Cylene the Goth has a new(ish) friend who works at Thorpe
Park. Through her she’s discovered a sudden, overwhelming and apparently
life-altering interest in theme parks. They’ve been to Alton Towers together
(where Cylene spent the first day screaming and begging for it to stop) and
Portaventura in Spain. ‘We should do something different’, Cylene said to me,
different, that is, from our usual fare of coffee, complaining and charity
shops, ‘we should go to Thorpe Park’. I have reached middle age never having
been to a theme park, not a real one; never having been on a rollercoaster. The
offer of cut-price tickets actually made it sound realistic. ‘Because I’m mad I
can get disabled entry, too’, she pointed out, ‘so we can avoid the queues for
the rides. You’d count as my carer. There are some advantages to being mentally
ill.’ So together with the ‘nutcase pass’ it all amounted to quite a reasonable
package. If I was ever going to do this, I could hardly do it under such
advantageous conditions. OK, I said, much to Cylene’s surprise, and we went
last Friday, as I was still on holiday.
The first ride took place entirely inside, in the dark
punctuated by coloured flashes of light. It was unspeakably terrifying and I
wasn’t sure I could actually face any more. ‘That was the easiest ride in the
park about from the tiny children’s ones,’ Cylene pointed out. ‘Look, I’ll ease
you into it gradually.’ By the end of a day of tension and terror I was able,
by a colossal effort of will, to keep my eyes open all the way through the
final ride, something I hadn’t managed before: it was, nevertheless, absolutely
horrible, and the catharsis and exhilaration Cylene talked about I felt not a
moment of. ‘Funny, I find I’m less frightened if I look’, she said, ‘it helps
to see what’s happening.’
But the point of this post is not my own reactions, but my
friend’s strange epiphany. Cylene is a newcomer to this world, too. Back in
Albuquerque as a child her parents promised to take her to a theme park, then
drove straight past it and went somewhere else. It was by no means the most
horrible thing they did to her, but it was an act of wanton betrayal she has
nursed through the intervening quarter-century. Now I see this usually
misanthropic soul whose imaginary landscape of comfort is a
post-nuclear-apocalyptic ruin – happy. At one with the world. ‘That’s park
life’, she explains. She has thrown herself imaginatively into the park
experience, and can reel off statistics on ride usage and the characteristics
and approaches of the different manufacturers who actually make the things; but
that’s the kind of impressive commitment she customarily applies, to everything
from perfume to the history of handbags to acrylic paint for her art work. More
strikingly, the park is now for her something of a spiritual space. ‘I’m
interested in the presentation, the engineering, the whole way it works. No
other species has done anything like this. It’s a place that simply exists to
make people happy, harmlessly. Here I don’t even have a problem with children
being around because they’re all focusing on something else.’ I hadn't really thought of any of this: it's a set of remarkably benign insights. She’s decided she
would quite like to work in ride maintenance, and it might be very good if that
could happen.
Delightful. (Not the rides, of course - Cylene's altered state.)
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