Bright ideas...

It's a curious beast, a holiday town. For years, the place has done a pretty good imitation of a passport office on Sundays in the few weeks following Remembrance day, but yesterday there was little sign that the visitors have deserted us.  Many of the hotels, of course, adapt to the season by running 'Turkey and Tinsel' packages, some starting in September for the truly addicted Crimbophiles, hiring in aged entertainers to croak out barely recognisable renditions of 50s xmas hits, trusting in the anaesthetic qualities of drip-fed intravenous alcohol dispensers for the lucky recipients to mask the often dire quality of the productions.

Of course, what attracts folk to our part of the world is the warm, fuzzy feeling engendered by a daintily-lit promenade, with its twinkling lights perfectly complementing the town's magnificent Christmas lights, ranged in all their stellar beauty across the main street. 

Or not, as the case may be.

It's true that erecting lights, powering them and finally dismantling them costs money, and money is in short supply for councils at the moment.  It doesn't help that the remunerative business rate income has been steadily declining for some time, in direct proportion to the increasing number of charity shops and empty premises, but it's hard to escape the sneaking suspicion that cutting back on things designed to attract folk to visit might be a tad short-sighted. And perhaps it's an even better idea to invite the shops themselves to start sticking up a few lights outside their premises. If the Victoria centre can manage it, then perhaps M & S, with its current profitability, might do it also.

Some years ago, a member of the Llandudno Heritage Trust bought the Leeds' City display, as they were renewing theirs, and he got it for relatively little.   Of course, the new displays are often LED based, with a lot of fibre optic work, but do we need a new system?  Would an older system, adapted and re-lamped, not provide an equally pleasant ambience, and be even more appropriate in a Victorian town?  Maybe it's time for whomever's responsible for our lights to visit a few second hand dealers....