Ticket Spurting Penny Pusher

When Donald Trump was shot in the ear, I was at the coast here in Britain taking a break in sunny Southend on sea because my birthday was a few days away. The thing I like the most about going to a popular coastal town in Britain is the sea front at night time. 

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 🙄

Tom Hanks Gem

People say that books sold in second hand charity shops are not very good but I disagree. I often go to second hand charity shops to buy books because I usually find a book I like, if I don't like the book, I'm still helping a charity. Some of the books are there because the person has read the book several times and they want new ones on their book self or something to that affect. 

The other day I saw a book in there written by Tom Hanks, I think it is called 'uncommon Type'. I bought it for £1, the original price was £9; When I think of Tom Hanks, I also think of Zoltar the furtune telling vending machine from the movie called 'Big'. I saw a real Zoltar machine once, near Waterloo bridge in an arcade by the river Thames in London; it looked very different from the movie one though, it spoke a lot and it was more animated but it was wearing the same hat. It also gives you a furtune token just like in the movie. 

When I think of Zoltar, I also think of Zapomatic the Robot from the Dark ride called 'The 5th Dimension' at Chessington world of adventures in the 90s. I imagined Zapomatic and Zoltar sitting at a table and having a cup of tea and talking about the news. Zapomatic would be the Logical Bot and Zoltar would be the gifted but irrational one. They would ask for my opinion and I would say I'm just annoyed that one person took a family Booth table for themselves at Wetherspoon's. If you're American, Wetherspoon's is a pub chain, it is a bit like the English version McDonald's, but they serve beer, coffee and English food. I wonder if they will expand into America like McDonald's has in the UK.