The weeks following the end of a long holiday often feel like a balancing act between looking forward to what’s coming next and trying to squeeze in the last moments of freedom before work routines take over again. For some, that period is filled with quiet evenings at home, a little reading, or perhaps some gentle preparation for the months ahead. For others, it’s an opportunity to step out, explore, and immerse themselves in a series of experiences that make the eventual return to working life feel both richer and more grounded.
In this case, the days leading up to a new job were anything but quiet. The preparation itself carried its own list of tasks—sorting out references, filling in the inevitable paperwork, running through the checks that every employer now requires, and finding time to brush up on knowledge so that first days don’t feel like being thrown in at the deep end. But in parallel with that, there was also the gentle but unrelenting rhythm of outings, exhibitions, and small adventures that punctuated the time. They were woven together in a way that made the whole stretch of weeks feel like one long rolling story: art festivals, historic buildings, quirky seaside arcades, and even parades of illuminated insects wandering through small town streets.
A Dragonfly in the Night
One of the first of these excursions was to Hexham, where a giant illuminated dragonfly took to the streets in the form of a parade. This was not the sort of dragonfly that hovers delicately over ponds in summer, but a towering creature of light and construction, moving slowly but with a strange grace through the town after dusk. Events like this transform familiar streets into temporary dreamscapes. The quiet stone buildings and centuries-old lanes of Hexham became the stage for something playful and fleeting, a reminder that even a place steeped in history can host a moment of surreal spectacle.
Watching such a display is a reminder of how public art does not always need to be grand or permanent. Sometimes, its impact lies in being here one night and gone the next. People turn up, perhaps not knowing what to expect, and find themselves following a glowing insect as it glides past market stalls and shop windows. Conversations spark, laughter rises, and for a few minutes, the ordinary rhythm of town life is interrupted by something unexpected and enchanting.
Durham’s Festival of Light
The following day brought another artistic experience: the Lumiere festival in Durham. This festival has developed a reputation for transforming the city with installations of light and projection, often drawing large crowds who come to see familiar landmarks reimagined with luminous creativity. This year, though, the impression left was more muted. Those who had attended in earlier years remembered displays that filled the city with a sense of wonder, with powerful visuals that seemed to reinvent buildings and streets. In comparison, the recent version seemed sparse, as if the energy that had once defined it had dimmed slightly.
But even in its quieter moments, the Lumiere festival still reminded visitors of the potential of light in art. It invited people to walk the city at night, to pay attention to details they might overlook in daylight, and to see how public spaces can be altered with a shift of perspective. A festival need not always be overwhelming to make an impression; sometimes, even a more restrained edition can spark reflection about how cities shape the way people experience art.
Gainsborough Old Hall: Stepping Back in Time
The weekend continued with another kind of journey—this time into the past. Gainsborough Old Hall, with its timber framing and soaring interiors, offered a chance to step into history rather than into art. What drew the most fascination was the medieval kitchen, preserved in remarkable condition. For anyone interested in how daily life functioned centuries ago, this space felt almost like a time capsule.
Kitchens of that period were not merely functional rooms; they were the beating heart of great households. The size and arrangement of the space reflected both the wealth of those who built it and the complexity of the meals they expected to serve. Walking through such a place, one can almost hear the sounds of chopping and stirring, smell the roasting of meat over great open fires, and imagine the steady bustle of servants and cooks working to sustain the life of the hall.
Preservation of spaces like this matters not only for their architectural value but also for the insight they offer into the rhythms of medieval existence. Too often, history is told through battles, kings, and political shifts, but it is kitchens, workshops, and living quarters that reveal how people actually lived their days. Gainsborough Old Hall’s kitchen, in its state of preservation, offered exactly that: a window into the practical and domestic side of a world often remembered only for its grandeur or violence.
Southwold and the Pier of Curiosities
Perhaps the most surprising visit of all came on Monday, with a trip to the seaside town of Southwold. The original draw was a local festival—the Sticky Bun celebration held at the church in honor of the Feast of St Edmund. But Southwold has other layers of interest, including its longstanding connection with brewing and, most delightfully, its pier.
Southwold Pier houses one of the most unusual amusement arcades in the country, known as the Under the Pier Show. Unlike the rows of glossy slot machines that dominate so many seaside venues, this arcade is a collection of eccentric, hand-built contraptions created by artist and inventor Tim Hunkin. The machines are often humorous, sometimes satirical, and always infused with a sense of DIY creativity that feels both playful and slightly rebellious against the polished uniformity of mainstream amusements.
Take, for example, the “automated doctor,” a machine that for a mere handful of coins offers to diagnose the health of anyone willing to hold a listening device to their chest. Or the newer installation, a bird hide that presents the seagulls’ view of humanity with a mix of mechanical motion and tongue-in-cheek commentary. These devices might be rougher in construction than the slick animatronics of global theme parks, but that is precisely their charm. They prove that ingenuity, humor, and imagination can produce entertainment every bit as engaging—perhaps more so—than million-dollar spectacles.
The Under the Pier Show embodies the spirit of seaside amusement at its best: quirky, personal, and rooted in the inventiveness of one mind working with discarded materials and sheer persistence. There is something refreshing about knowing that entertainment can be created not with vast teams of engineers but with scavenged parts and an artist’s vision. Visitors may laugh, puzzle, or even scratch their heads, but they leave with memories far more distinctive than the repetitive flash of a digital slot machine.
Linking Birds, Games, and Seaside Quests
During the visit, the thought arose of connecting the experience with a familiar pastime: board gaming. Standing inside a mechanical bird hide, surrounded by cawing seagulls rendered in nuts, bolts, and wires, one might be prompted to think of games that feature birds as a central theme. Some immediately spring to mind for modern gamers, while others require a little more digging through memory. It becomes almost a challenge in itself: what titles take flight, and which remain grounded?
This kind of tenuous linking is a small reminder of how hobbies often bleed into each other. A stroll along a pier can suddenly turn into a mental game of categorizing bird-themed board games. A medieval kitchen sparks thoughts about historical simulations and the way games attempt to capture the essence of everyday life from centuries past. An illuminated dragonfly, gliding above cobblestones, might trigger memories of fantastical role-playing adventures. In this way, each outing becomes not only an experience in its own right but also a spark that connects to wider interests, weaving a personal tapestry of leisure, art, history, and play.
The Quirks and Charms of a Seaside Arcade
The British seaside has always carried a particular kind of nostalgia. For generations, families have flocked to the coast not only for the sun, sand, and sea air but also for the peculiar blend of entertainment found on piers and promenades. Stalls selling sticks of rock, fish and chips wrapped in paper, penny arcades humming with flashing lights, and mechanical rides creaking with age all combine to form a sensory experience that is as much a part of the coast as the cry of seagulls.
Yet Southwold Pier offers something strikingly different from the familiar rhythm of slot machines and claw grabbers. It is here that the Under the Pier Show, created by Tim Hunkin, takes visitors on a detour into the strange and wonderful world of homemade mechanical amusements. In doing so, it challenges assumptions about what an arcade should be, reminding us that play and creativity need not always come packaged in glossy corporate wrapping.
From Slot Machines to Subversive Inventions
The typical seaside arcade relies on repetition. Rows of machines encourage players to insert coin after coin, chasing the illusion of reward through flashing lights, spinning reels, and jingling sounds. It is a kind of entertainment that depends on uniformity: machines may differ in theme or imagery, but they work in much the same way, designed more to absorb money than to spark imagination.
Against this backdrop, the Under the Pier Show stands as a deliberate contrast. The machines here are not designed for profit alone; they are built to amuse, to surprise, to provoke thought. Each one feels like an art installation disguised as a game, inviting players to interact in ways that go beyond pressing buttons or pulling levers. The act of play becomes less about winning and more about discovery.
The automated doctor, for example, offers a comical twist on medical diagnostics. For the price of a few coins, a player receives a “check-up” from a contraption that appears both absurd and oddly convincing. In another corner, the bird hide turns the tables on human observers, allowing seagulls—mechanically speaking—to pass judgment on the species that usually feeds them chips or shoos them away. These inventions are playful, but they also carry undertones of satire, poking fun at modern anxieties, institutions, and behaviors.
The Spirit of DIY Creation
What makes the arcade truly remarkable is not only the humor of its machines but the fact that they are the work of one individual mind, cobbling together parts with resourcefulness and vision. In an age where technology often feels distant—created in sterile laboratories, mass-produced in anonymous factories—there is something refreshing about machines that bear the marks of human tinkering.
The construction is often deliberately visible: wires, bolts, and panels are not hidden but incorporated into the aesthetic. This gives the machines a handmade quality that encourages visitors to think about the act of invention itself. They are reminders that creativity is not reserved for professionals with vast resources but can emerge from sheds, garages, and workshops. Anyone with patience, curiosity, and a sense of humor can create objects that entertain and inspire.
This ethos resonates deeply with traditions of tinkering and making that have long existed at the margins of mainstream culture. Model train enthusiasts, hobbyist inventors, and backyard engineers all embody a similar spirit. What sets Hunkin’s work apart is the decision to place these creations in a public space, inviting strangers to interact with them. In doing so, he transforms private creativity into communal entertainment.
Seaside Amusements Through the Ages
To appreciate the uniqueness of Southwold’s arcade, it helps to step back and consider the broader history of seaside amusements. The origins of the British seaside holiday can be traced to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the coast became a fashionable destination for health and leisure. By the Victorian era, piers and promenades had sprung up to cater to the growing numbers of visitors.
These piers often included mechanical amusements of their own: fortune-telling machines, automated dioramas, and penny-in-the-slot devices. Long before electronic slot machines took over, visitors could place a coin into a contraption and watch tiny figures move, cards flip, or messages appear. The Under the Pier Show is in many ways a continuation of that tradition, though with a distinctly modern and ironic twist. Where Victorian devices promised novelty and mild wonder, Hunkin’s creations add satire, humor, and commentary, reflecting the sensibilities of the present day.
This continuity matters because it situates the Under the Pier Show not as an isolated curiosity but as part of a lineage of seaside entertainment. Just as Victorians delighted in mechanical marvels that seemed to bring objects to life, modern visitors to Southwold are drawn to machines that both amuse and puzzle them. The difference lies in the framing: the modern arcade acknowledges its absurdity, often laughing at itself and its players, while still delivering a sense of wonder.
The Role of Play in Everyday Life
Beyond the machines themselves lies a broader question: why do people continue to be drawn to play, especially in settings that might otherwise be defined by relaxation or leisure? The answer is partly practical—play offers entertainment, distraction, and a way to fill time—but it also goes deeper. Play is a way of engaging with the world, testing boundaries, and exploring ideas.
At the seaside, play has always been a central part of the experience. Children build sandcastles, adults stroll along promenades, groups gather to play cricket on the beach. The presence of arcades and amusements adds another layer, offering structured forms of play that combine chance, skill, and spectacle.
The Under the Pier Show enhances this by making play more than just a pursuit of prizes. Its machines invite reflection: what does it mean to trust a mechanical doctor? How do animals see humanity? What anxieties define modern society, and how can they be turned into sources of amusement? In this way, play becomes a tool for exploring culture, not just for passing time.
Cultural Commentary Through Machines
One of the most striking aspects of the arcade is the way it embeds commentary within entertainment. Unlike conventional slot machines, which provide a predictable cycle of reward and frustration, Hunkin’s inventions often deliver a message alongside the amusement. The automated doctor, for instance, satirizes both medical bureaucracy and the rise of impersonal technology in healthcare. The bird hide reflects on the relationship between humans and nature, flipping perspectives to challenge assumptions.
This blending of humor and critique gives the arcade a depth that distinguishes it from ordinary amusements. Visitors laugh, but they also think. The machines may be absurd, but they point toward real questions about society, technology, and human behavior. In doing so, they fulfill one of the traditional roles of art: to hold up a mirror, albeit a distorted and playful one, to the world around us.
The Seaside Setting
It is worth considering why this arcade feels so at home on a pier rather than in a city center. While a sister collection exists in London, the seaside setting adds an irreplaceable atmosphere. The sound of waves, the cry of gulls, and the salty air all contribute to a sense that the arcade is part of a larger experience.
Seaside towns carry a sense of timelessness. Their piers, often weathered by decades of storms and sunshine, seem to stand slightly apart from the rush of modern life. In such a setting, eccentric machines feel less like novelties and more like natural extensions of the environment. Visitors already expect a degree of whimsy from the seaside—punch-and-judy shows, ice creams melting too fast, brightly painted deckchairs. The Under the Pier Show fits perfectly within this landscape of gentle absurdity.
A Personal Connection to Play
For many visitors, the arcade is not simply a collection of machines but an experience that evokes memories of play in childhood. The clatter of coins, the thrill of discovery, the simple act of pressing buttons or turning handles—these sensations reconnect people with earlier forms of joy. Yet, unlike the generic amusements of mainstream arcades, the Under the Pier Show provides a twist. It invites players to rediscover playfulness not as a nostalgic retreat but as a living, evolving form of creativity.
This is perhaps the most important contribution of the arcade: it reminds adults that play is not something to be left behind in childhood. Instead, it is a way of engaging with the world that remains vital throughout life. In laughing at a mechanical doctor or marvelling at a DIY bird hide, visitors are reminded that curiosity and humor are as important at fifty as they are at five.
From Medieval Kitchens to Modern Games – The Threads of Play
Play is one of humanity’s oldest instincts. Long before neon lights, video consoles, or seaside arcades, people have sought out activities that blur the line between necessity and pleasure, ritual and pastime. When walking through a medieval kitchen such as the one in Gainsborough Old Hall, it is easy to imagine the bustle of cooks and servants, but it is just as easy to imagine that once their work was finished, some of those same individuals found ways to play. Dice, boards, or even improvised games with household tools would have filled evenings. The instinct to play is as ancient as the instinct to eat or tell stories.
That continuity across centuries is part of what makes modern experiences of play so rich. A machine on Southwold Pier, a modern board game featuring birds, or even a light festival in Durham can all be seen as echoes of a much older tradition: humanity’s constant desire to reimagine the world through playful interaction.
Medieval Play: Foundations of Modern Pastimes
The preserved medieval kitchen at Gainsborough Old Hall is a reminder that life in earlier centuries was not solely defined by toil. Historical accounts and archaeological finds suggest that games of chance, skill, and strategy were common across social classes.
Dice, often carved from bone, were among the most widespread gaming tools. They could be used in simple betting games or incorporated into more complex board-based pastimes. Chess, introduced from the Islamic world via Europe’s southern gateways, became a favored pursuit among the nobility. It carried not only entertainment value but also symbolic importance, representing order, hierarchy, and strategy. For the less wealthy, simpler games such as Nine Men’s Morris or Fox and Geese offered accessible ways to pass time.
These games reveal much about the societies that played them. They were more than idle amusements; they reflected values of skill, chance, and social interaction. They also established templates that persist today. The turn-based structure of medieval board games is mirrored in countless modern designs. The blend of luck and strategy in dice games continues to shape how games are enjoyed, whether on a tabletop or in an arcade.
Festivals and the Playful Use of Public Space
Just as games were central to private life, festivals brought play into public space. Illuminated dragonfly parades or modern light festivals in Durham echo earlier traditions of carnivals, pageants, and fairs. These events blurred the boundary between spectacle and participation. Audiences did not simply watch; they became part of the atmosphere, swept along in music, light, and movement.
The illuminated dragonfly in Hexham can thus be seen as a modern continuation of medieval mummers’ plays or traveling entertainments. Its transience—the fact that it existed only for a night—captures the same spirit of temporality that defined historical festivities. The spectacle was less about permanence than about creating a shared memory, an event to be retold and remembered.
The Lumiere festival, despite being perceived as more subdued in recent years, still carries that essential function of transforming familiar city spaces into playful arenas. For a weekend, streets become canvases, landmarks are altered, and the ordinary is temporarily displaced by light and imagination.
Seaside Amusements: From Piers to Arcades
Fast-forwarding through history, seaside towns such as Southwold demonstrate how play migrated into new forms with the rise of modern leisure culture. Piers, built originally as landing places for boats, evolved into promenades for strolling and gathering. By the Victorian period, they became stages for entertainment: musical performances, fortune-telling, and mechanical amusements.
Early pier amusements bore striking similarities to today’s Under the Pier Show. They featured automated displays powered by clockwork, weights, or early electrical systems. For a small coin, one could watch miniature figures enact scenes, from rural life to exotic adventures. These devices were marvels of their age, giving visitors glimpses of the mechanical wonders that foreshadowed cinema and arcade games alike.
The Under the Pier Show, with its satirical machines cobbled together from scraps, consciously invokes this lineage. The difference is in tone. While Victorian machines celebrated industrial progress and modernity, today’s machines often poke fun at society’s excesses or anxieties. The automated doctor, for example, lampoons both faith in technology and the bureaucracy of healthcare, something that would have been alien to a nineteenth-century visitor but instantly recognizable today.
Board Games and Birds: A Curious Link
During the visit to Southwold, the thought of connecting the mechanical bird hide to bird-themed board games seemed almost whimsical. Yet it opens up a fascinating reflection on how themes carry across different forms of play.
In recent decades, board games have embraced a remarkable diversity of subjects, moving beyond abstract contests of territory or economics to explore natural themes. Birds, once peripheral to gaming, have taken center stage in titles that celebrate their beauty, diversity, and ecological importance. This reflects a broader cultural shift toward valuing nature and biodiversity, integrating education with entertainment.
This is not entirely new. Earlier games, though less sophisticated, often drew upon animals or natural motifs. What distinguishes modern bird-themed games is their attention to detail and immersion, mirroring the way Tim Hunkin’s machines capture specific quirks of modern life. Whether in wood and cardboard or wires and gears, play becomes a way to explore themes that matter to people in their daily lives.
Play as Social Glue
One of the most important aspects of play, whether in a medieval hall or a seaside arcade, is its role in fostering connection. Games and amusements bring people together in shared experience. In medieval times, dice games and board contests provided moments of camaraderie in otherwise stratified societies. In the nineteenth century, seaside amusements allowed families to gather, laugh, and bond in spaces outside their daily routines.
Today, board games are often praised for their ability to create face-to-face social interaction in an increasingly digital world. Similarly, the Under the Pier Show thrives because it invites groups to gather around a machine, laugh at its absurdities, and share a moment of joy. Unlike solitary slot machines, these machines encourage conversation and collective amusement.
The bird hide, for example, does not simply deliver an individual experience; it prompts discussion. What did the seagull just say? How accurate is that critique of human behavior? In laughing together, visitors form small, temporary communities, much as festival-goers did in medieval towns.
Chance and Strategy Across Time
One striking thread linking past and present forms of play is the tension between chance and strategy. Medieval dice games relied heavily on luck, though players often infused them with ritual or superstition. Chess emphasized pure strategy, with outcomes dependent on foresight and skill.
Modern games, both digital and mechanical, often blend the two. Arcade machines introduce random elements alongside player input, ensuring unpredictability. Board games frequently combine dice rolls with strategic planning, creating tension between what can be controlled and what must be adapted to.
The Under the Pier Show plays with this balance in its own way. Some machines feel random and chaotic, while others require careful timing or choice. Yet in all cases, the balance reflects a truth that has persisted across centuries: play is compelling because it mirrors life itself, where control and chance are inseparably entwined.
The Subversive Side of Play
Throughout history, play has also served as a medium for critique. Carnivals in medieval Europe inverted hierarchies, allowing peasants to mock nobles and the church. Satirical plays poked fun at authority under the cover of festivity.
The Under the Pier Show inherits this tradition of subversive play. Its machines, with their tongue-in-cheek commentary, allow visitors to laugh at bureaucracy, technology, and human behavior. By placing critique in the form of amusement, it softens its edge while still provoking thought. In this way, play becomes not only entertainment but also a means of questioning the world.
The Value of Imperfection
One reason why Southwold’s arcade resonates so strongly is its embrace of imperfection. Unlike the polished surfaces of mass-produced games, these machines wear their construction openly. Their wires, bolts, and recycled components are visible, almost daring visitors to notice their fragility.
This imperfection is not a flaw but a strength. It humanizes the machines, reminding players that they are the products of individual creativity rather than corporate design. The laughter they provoke is not only at their content but at the audacity of their existence. They show that play need not be perfect to be meaningful.
This resonates with broader traditions of folk play and homemade games. For centuries, communities have improvised with what was available—stones, sticks, bones, or chalk on the ground—to create games that carried as much joy as any expensive device. The Under the Pier Show captures that same spirit, updated for a modern audience.
A Continuity of Joy
When looking across the spectrum—from medieval kitchens to seaside piers, from festivals of light to modern board games—a continuity emerges. Play adapts to its environment, taking new forms as society changes, but its essence remains constant. It is about interaction, creativity, and the delight of discovery.
Medieval dice games, Victorian mechanical amusements, and Southwold’s eccentric machines are all part of a single lineage. They represent humanity’s endless capacity to find joy in shaping rules, testing luck, and embracing absurdity. Each generation reinvents play in ways that reflect its own values, but the thread connecting them remains unbroken.
Futures of Play – From Seaside Arcades to Digital Frontiers
The story so far has carried us through medieval kitchens, glowing festivals, Victorian piers, and modern bird-themed board games. Each chapter has revealed a truth: play is one of the most resilient and adaptive forces in human culture. It thrives in conditions of scarcity, flourishes in eras of abundance, and always manages to reinvent itself in ways that reflect the anxieties, aspirations, and technologies of the moment.
Now, standing at the edge of Southwold Pier with the waves rolling beneath and the eccentric machines of the Under the Pier Show humming and clattering behind, the question naturally arises: What comes next? What will play look like in the decades ahead, and how might the seaside arcade—a symbol of both nostalgia and innovation—continue to evolve?
The Arcade as Time Machine
Walking into Southwold’s collection of machines feels a bit like entering a time machine. The cabinets and contraptions are rooted in an earlier era of mechanical ingenuity, yet they satirize twenty-first century life. They evoke nostalgia while also offering biting commentary on the present. This duality is important: the arcade has always been a liminal space, a borderland between eras.
In the 1980s and 1990s, video arcades embodied the cutting edge of digital entertainment. Now, with consoles, smartphones, and VR headsets dominating private spaces, arcades have shifted into a new role. They are no longer technological frontiers but cultural sanctuaries, places where physicality, spectacle, and community still matter. The clunk of tokens, the rattle of a joystick, the laughter of onlookers—these sensory experiences cannot be replicated by online gaming alone.
Thus, the seaside arcade may survive not by competing with digital platforms but by offering something they cannot: tactile play infused with irony, social interaction, and physical presence. In this way, Southwold’s eccentric collection points toward one possible future for arcades—spaces of artistic expression and cultural critique as much as entertainment.
The Blending of Physical and Digital Play
Yet digital technology is not going away. If anything, the future of play lies in hybrid forms that blur the line between the physical and the virtual. Already we see this in phenomena like augmented reality games. Pokémon Go, for instance, transformed everyday streets into landscapes of play, layering digital creatures onto familiar environments.
What if a seaside arcade machine integrated AR elements? Imagine a pier-based scavenger hunt where your phone reveals hidden animations superimposed onto the wooden boards or seagulls overhead. Or consider mechanical contraptions like Tim Hunkin’s creations that trigger digital extensions—an absurd arcade doctor whose “diagnosis” spawns an app with further satire.
This convergence suggests that play in the coming decades will increasingly involve layers. The physical and the digital will not compete so much as complement one another. Seaside towns, with their nostalgic infrastructure, could become ideal testbeds for such hybrid experiences, offering a blend of tradition and innovation.
The Persistence of Satire in Play
Another enduring feature of play is satire. From medieval carnival inversions to the cheeky mechanics of Southwold’s arcade, play often carries with it a mocking edge. This will almost certainly persist into the future, because satire thrives wherever authority, anxiety, or technology creates tension ripe for laughter.
Already, indie video games have begun to embrace this role. Titles that parody workplace culture, poke fun at bureaucracy, or exaggerate modern fears echo the spirit of the Under the Pier Show. The fact that a seaside arcade machine can critique healthcare bureaucracy in the same way that a digital indie game can critique corporate culture demonstrates a continuity of function across platforms.
The likely future is not that satire will fade, but that it will diversify. Machines, games, and digital worlds alike will provide safe spaces for laughing at what might otherwise overwhelm us. In that sense, the seaside arcade’s satire is not a relic but a prototype.
Play as Community-Building
One theme that has consistently emerged across this series is the social dimension of play. From medieval dice games in kitchens to illuminated festivals in Durham, play has always been about gathering, sharing, and connecting.
The future may amplify this role. At a time when isolation and digital silos dominate headlines, play may serve as a crucial counterbalance. Already, tabletop board games are experiencing a renaissance precisely because they require face-to-face interaction. Similarly, community-centered play experiences—festivals, public art, even giant outdoor games—are being celebrated as ways to bring people together.
Seaside arcades, then, may position themselves as hubs of collective play. No longer just rows of isolated slot machines, they could evolve into spaces that emphasize group experiences: collaborative machines, multiplayer challenges, interactive performances. The eccentric machines of Southwold already encourage conversation and laughter among strangers. Future arcades could build on this model deliberately, making community the core of their design.
The Environmental Dimension of Play
A more sobering factor in the future of play is the environment. Rising sea levels and increasing coastal erosion threaten seaside towns across the UK, including Southwold. Arcades built on piers are, by their very nature, vulnerable. The physical survival of these spaces cannot be taken for granted.
This challenge might itself shape the next phase of play. Imagine arcades that integrate environmental awareness into their amusements—machines that satirize climate inaction, or games that physically change in response to weather conditions. Play could become not just a distraction from the environmental crisis but a means of engaging with it.
In this way, the seaside arcade could once again take on a role of cultural commentary, highlighting pressing issues through humor and spectacle. Just as a mechanical seagull lampoons human folly, future machines might lampoon our relationship with the natural world.
Play and Memory
Looking forward, we should also acknowledge the role of play in shaping memory. One reason seaside arcades endure in cultural imagination is that they create lasting impressions. A single encounter with a bizarre machine, a single afternoon spent laughing at absurd contraptions, can linger in memory for decades.
This mnemonic power will only become more important as societies accelerate. In an age of fleeting digital interactions, experiences that create enduring memories stand out. Play, especially physical play, is uniquely suited to this. The clatter of coins, the smell of sea air, the feel of wood underfoot—these sensory anchors root memory in ways that digital clicks cannot.
Thus, the future of play may emphasize memory-making. The most successful experiences will not be those that occupy us for hours but those that we recall years later with a smile. Seaside arcades, by virtue of their eccentricity, are already ahead in this respect.
The Role of Imperfection in Future Play
As mass entertainment becomes increasingly polished and corporate, the appeal of imperfection is likely to grow. Southwold’s machines, with their visible wires and recycled parts, capture this perfectly. They stand as a rebuke to sleek, soulless design.
Future play spaces may well lean into imperfection deliberately. Handmade contraptions, open-source games, DIY festivals—all embody a spirit of authenticity that polished products cannot replicate. Just as the craft beer movement challenged mass-market lagers, so too might eccentric arcades and DIY games challenge corporate entertainment.
This suggests that the seaside arcade, far from being outdated, could be a model for the future: messy, personal, full of character, and unapologetically imperfect.
Final Thoughts
Over these four parts, we’ve wandered through centuries and across landscapes, from the preserved kitchens of Gainsborough to the glowing art of Durham, from medieval games of chance to the eccentric seaside arcades of Southwold. What began as a simple recounting of outings—an illuminated dragonfly here, a sticky bun festival there—gradually revealed itself as something much broader: a meditation on the enduring presence of play in human life.
Play is everywhere once you start looking. It lurks in the rituals of festivals, in the laughter of crowds, in the shuffle of dice, and in the clatter of arcade tokens. It can be as solemn as a church feast or as absurd as a mechanical seagull lampooning humanity. It bridges past and present, connecting medieval revelers with modern board gamers, seaside holidaymakers with children hunched over smartphones. It thrives in both scarcity and abundance, adapting constantly to new contexts without losing its essence.
One of the most striking patterns across this journey has been play’s dual role: at once a source of joy and a tool of critique. Festivals invert hierarchies and laugh at authority. Board games simulate risk and strategy, allowing us to experiment with chance in a safe way. Arcades poke fun at bureaucracy, health systems, and modern anxieties, all under the guise of lighthearted entertainment. In every era, play reflects the world around it while giving us room to challenge it.
Equally striking is the persistence of imperfection. The machines at Southwold are charming precisely because they are cobbled together from scraps. Their rough edges remind us that play does not require polish to be powerful. In fact, imperfection often makes play more memorable. Just as village games required little more than improvised rules and a patch of ground, modern players often find the most joy not in sleek, corporate experiences but in the quirky, handmade, and unexpected.
And then there is memory. The illuminated festivals may come and go, the arcades may evolve, but what endures are the stories we carry forward. The dragonfly parade in Hexham, the glowing artworks in Durham, the medieval kitchen in Gainsborough, the seaside contraptions in Southwold—all of these moments linger precisely because they are infused with play. They become part of the fabric of personal and cultural identity. Years from now, a person may not recall the specifics of a job or a routine errand, but they will remember the time they laughed at a machine diagnosing them with absurd ailments for 40p.
Looking ahead, the future of play is likely to echo its past while layering on new technologies and new contexts. Hybrid forms of physical and digital play will grow. Satire will adapt to new targets. Community will remain central. Environmental pressures may reshape the very spaces where play unfolds. But the underlying functions—joy, critique, memory, community, imperfection—will remain. They are too deeply woven into human experience to disappear.
Seaside arcades, then, are not relics but symbols. They show how play can survive by adapting, by offering something digital platforms cannot: tactility, absurdity, laughter shared with strangers. They remind us that even in a world saturated with polished entertainment, there is immense value in rough edges, in handmade contraptions, in the joyous collision of creativity and imperfection.
If there is a single lesson to take from this exploration, it is that play is not trivial. It is not something to be dismissed as childish or secondary. It is essential. It teaches us how to connect, how to cope, how to critique, and how to imagine. It creates the memories that outlast routines, the laughter that breaks tension, the stories that become part of who we are.
So whether in a medieval hall, a city square lit with lanterns, or a seaside arcade filled with eccentric machines, play continues to matter. It always has, and it always will. And perhaps that is the true magic of Southwold’s Under the Pier Show: it looks like a jumble of wires and wood, but what it really offers is a reminder that as long as we can play, we can face whatever the future brings—with resilience, with laughter, and with joy.