At the end of the day.

By Martha Linnehan

At 8am on a Saturday morning in August, patterned and ageing amusement arcade carpets in the seaside resorts of Blackpool, Bognor Regis, Scarborough and Skegness are simultaneously vacuumed by arcade staff. Yesterday’s shoe-shifted sand guzzles and scratches into each whirring machine. Stray coins are spotted and retrieved from underneath change dispensers and penny pushers. Spray polish hisses onto glass panels and is buffed lavishly with soft yellow dusting cloths. Laminate arcade toilet floors are slopping bucket mopped. A bin in the style of a smuggler’s barrel is emptied of its ice-cream wrappers and chip paper cones. A fresh bin bag is flapped open then secured around its metal rim. An Arcade Attendant stands on a ladder to reposition a wonky suspended ceiling tile. The polystyrene tile drags and squeaks on its way back into its supporting metal grid. Clinking keyrings and mini plastic figurines are laden over enclosed two penny pieces. Crane grabbers are restocked with a few small soft toys from China and Taiwan. Topped up and propped up, their fluffy sweet-smelling fabric nestles into pools of primary coloured balls and pastel coloured loose fill polystyrene, ready for another day’s pensive silence. A coin-operated boat ride with Igglepiggle from In the Night Garden jerks into motion at an amusement arcade entrance, rocking and automated-lullaby- singing to an eager morning child. Employees’ flick multiple switches. An interior neon amusement arcade café sign is turned on and begins its lowly daily hum. Looping and overlapping jingles begin to electrically and sonically score the coastline.

By midday, seaside amusement arcades from Penzance to Arbroath pulse and vibrate. Human and automated voices, and regional and global accents assemble. A bingo caller enigmatically warbles historic lingo into a microphone. Elvis performs with Disney stars in bristling sing-offs. Cher is accompanied by a traditional seaside organ. Child-friendly nursery rhymes ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm’ and ‘Nelly the Elephant’ grow into ‘The Rhythm of the Night’ by Corona and ‘What Is Love’ by Haddaway. Pre-recorded spooky footsteps creep up on invisible stone steps. Air hockey pucks persistently clatter. Worn old coins are stuffed into slots and cascade into chrome trays. Just beneath the deliberate, needy sonic beckoning of the games’ machines, unwanted whirs, metal clinks and clicks linger. Neon crackle, speaker fuzz, amplifier distortion and generator hum.

Around 4pm, daytime tipsy karaoke renditions of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ spill out from amusement arcade karaoke booths. Rubber duck prizes squeak in sticky little hands. Strong man hammer strikes sync into one determined topless thud. Out of the sun and rain, afternoon footsteps daydreamingly tread and soften over the gaffer-tape plastered carpets. A bottle of reinvigorating pop hisses open. A child’s sugared heartbeat accelerates. Smart phones vibrate in pockets, nagging and beckoning back to the world beyond. Leaving the arcade, crumpled anoraks and puffer jackets are pulled on to warm bodies from the evening chill. Abandoned by players, the mechanical waves of coins resting on the relentlessly oscillating penny pusher platforms occasionally, ever so slowly, nudge some of themselves over the edge.

By 10pm, arcade entranceways and exits are concurrently locked. Games machines are switched off and stop sounding, one by one.

At the end of the day, quiet and darkness descend. The chorus of reverberating and sonically tenacious amusement arcades ceases, revealing the limitations of each room. Outside sounds creep into and linger inside the arcade space. Seagulls. The occasional passing car. Wind through weathered door cracks. Late night spattered conversations and bodily exchanges drifting from the beach. Resting awhile, the arcade resigns to listening to the nighttime whispering sea. Cold drink vending machine buzzes persist.

Martha investigates the experience of enduring places through a sensory and materially engaged inquiry. She primarily works with autoethnographic mixed-methods fieldwork. Her writing incorporates the observed and the imagined. www.marthalineham.com