaching bodies trying to shove business cards into your palms.  It’s a bit like something out of ‘Logan’s Run’.  We’re runners being pursued by sandmen.

Efforts to avoid them often prove fruitless.  As you try to walk past them an annoying smile appears on their face and they ask you how you’re doing?  Like it’s any of their business!   This is after you try to avoid eye contact and start body swerving across to the other side of the walkway, trying to give them as a wide a berth as possible.

On occasions your luck can be in.  Some other poor person obscures their view and becomes the prey rather than you.  It’s a bit like being a zebra at the watering hole in Africa.  You just hope you’re the one the lion or the crocodile doesn’t get their teeth into.

On the subject of luck, walking through Blackburn Mall is becoming like the seafront at Tenerife with people trying to stop you.  They might as well try their luck bending your ear into buying raffle tickets.  ‘Lucky Lucky’ (Looky Looky, if you prefer) Men could try their luck selling timeshares in empty shops in the Mall.  You always win with these tickets and you could be offered a free rent timeshare for one of the empty shops.

In July 2024 I poked fun at Morrisons for doing something similar by expanding into their walkways:

https://www.rovingmick.com/2024/07/03/blackburn-morris-expanding-into-its-walkways/    

Like the Mall, they have an optician’s in their superstore, with more annoying people stood outside who keep stopping you to try and get you to use their services.  What with beggars and chuggers harassing you in the town centre, it doesn’t make for a happy shopping experience in Blackburn at the moment.

Plans are afoot to use Blackburn’s large Corporation Park Lake as a salmon hatchery.

During recent storms which hit the British Isles, damage was done to some Scottish fish farms, leading to their enclosures being breached.  This led to an escape of thousands of juvenile salmon into the surrounding seas.  Concerns were raised over possibilities of disease spreading from these farmed fish to their wild counterparts.  This has led to not only calls for greater security across fish farms, but also more environmentally friendly ways of carrying out this breeding process.

What the Department of the Environment, Fisheries and Food (DEFRA) would like to do is have greener kinds of salmon farming rather than enormous fisheries.  This would stop the spread of disease coming into the wild and immediate countryside.  Their way around this is to try and create more local fish farms.  They also want these to be on a much smaller scale than are currently in use.  It would also be very handy to create new ones which could be put into use on a commercial basis.

Blackburn’s Corporation Park has two lakes, known as the Big Can and the Little Can.  The larger of the two was originally used as Blackburn Corporation’s water supply reservoir.  This originally was put into use in 1772.  It used to use wooden pipes to take water from the reservoir.  These lakes were called Big and Little Cans due to people collecting water from them using cans.

Eventually this area became Corporation Park, which we know today, in 1855.  The area which became the park was originally known as Pemberton Clough.  A stream which flowed through was dammed to create a reservoir.  This had an outlet which flowed through the park and went into Snig Brook, a tributary of Blackburn’s River Blakewater.  This latter river, from which our town gets its name, then flowed into the River Darwen and subsequently River Ribble to the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

Juvenile salmon have various names.  In their early stage they are known as Alevin.  Once they have eaten their yoke sacks, they become Fry.  In their next stage of development they are known as Parr.  And when they are ready to head for the ocean, they become Smolt.  At least it’s a downhill all the way from Blackburn.

Navigating returning salmon from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in Corporation Park Lake will be no mean feat.  Various adaptions will have to be placed on the stream flowing from the lake in the park.  One of these will have to be some kind of salmon ladder or maybe a wheel to get through its dam holding this lake’s water back.  No doubt thoughtful planning is already taking place for the Big Can’s new residents homecoming.

Some people have suggested a Blackburn man’s deceased father is trying to contact him from the dead, through his old electric shaver.

When his dad passed away, the man spent a lot of time clearing out his parents’ house.  This included giving away most of their furniture and possessions to various charitable institutions.  But some items were in such good condition, he decided to keep them for his own personal use.  One of these was his dad’s old electric shaver, which was relatively new and still in good working order.

His own shaver had reached the end of its tether, to the point of scratching and cutting his face.  So he saw no reason not use his dad’s appliance instead.  At first there was nothing wrong with using this electric shaver, but after a few days strange sounds began to emanate from this machine.  What started out as crackling and buzzing soon became discernible sounds.

At first the buzzing seemed to follow a pattern, like Morse Code.  His dad had been in the Royal Corps of Signals while serving in the army.  So this seemed uncanny.  Could this series of crackling sounds be a form of ghostly communication,  perhaps a message from beyond the grave?

It needed looking into.  Although a sceptic, he was open minded enough to try and resolve this unusual situation.  After all, there have been all sorts of reports and stories over the years of odd noises in pipework, or electrical equipment doing strange things, such as flashing and crackling.

Word soon got out regarding his ‘haunted’ shaver, leading to an appearance in the local media.  It garnered a lot of interest, especially from across the Atlantic Ocean.  This led to suggestions calling for the shaver to be exorcised.  Not even a clairvoyant could have predicted this.

And so a seance was arranged, which took place in the studio of a local radio station.  It was a sensation, gaining world-wide reaction.  The radio  station switchboard was jammed with callers ringing in  with their theories.  They proclaimed it to be a miracle, poltergeist activity and even contact from aliens.

But to the owner of this so-called haunted electric shaver, it was just a load of snap crackle and pop.  He ended up selling his dad’s electric shaver for a princely sum to a rich client with deep pockets.  This was after being made an offer he couldn’t refuse.  Not bad for an intermittent fault, or a loose wire.

There are certain mysteries in life which beguile us, but we tend not to pursue their meaning.

One of these is what is that little pocket inside a pair of jeans, above the front right hand one for?  Another is the black diamond mark on those annoying metal tape measures.  The tape nearly cuts your hand when you let it return on its own after trying to measure your height.

But one of the strangest mysteries of all are these obscure carved signs which appear on some of our older buildings.  At first they look like the sign of the ancient Carthaginians, before the Romans finished them off.  But on closer inspection, the sign looks more like a three legged stool.

These are known as ‘Benchmarks’.  They are used as a way of measuring height above sea level and are placed there by the Ordnance Survey.  Many of us are familiar with maps from this government agency.  Some of us even understand what the symbols mean, such as a church with a spire, or a tower, or even a triangulation (trig) point.  But Benchmarks are a different kettle of fish altogether.

Some of these chiselled signs, usually a line with an arrow underneath, can date back as far as the early 19^th century.  The Ordnance Survey started to use them during mapping and surveying projects.  They were used to define a precise height above sea level.  This process was carried out using spirit leveling.  The horizontal marks were used to support a stable ‘bench’ for a leveling stave to rest on – hence ‘benchmarks’.  This design ensured that a stave could be accurately repositioned in the future and that all marks were uniform.

Unfortunately to many of us, this process sounds a bit complicated.  So it was probably a good idea leaving it to the surveyors and stone masons to carry out the work of calculating how far above sea level these buildings where.  At least we were safe in the knowledge Blackburn was too high up to be deluged by the sea.

There were over 500,000 benchmarks created, but this number is diminishing as roads change and buildings are demolished.  The advent of Global Positioning System (GPS) has replaced Benchmarks due to its highly accurate way of measuring and coordinating height above sea level anywhere in the world.  It has become the international standard for mapping and surveying.

Benchmarks may now have been consigned to the history books and old mapping archives.  As is the way of all technology, there’s always something approaching round the corner to replace the current norm.  But they played a valuable part in the surveying of our country and helped the Ordnance Survey to produce much needed accurate maps.

Blackburn still has a few public clocks in its town centre.  Not all of them tell the time correctly, or even at all.

Due to most people these days wearing watches, or using their mobile phones, finding the correct time is now at your fingertips or in your handbag or pocket.  But a couple of clocks not only tell the time, but let you know all about it.  Best one to start with is Blackburn Cathedral, which makes a big noise about its timekeeping.  Its three dials all tell the same time and it’s always correct.  Although its near neighbour, in Morrisons, chimes the same time a bit later.  Whether it’s the lamb or the lion which meets the pips, is up for debate.

Unfortunately the triangle which makes up Cathedral Square has another clock.  This one is high up on Blackburn Railway Station.  It stays as quiet as a mouse when its neighbours sound off.  Its fingers don’t seem to have moved for years, a bit like trains on a strike day.  Fortunately for travellers, this clock doesn’t determine what times trains are running.

As well as the aforementioned timepieces, Blackburn’s most well-known public clock must be its tower one on King William Street.  Sadly, only one of its dials tells the correct time.  Though the other couple do so twice a day.  This must be Blackburn’s most confusing clock.

Many Blackburners don’t realise there are more public clocks to be discovered in our town centre.  If you look across from St John’s Church on Victoria Street, you will see a clock on the building at the side of a local solicitors.  This timepiece always seems to be running and keeping good time.  Being connected to a law firm, it should know all about doing time.

Perhaps the most mysterious public clock in our town centre is the one at Sudell Cross.  It actually used to be based in one of Bradford’s railway stations.  There is a plaque next to the dial which says:  ‘Bought and erected in 1984 by J.H. Cartwright for the people of Blackburn’.  It’s worth remembering how standard time came about due to the advent of Britain’s railways.  Like the one at Blackburn Station, this tyke clock doesn’t seem to keep time on this side of the Pennines.

Time is one of those few things most of us want to believe to be accurate.  But like the news, it often gets distorted.  Maybe there are more public clocks ticking around Blackburn town centre?  Finding them just takes a bit of time, but don’t let it wind you up.