Can you believe it was almost 4 years ago when the world suddenly changed when the COVID virus hit?

Equally hard to believe that in the Costa Del Sol there exists a theme park in BENALMADENA, which became very popular in the 1970’s, which sadly failed to survive the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

When it shut its doors in 2020 the expectation was that once the pandemic was over it would soon be business as usual.

Indeed the following year it did re-open for a couple of months, only for it to close again, this time, seemingly for all time.

However a strange loophole in the contracts of those employed there, meant that they weren’t able to seek alternative employment.

Were they to leave they’d get no compensation or unemployment benefit, so many continued to work at Tivoli just to keep the place clean and in a good enough condition, that should the local council finally decide to make the park operational once again, it could do so.

Incredibly some staff members have even slept overnight in the theme park to protect it and indeed the security cameras they set up helped foil an attempted break in earlier this year!

In the second hour of today’s programme we turned to clock back to the mid 1800’s, as the subject of today’s “BYGONES” feature by Margaret Mills involved a Lady Olivia Sparrow.

Although Irish by birth, Lady Olivia Sparrow, became deeply involved in improving the lives of the residents of Leigh-on-Sea and Hadleigh, by among other things, establishing a church run day school for poorer children, arranging for a well to be dug to supply clean drinking water.

It seems, however she is not well commemorated locally, possibly due to her falling out with the local vicar and subsequently refusing to attend the church where said vicar was preaching!

Anyway if you missed what Margaret said, you can catch it all again here: –

I very much hope to have your company again next week, and in the meantime wish you a very happy, prosperous and most of all, healthy 2025,
Scott