An Old, Beloved Favourite ......... Gone!

Derek has very quickly embraced another of our Dawlish Warren family holiday traditions, to wit, the amusements where tickets very definitely mean prizes! However, there was one mahooooosive and unbelievable catastrophe we all had to get to grips with as soon as we arrived, only the disappearance of our beloved "Ball Dropper", the first and very last machine we ever play at the beginning and end of our long Dawlish Warren weekends. 

As soon as we walked in, we made a beeline to where it's stood loud and proud for the past four years at least, but it wasn't there and despite all our walking round in every direction it wasn't to be found and we had to accept the inevitable, it was gone.  It was, I have to say, emotional, very, very, VERY emotional.  If we had only realised last year (pictures above) was our last time playing, those balls would have been grabbed, like balls have never been grabbed before!

However, tears and sighs aside, the show had to go on and a substitute, which also included the handling of spherical objects was found, if in a much more sedate and unfrenzied fashion, ten pin bowling ........

...... of which Young Master Bertie excelled ........ 

...... consistently winning tickets equal, if not greater, to any we've previously won on the much mentioned and much lamented Ball Dropper ...... wherever it is now.

I think, with having Derek on board, we ended up with more tickets than ever before, earning enough for a small Nerf gun for Bertie and a replica dance machine in brick form for Iris, not to mention the obligatory tubes of Parma Violets and single chews to use up the remaining tickets, oh, joy upon joy!!!

Then, with all our arcade budget resources depleted .......

...... it was off for an ice-cream, where, to be honest, there was almost too much choice .......

 ..... especially when flakes, sprinkles and sauces are also thrown into the equation.

...... but, in the end, for me, it had to be a straight pistachio ..... bliss! 

Mr D, do you remember Mr Hargreaves always dashing off to spend a week or so in Dawlish Warren the moment the school bell rang on the last day of the school year? I think he'd gone for the same week, same hotel, same everything for at least thirty odd years, bless his soul.