Royal Seal of Approval

King Charles III visited Blackburn in the last millennium when he was but a mere prince.  Here’s what happened.

Are you sitting comfortably?  Then I’ll begin.  Once upon a time in the last millennium, a prince was on tour in one of his mother’s dukedoms.  He was due to visit Blackburn’s Fishmoor Estate.  This led to the local burgomasters going into a panic.

Rumours surfaced about supplies of paint going short and there being no money left to purchase new supplies.  This was a headache for the local burgomasters.  They wanted to follow the time honoured tradition of decorating an area where a royal visit was going to take place.  Charlie’s granny once remarked how everywhere she went smelt of paint.  She was right.  In many cases it was the only time some places ever received a decent paint job.

So a plan was hatched into how the prince could be navigated through the estate and only see houses which had been spruced up using this limited paint supply.  It became known as ‘Operation Yellow Brick Road’.  This cunning plan was to produce a route for the prince to walk along.  His route would only include houses which had been given a new paint job.

If you lived away from the route – hard luck!  No smell of paint for you.  A bit like many people think about the royal family these days, the chance of getting your house painted up Fishmoor was about as likely as a fairy tale coming true.

   And so it came to pass, Charlie’s visit to Blackburn took place.  Up the Roman road to Fishmoor, the Prince of Wales traversed.  No Picts, but quite a few Scots lived in this outpost of the empire.  As expected, there was a large turnout for the visit of the future king of our country.  Somebody joked how they wanted to see the prince before he turned back into a frog.  Sounds like they’d had their ear bent by David Icke.  Although a frog is an amphibian, not a reptile.

   And so Blackburn had its own version of the Truman Show.  An invisible bubble had been created around this royal visit, making it totally impregnable to outsiders.  Yet it created a familiar situation, where Charlie really wanted to get out and join our world, but isn’t allowed.  Whereas ordinary people want to get in and join his world, but cannot.  Like most good fairytales, they all lived happily ever after.

In April 2019 fire severely damaged St John the Evangelist, a former parish church in Blackburn town centre.  Now plans are afoot to reopen this distinctive building.

This former church is actually the oldest building in our town centre, having been built around the time of the French Revolution at the end of the 18^th century.  Now a new revolution is to take place for St John’s with an eyewatering amount of nearly £9M to be spent on bringing this building back to its former glory.  Our local council has given a green light to the project going ahead, with Barnfield Construction as their chosen building contractor.  Let’s hope they can keep their heads while all around are losing theirs.

The finished St John’s hopes to bring cyber and digital technology facilities to their building, making it a technological hub.  It wants to build links to the Blackburn Skills Centre, which is coming to the town and the National Cyber Force development which is due to open at Samlesbury Enterprise Zone on the outskirts of the town.

One of many issues being debated is whether this building should be refurbished in the first place, especially over such a large amount of money being spent.  There are plenty of empty buildings in Blackburn town centre which could be brought back into use at a fraction of the cost.  These include our town hall tower block, along with former CAPITA headquarters, Castleway House.

What places the former St John’s church ahead of other worthy buildings in the town centre is its long historical connection with Blackburn.  This Grade 2 listed building has been serving our community for centuries in one capacity or another.  From an aesthetic point of view, it is also streets ahead, as well as from a historical and cultural point of view, in front of most of those other empty buildings which need bringing back from the dead.

Only the Exchange could be classed as another aesthetically pleasing to the eye restoration project.  Refurbishments to this building are plodding along bit by bit.  We also have Blackburn Museum nestling between St John’s church and the Exchange.  Here is another very pleasing to the eye building which has served the people of Blackburn well.  First as our public library and now our museum.  It will be great to see these three neighbouring buildings back to their former glory and serving our community once again.

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.