Margate
1984
It was at the age of 13 and in Margate, during
the early winter months of 1984, that my best friend and I struck
very, very lucky. Here's the tale...
Margate seafront was a regular daily haunt following
a long day at the stuffy, Grammar school we went to which housed
teachers that still wore black cloaks and mortar-board hats to
morning assembly followed by a Latin prayer.
The school had once been a boarding school but
had failed to drag itself into the 80’s along with the rest
of society. So it was playing the likes of Cosmic Guerrilla (5p
a go, 2 players for 10p) that eased the pain of a long school
day until Sinistar, Gauntlet and the sit down vector king Star
Wars started getting our attention and pocket money.
Although the price of arcade machines was cheap,
at 13 we was lucky to have 20p left from our dinner money at the
end of the day so it was important to spend the money wisely on
games that guaranteed longevity of play. Games like Galaxians,
Phoenix or Scramble could easily take up to 45 minutes in two-player
mode once mastered. Even so, 20p was soon spent and it was a dream
to have lots of 10p pieces to feed the machines wih...
Remember these? 10p back in the day,
oh yes!
February 1984.
Most of the arcades along Margate seafront were
built inside the shell of much older Victorian buildings, and
so it was that, in early February of 1984, two of the oldest but
largest arcades were to be demolished. A fascinating sight for
any 13 year old was to watch the large ball swinging into the
crumbling walls of these old buildings before remembering the
coin or two in the pocket and rushing into an arcade, throwing
a schoolbag down with no care and getting “down to business”
with Ladybug or Mr Do before catching the 5.00pm bus home. The
demolition work took a couple of weeks to complete but eventually
it was finished. The rubble hadn’t been cleared but Margate
seafront would soon be ready for the new super arcade which was
to be built in the gap that had been created.
An arcade, not yesterday, sadly.
Because of our regularity, my friend and I were
on fairly chatty terms with a few of the young lads that worked
as gophers in the arcades (15/16 year olds that had left school
early and helped run the change till or tip the pool table sideways
when a ball got stuck). One evening a ginger haired arcade gopher
called Gary said he has something to show us and told us to meet
him round the back of the cinema, which backed onto the rubble
that had been left by the demolition work.
At about 6:15pm, in the darkness of a cold February
evening, we followed him as he weaved a path through a gap in
the fencing and the demolition rubble with a torch in one hand
and balancing himself with the other. Eventually stopping, he
shone a light down onto something glittering on the ground, buried
beneath the broken concrete and bricks. Closer inspection revealed
it to be a 10p piece! As his torched moved slightly we noticed
another one about 6inches away. And then another……..and
then another! It wasn’t long before we realised there were
literally hundreds of 10p pieces lying all over the place!
Suddenly this demolition area had turned into
a schoolboy arcade freaks goldmine! That evening we filled our
schoolbags and pockets with as many coins as could be carried!
When I got home I dashed upstairs and, as quickly as possible,
counted up over £24 in 10p pieces! No wonder my bag had
been so heavy.
How
many others have met the same fate?
The next night we were prepared with additional
bags (“its extra sports today Mum,” as I left the
house in the morning) and managed to carry nearly £50 worth
of coins home. In addition to the 10p pieces we were also finding
tokens for the fruit machines (those odd looking gold coins with
two parallel grooves) and the occasional fifty -pence-piece too!
We continued this foraging for the next two
nights until finding a coin was taking about 10 minutes each.
In all, between the two of us, we managed to collect over £300,
which in 1984 and at the age of 13 was an awful lot of money!
Plus we got plenty of winnings from the fruit machines using the
free tokens we had found.
Needless to say the vast majority of the coins
were spent along Margate seafront, and the hoard kept us gaming
and eating sweets and chips well into the school summer holiday
of 1984!
barry x, August
2003.
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