scarborough - fun for £1 or under!

This was the best 50p I ever spent. So good, in fact, I spent it twice! This little chap and his tank of mysterious dark bubbling water lives in the window of a toy shop. You put 50p in a slot in the wall and a jaunty tune plays while the wee man in the kilt dances about and the tank bubbles more furiously.

After a while, this monster emerges from the depths. It wasn't quite as scary as I had expected, but then... Well, I can't tell you what happened next because you must go to Scarborough and find out for yourself, but suffice to say I was left red faced after shrieking loudly in public.

Also out on the street was this passion meter. I was declared a 'rude girl' while Graham's passion only bubbled as high as the (rather pathetic) 'Romeo'. It only goes to prove what I always knew - that I am the passionate one in this relationship ;)

For 70p you can ride one of the funicular trams up (or down) the very steep cliffs. This saves your legs and is great fun, plus look how lovely the wooden interiors are.

You can gamble with less than £1, but you do have to be careful. Graham can't resist puggies even though I'm pretty sure he has no idea what he's doing. I prefer the child-friendly gambling formats. We must have spent a small fortune on penny falls and the horsey game, but it was worth it and I'm sure it doesn't count as real gambling if you fritter it away 2p at a time, right?

While Graham was getting addicted to slot machines, I got guilt tripped into playing bingo with two old ladies who had been waiting for a third player for ages. I was quite happy to get to play with this exciting bingo machine, but it wasn't really the best 20p I ever spent. Aside from the fact that I lost, the bingo caller made fun of my poor bingo skills over the loud speaker too :( Most embarrassing! I didn't stay for a second game, not even when one of the old ladies started to cry. (Just kidding... although they didn't look too happy!)

£1 is a small price to pay to realise previously undiscovered skills. Turns out I am a sharp shooter, though only if I rest the gun on my chin, which meant I didn't really look the part.

Graham put his recently acquired muscles to good use and won loads of tokens on this machine. We cashed them in for lots of Street Fighter/Casper The Ghost trading cards (why they only had mid '90s film, I do not know) and a Pucca bracelet for me. The list to choose your prizes from caused much hilarity as nothing was ever quite what we'd expected. After winning this game, Graham selected a 'colour LCD watch' for himself. We were very excited as he had actually been looking for a digital watch, so we thought it was our lucky day. When the watch arrived, however, it turned out to have a strap and face made of paper with a tiny little paint palette and brush so you could colour it in yourself. Graham wore it anyway, but a few hours later we realised that the minutes changed quite reliably, but the hour was permanently stuck at 6.

We didn't waste time/money on any of the other grabber machines, but this one rarely let us down. On our very first attempt I won this, which was a bit like a double dip, but with only one flavour and...

Graham won these banana flavoured(?!) big red lips. Delicious...

Apparently we don't have any pictures of air hockey, which seems odd because we really did play it a lot. It's probably because I was taking it too seriously to risk letting a goal in while I took a picture!

Once you've had enough gambling/gaming for one day, there are bazillions of charity shops to browse. We didn't really find anything (I did get a book for my sister actually) and they were crazy busy with old ladies fighting over the numerous Daniel O'Donnell plates and other paraphenalia, but they were still fun to browse. I did buy some ribbon and fabric from a lovely crafty shop though and treated myself to a selection of buttons from the market.

I'm naughtily sneaking in this ten-pin bowling picture at the end of this post, even though bowling does not fit into the £1 and under category, but I scored my first ever strike, so couldn't very well not mention it! It was on my very last ball too and felt amazing. It also meant that I came up from behind and won the whole game. In your face!

I'll be back later with the very last of my Scarborough posts. It will be short, but very, very sweet. What better start to your birthday than a tip-top super-duper celebrity sighting? Can you guess who it was, I wonder? I don't want to ruin the surprise with a clue... but if you're around my age (or older) you probably grew up seeing their face on telly all the time. I even wrote to them a couple of times, though that doesn't narrow it down much. I was quite the celebrity letter writer back in the day!