Part One; Preview Night.
I first got wind of Banksy coming to Weston a couple of weeks before the announcement was made. A friend 'In the know' told me that he would be in one of the local parks doing something!
'Doing something in the park' turned out to be the contradictory, Dismaland. But I needed to get in to see it... immediately.
The town was a buzz, talk of Banksy everywhere but how to get tickets. Thursday was the preview night and Friday was VIP night. For some reason I started to believe that I had a right to get in, I owned a gallery for gods sake. A few calls to some contacts at the council were fruitless until a last minute call from a friend who had extra tickets, I'd got lucky.
Dismaland was anything but.
The anticipation of going in, the first time since the far away summer days of the Tropicana was quite strange. Banksy, yes Banksy... was hosting an exhibition in the Tropicana... that most amazing place back in the day when we were kids on school holidays. The days of BMX's, Tiswas and the Weston Speed Trials, the feelings came flooding back...
In the next episode, Dismaland gets an S10 slap! After all it would be rude not to.
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