I would get up after dark in my hotel room and make some tea or coffee. Then I would walk down to the sea front. Everything would be lit up with neon and led lights. The sea would be dark and the sea front road would be glistening with lights. There would be row after row of open plan arcades. I would look out to sea and see a dark mass with a few lights from passing ships in the distance. There would be a gentle sea breeze with a slight salty smell in the air and you can smell rotting sea weed, a nice smell if you're like me, it's a bit like petrichore; that after rain smell we all love.
The best thing about the arcades is the penny pushers, they are machines where you push pennies and let them roll down into a flat bucket of coins that are slightly cascading over the edge. A small metal plough pushes the coins into the other coins and sometimes causes them to fall over the side of the bucket. They would then fall into another bucket and possibly cause more coins to fall into a opening in the machine. You can then use those ejected coins to play more. Sometimes there are little prizes nested on top of the coins.
The best coin pushers are the hybrid ones, the ones that give you tickets for prizes when the coins drop out. Some have a light up jackpot screen that lets you win 500 tickets in one go. They have fruit machine wheels that spin when a coin breaks loose. With a tenner(£10) I can have 500 2p coins in a plastic tub and sit there for over an hour dropping coins and trying to get the timing right. Trying to dislodge more coins and little prizes, playing cards, key rings all sorts of things. I would be surrounded by all the noises of the arcade and all the music and lights everywhere.
Before I play a coin pusher I would look for an old friend; in every arcade zone there is a zoltar machine, a fortune teller in a glass box that tells you parables with a east European accent. I don't believe the fortunes, I just like the mannerisms of the animatronic man in the box. He gives you a little card telling you your fortune and he tells you a parable. I would talk back to zoltar, I would say hello Zoltar, how are you? He can't hear me though 🙄
