June 2004

June 29th, 2004. Would Caitlin's mum please come to the diary room

A bit filled-up with unemployment-related apathy at the moment. Not sure what I want to do, or where I want to do it. I'm even going back to my childhood and thinking: "ooh, it would be cool to be a train driver".

The Mother is getting even more interested in Big Brother than I am this year; she'd never have watched it at all if I wasn't here. She watches it every day, and gets very aggrieved whenever Big Brother does things without telling the contestants. "But that's not fair! They shouldn't do that to them!"

22:31 Comments (7)

June 27th, 2004. Skegness

It's not a very appetising name, is it? Skeg. Skeg. I went there with The Mother for the day - my dad had a meeting to go to nearby, and dropped us off for sightseeing.

There aren't really many sights to see, though. We tried to go shopping, but apart from an intereting-looking, rather gothy shoe shop, everything on sale was the usual tourist tat. Lots of cheap, low quality, low taste souvenirs. We wondered up and down the prom, but The Mother didn't want to go on any of the rides. We looked at what was on at the seatfront theatre:* "International Meccano Show" "No Jacket Required (Phil Collins tribute)", "The Best Of The West End, starring ______".** Sadly, the Billy Joel tribute show had been cancelled.

You can't really go to the seaside without, well, going to the seaside, so we walked out to find the sea. At Skegness, none of the tourists are interested in the sea. The prom - lined with fairground rides and arcades - was busy, but the beach itself was deserted. We looked at the pale brown waves breaking on the seawall, and at the Norfolk coast on the horizon. No ships. No people. I looked back at the waves, and wondered where the toilet was.

Getting a bit bored, we found a backstreet cafe to sit in and get a cup of coffee. The cafe woman - mid 20s, yellow t-shirt, grey tracksuit trousers - was chatting to a friend. We listened in, of course:

Friend: "Can I have a bit of your trifle?"

"You don't like trifle."

"I don't like the bottom bit."

"You don't like the fruit bit on the top either."

"No, but I like the custard in the middle. Can I have some?"

* the Embassy Centre, I think it's called.

** Some permatanned, permagrin 'star' that nobody has ever heard of. He probably tried to audition for Steps back in 1995 and didn't make it. I genuinely can't remember his name.

15:14 Comments (3)

June 24th, 2004. Unavoidable, even here

Monday evening. As I'm writing this, my parents are in the living room watching the football. My mother is very worried, because the score is one-all and she's sure that Croatia will score again at any minute.

In the news today: a Grimsby street is claiming to be the most supportive in the country, covering every house in bunting and giant footballs. I know I've said before that I don't like all the flags flying everywhere at the moment; but I was quite pleased about the reason behind it. The street is in Nunsthorpe, one of the most notoriously run-down parts of town - there are actually worse parts, but Nunsthorpe has the bad reputation. A local action group has been trying for a few years to improve the area and 'bring back a sense of community',* and they decided that the football would be a handy peg to hang some community-building on. Old women were interviewed on the local news, saying "ooh, it's much better than it was, the kids now help me carry my shopping home" and so on. So maybe, football-supporting can be a force for good after all.

This doesn't, of course, alter my view about the majority of flag-wavers. For myself I don't care which way the football match goes tonight; but part of me is hoping that England lose, just so we can get it over with sooner.

Thursday afternoon. I'm glad I'm not in Boston tonight.** I'm generally glad I'm not in Boston anyway, but I'm especially glad tonight because of the Portugal-versus-England football match.

The last time England lost the football, against France the other week, 'riots' broke out in Boston. I'm using the quotes because I'm used to the local news exaggerating things. Nevertheless, 'riots'. Moreover, according to the local news, the reason the riots broke out was a general local hatred of the Portugese. If Boston can break out in anti-Portugese riots because England happens to lose a match in that country, I hate to think what might happen if they lose a match against Portugal themselves.

Boston, you see, is one of those sleepy rural towns where not much happens, and where if you listen carefully the main sound you'll hear is the low-frequency rustle of plants growing in the endless fields stretching to the (ruler-straight) horizon. Unsurprisingly, most of the jobs available locally are rather boring, poorly-paid farmhand-type ones: potato-picking, cabbage-harvesting, and so on. Unsurprisingly, nobody from the Boston area really wants to do these jobs, so the area has been filled by immigrant workers who are willing to do crap work for illegal rates of pay. In the rest of the country the news has all been about Chinese migrant workers; but Boston, for some reason, is full of Portuguese farmhands. Hence why I really wouldn't want to be in the area when there's a Portugal-v-England football match on.

From here, of course, I should be going to a fine, solid, acceptable conclusion, something along the lines of: "see, very few hooligans are your genuine psychopaths; most have entirely valid socio-economic reasons for beating people up." Unfortunately, I'm not that woolly-liberal. The economics of British farming is completely fucked-up, and Something Should Be Done About It - but even if it is, the Boston rioters from the other week will still be violent morons. And, incidentally, today I care even less whether England win or lose.

(Coming soon on FatTotS: Why I Would Cross The Street To Avoid Wayne Rooney.)

* which is going to make me suspicious, because it's another of these things that gets co-opted by the Far Right as something that sounds nice, and that nobody's going to object to.

** Lincolnshire, not Massachusetts. I'm indifferent about Boston, MA; Boston, Lincs is near enough for me to have to make a vague effort to avoid it.

18:09 Comments (2)

June 23rd, 2004. Bookish

I still haven't finished doing all those little administrative things that are involved in moving house. I still haven't registered with a new doctor, for example. This afternoon, though, I managed to go into town and sign up with the library. I thought I'd mention it because I'm fairly sure there's at least one regular reader who goes to Grimsby Library to read this site, so at least they'll be able to imagine the scene.

The library's changed a bit since I was last there. The desks and departments have all been moved around, rather confusingly. There are less books, and more CDs. There are DVDs. There are computers.* The old issuing consoles - black, built into the desks, and looking like the Starship Enterprise's computers - have been ripped out and replaced with boring old computer terminals. The only things that hadn't changed were the enormous 1960s light-fittings, and the strange curved bookshelves, which take up rather a lot of space but make it much easier to see what's on the bottom shelves. I didn't even recognise any of the staff.**

I told the assistant that I wanted to rejoin, and handed over my driving license. "Will you be wanting to use the internet?" she asked.

"Um ... probably." Don't laugh.

"Read this, then, please." She handed over a laminated sheet, covered with smallprint. I skimmed through it. Internet access is available to blah blah blah ... blah blah ... You agree not to download or run any software not approved blah blah ... blah ... offensive, disturbing, illegal or racist material, or material contrary to North East Lincolnshire Council's Equal Opportunities policies ... blah ... agree not to alter or adjust any settings on ... blah. At the bottom was a space to sign and date the sheet. I handed it back. As she typed my details and random other words into the computer terminal, my mind went back to wandering. The woman behind me in the queue had a rather nice outfit on; I wondered where she had bought it.

* Well, obviously, if someone goes there to read this website then there have to be computers there. I mean, duh.

** although the only staff I knew there before were Dot who also ran part of the Youth Orchestra, and my friend Amy's mum.

23:06 Comments (0)

June 21st, 2004. Who Art In Heaven?

I was rather unsure what to get my father for Fathers' Day. Normally, I wouldn't bother with a present, but the mother said:

"You've missed lots of his birthdays over the past few years. Go and get him something."

But what to get him? A book? I always get him books. He has huge piles of unread books that he plans to read eventually, when he goes on holiday. He's a slow reader. There's no point getting him something that he'll just put on a shelf, because ... well, he'll just put it on a shelf. A CD is no good: his taste is so hugely random that I'd have no idea what to buy.* A DVD or two would be a good idea, I thought. He may have lots already, but at least they only take a couple of hours to watch. But what? In the end, after spending half an hour scanning the special offer racks in the local record stores, I decided on:

• Planes, Trains and Automobiles
• Being John Malkovich
• Ring

He's normally very reluctant about foreign films, but I can get around that by pointing out that if he can persuade the mother to watch Ring, it will give her nightmares for weeks. All in all, I was quite pleased: it's a nicely varied selection, and (because of the way the various special offers worked out) it meant I got a film free for myself. So, now I have two DVDs of my own on the shelves.** Must remember to watch it some time.

* That's not quite true: when he does buy CDs, he usually buys whatever Radio 2 has been playing to death lately. As I don't listen to Radio 2, I have no idea what he'd be wanting right now.

** The one I bought with Dad's was Ghost World. The other is the Belle and Sebastian videos compilation.

21:55 Comments (1)

June 19th, 2004. Yet more self-promotion. And some other adverts, too.

I've got another article up on Rum and Monkey. It's all about how you should always be a bit suspicious of people - in politics, religion, or whatever - who always seem to be absolutely sure of themselves.

When I followed that link just then to check it was right, one thing made me smile. The adverts that came up on the page included:

Right Wing Singles
Join free, We Match Conservatives! A Community of Conservative Singles.
www.ConservativeMatch.com

The great search engine, in all its wisdom, has decided that that is what people who read that article are likely to go for. It's the height of artificial intelligence, you know.

22:45 Comments (3)

June 17th, 2004. 1, 3, 5, 3, 2, 5, 4, 2, 1, 3, 5, 3, 2, 5, 4, 2

When I was about 12 or so, my mother came into some money.* So, she bought a piano, because she'd always wanted one. I was already going to a local piano teacher,** so of course I started to have piano lessons. I was never very good at the piano, though. I was fine at reading music - I already played the clarinet and various types of recorder, and was fairly decent at all of them - but reading two or more lines of music at once was a bit of a challenge. Playing multiple notes at once, too, was a bit tricky. My playing would trundle along all well and good until I reached a complex chord; then there would be a long pause whilst I rearranged my fingers and found all the right notes. I started off on the easy stuff without too much trouble; but eventually failed an exam, and stopped playing it seriously there.

The other day, though, I had nothing to do, so I sat down at the piano again. I tried a C-major scale, one-handed: it seemed to go OK. I tried it two-handed, and ended up in an awful muddle with having to pivot each hand on different notes, when my hands wanted to be doing the same thing together. My fingers were awfully uneven, too; it was very difficult to play a run of notes and make them all the same length. If I tried to play softly, I would often skip some notes completely by not pressing the key all the way down. The more I tried, though, the better it started to sound.

I hunted out one of my old piano books: Czerny's 101 Exercises, written by a little-known 19th-century Austrian composer. If any of you have been taught the piano, you might have come across it; it's full of exercises to improve your touch and dexterity. Slowly, I tried the pieces on the first page, trying to persuade my fingers to work evenly and consistantly, trying to make them more flexible, trying to make them behave. And, slowly, they started to improve, and a few days later I can play the first few pieces at a reasonable speed. Sometimes you might not even notice my chord-hunting pauses, they're that small. Maybe I will be able to pick it up again, and maybe even be better than I was a few years ago

(The topic of this post, incidentally, is the right-hand fingering pattern for the first piece in the Czerny book - 1 is the thumb, 5 the little finger. According to the notes scribbled in the margin by my piano teacher, I first started playing that piece in November 1991.)

* it was compensation money after we'd been in a car crash.

** for music theory lessons, in case you were wondering.

21:13 Comments (5)

June 14th, 2004. ... or, a play on words

There was shocking news in this morning's Guardian. It turns out that, according to top scientists,* puns just aren't funny. In fact, if you double the number of puns in a long, rambling joke, you halve the total comedy value.

As many of you will have guessed, I just have to disagree with this. Then again, those of you who have had to listen to my long, contrived puns in the pub,** will probably think that the scientists are spot-on.

(I want to know what the official S. I. unit of comedy is, too. And how do you quantify ouch-factor, exactly?)

* Top scientist-comedians, in fact.

** There was this scientist, who decided to breed extremely tasty rats for use as cheap meat in those mysteriously unspecific 'meat' pies. Unfortunately - for him, but good for the rats, I suppose - he accidentally bred hyper-intelligence into the rats. Obviously, he hadn't read Mrs Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH when he was little, because he wasn't prepared at all for what happened next. The rats, in between speaking, developing civilisation, and inventing their own computer languages, worked out what was happening to them. They quickly realised that they were being bred for food, so worked out a plan to escape...

A Reader writes: Get on with it!

Um, sorry. I'll try to be brief. Rats plan. Rats escape. Rats swarm out of building and think "what shall we do now?" Rats plan some more. They rush over to the nearest town, which happens to be a big seaport. They swarm down to the harbour and onto a nice big yacht. They drive all the people off the boat, and sail off out into the ocean. They live a live of leisure and happiness, funding it by attacking other ships they find at sea, stealing the cargoes and forcing the crews to walk the plank? Why? Because they were bred as pie-rats.

22:48 Comments (3)

June 13th, 2004. Stalky stalky stalk stalk

On Saturday, we went up to the seafront. It was my first trip up there since moving back here; I was intrigued, because someone commented here recently that it's going upmarket in a narrow-minded Daily Mail kind of way.

The promenade still looked the same, overall. Cheap-looking arcade buildings, and a street tarted up with late-eighties herringbone brick paving. The sea was still brown, and the sand was still brown too. We watched the Grimsby-Denmark ferry sailing out into the river, and wandered past the arcades and coin-op bingo shacks.

There are little bits of newness, though. The seafront is still full of greasy-spoon fish-and-chip cafés, but there's a new, posh, restaurant by the pier. Decked out in pine and chrome like any city style bar, it was selling half-pound steaks for £12, other meals for £8. It was empty inside, at lunch-time; the greasy-spoons were all packed with daytrippers from Rotherham and Doncaster. "Can't see this place lasting long," said my dad. Overlooking the prom on the corner of Seaview Street, 'penthouse apartments' are going up. When I was younger, that was the site of JD's, the nightclub of choice for all the local 13-year-olds who wanted to get pissed and pull every weekend. Now, it's a luxury development.

The railway station still looks the same, too: large and empty. It has acres of derelict platforms, covered in windblown sand, used now by little one-coach and two-coach trains. There was an exhibition of some sort at the station, and we managed to spot Tim Mickleburgh there. I've mentioned Tim Mickleburgh before. He's the sort of person who might have been a blogger if blogs had been invented ten years earlier.* His main hobby seems to be writing letters to newspapers; unfortunately, his letters to the nationals never get published.** He has to make do with getting three or four letters per week in the Grimsby Telegraph, instead.*** I'm rather tempted to set up an Unofficial Tim Mickleburgh Fan Club website. Maybe we should have said something: "hello, Tim, we're you're biggest fans!"

(I will have to go up Cleethorpes and explore it more on my own; maybe a bit later in the summer. I will have to get round to starting my Tourist Guide too, you know. I've a feeling Cleethorpes will be better material for it than Grimsby.)

* Although I probably wouldn't link to it; I'd find it a bit too serious and pernickety.

** At least, he only gets letters in The Guardian rarely, usually when he's writing in his official capacity, as Chairman of the National Piers Society. For all I know, he might be getting letters in the Times or the Telegraph every week. If you spot anything from Tim Mickleburgh of Grimsby on your newspaper's letters page, let me know!

*** Which reminds me - I meant to write them a letter pointing out that all these people who say "ooh, isn't it nice to see all these flags flying! It might give people some pride in their country!" aren't really the sort of people who think before they speak.

20:43 Comments (5)

June 10th, 2004. News From Our Foreign Correspondant

Washington, DC: Thousands of distraught Americans are filling the streets of their capital tonight, unable to believe that former President Ronald Reagan has not yet risen from the dead.

"I can't believe it hasn't happened yet," said a tearful Kentucky woman. "He did so much for this country! He did so much for the poor and homeless, liberated the Nazi death-camps, and then he went and destroyed Satan! He was a poor white English-speaking man just like Jesus Himself, so we all thought that he would rise again."

Hopes for the senile ex-president's resurrection were still high on Sunday and Monday, but by Tuesday morning many worshippers were trying to come to terms with the non-event.

"We were so sure He would return on Monday," said a Tennessee man, "just as Jesus returned on the third day. On Tuesday, we thought, maybe we'd got our sums wrong. Now, we have to think: maybe it won't happen at all. That's a big thing for us to accept." "He's sure to come back eventually," added his wife, "at the head of an army of flaming angels. We might have to wait until next week, though, that's all."

21:19 Comments (3)

June 9th, 2004. Transport

Nothing much exciting has been happening, unsurprisingly. Highlight of my week so far: popping into town to get some extra groceries.

The bus station in the town is shut at the moment, for Big Radical Changes like ... um ... digging up a zebra-crossing. A few people were still standing at the bus stops, looking a little puzzled. "Why is it all so quiet? Where is everybody?"

I tried to find where my bus would be hiding. In Town Hall Square, outside the registry office, the sign said. I wandered down there, past the back of the library, and found a layby with no signs or buses. As I leaned against the registry office wall, a series of little old women came up to ask me where their bus had gone. This is unusual: normally, on buses, the little old women sit as far from me as they can.*

"Is this where the 9X stops, love?"

Me: "Um... I don't know. Maybe."

"Oooh, it's terrible, isn't it. I mean, it's all a big mess! Nobody knows where to go or anything. There's a bus down there; I;ll see if the driver knows what he's doing." She wandered off, the next old lady ambling on her heels:

"Hello, dear. Are you waiting for the 9X?"

Me: "Um ... yes, but ..."

And so it went on. A bus pulled up, with no sign up front. The driver left his cab, kept the doors firmly closed, and laid down for a snooze on the back seat. Small insects buzzed around in the afternoon heat, and the territorial calls of elderly women** drifted on the breeze. I resigned myself to relaxing outside the registry office all afternoon; or maybe just walking home.

* "Ooh, we never dressed like that in my day! I don't know, people today..."

** "Hello, dear! Lovely weather! Which bus are you looking for, love? Oooh, it's terrible, isn't it dear..."

23:18 Comments (1)

June 7th, 2004. Let's all vote against the mad people!

Only a few more days left until the European elections, and then I promise I'll shut up about politics for a while. I just wanted to mention it again, though. Just once more.

There have been a few letters in the Grimsby Telegraph recently from Disgruntled Of Cleethorpes and the like, saying "ooh, I'm not voting, all this postal voting stuff is a big swindle. They've all got numbers on the ballot papers, you know! It's not secret any more!" I don't know if they have short memories, never bothered to vote, or are just a bit thick; because British ballot papers had numbers on all along, and it was always possible to work out who you voted for. Allegedly,* it was routine in the 1950s for MI5 to go through the Communist ballot-papers afterwards and look up everybody's names.

A small quirk of geography denied me one tiny pleasure when voting. If I lived a couple of miles south-east of here, the TV presenter and ex-politician Robert Kilroy-Silk would have been on the ballot paper, representing the UK Independance Party. I'd have received a tiny jolt of pleasure from being able to actively vote against the orange-skinned racist; but it was not to be. If any of you are considering voting for him, I'd like to point out that he recently said that if he's elected, he intends to spend as little time as possible actually at the Parliament.** I can't see the point in voting for someone who admits that they'll then deliberately avoid doing their job.

The UKIP, of course, claim to be the moderate, non-racist face of the isolationist right. This is, of course, clearly nonsense, as shown by their TV advertising. According to the UKIP, the EU Fisheries Commissioner is unsuitable to hold his job because of his nationality.*** They might keep saying "we're moderates! Honest!" but in reality they're still extremists.

* according to correspondants in The Guardian's letter pages just after the last election, at any rate.

** in a Channel Four News interview last week, if you don't believe me.

*** subtlely illustrated by a yodelling man in lederhosen, being slapped in the face with a big fish. They're at the cutting-edge of comedy, you know.

21:39 Comments (4)

June 6th, 2004. Viewpoint

The week before I left Edinburgh, we went to climb up Arthur's Seat. We sat at the top and looked down over the city. I took in the view of the city, the river and the sea, thinking it might be the last time I saw it.

Whilst I was up there, it occurred to me that it might be a while before I was that high above the sea again. Looking at the landmark sign at the summit, I worked out that Arthur's Seat, a couple of miles from the shore, is higher in altitude than anywhere in the entire county of Lincolnshire.* I could travel for miles and still be lower.

When I first arrived in Scotland, one of the things that most stands out in my mind is the height and closeness of things. Not just hills, but buildings too. I have a very vivid memory of driving into South Clerk Street, where my first flat was, for the first time, and thinking how tall and narrow it was: five-story buildings right up to the edge of the road. Everywhere in Lincolnshire is small, broad and spread-out by comparison. The skies are much larger. The views, on the other hand, stop at the first hedge.

And that what what came to mind last month when I read this piece by Somewhat, Muchly. When I was little I never noticed the flat lands and wide skies; now they're something of a novelty again. Before long I should try to get up and climb the edge of the hills, a few miles west of here. From there - although it's nowhere as high as anywhere near Edinburgh, of course - you can see the coastal plain laid out before you. On the edge, just before the horizon: the docks, the refinaries, the town, the river, the ships, the sea.

One, problem, though, that Somewhat hinted slightly at. It's a right bugger to photograph.

* Arthur's Seat's summit is about 250m or so, off the top of my head. The highest point in Lincolnshire is well under 500ft.

22:45 Comments (1)

June 3rd, 2004. Contact

Incidentally, now I've moved I've finally managed to get back on the internet at home, and to get instant messaging working. Woohoo! If you want to get in touch with me, you can now contact me through AIM; my user-id is 'caitlinpigtails'.

21:21 Comments (0)

June 2nd, 2004. Reintroduction

Still unpacking everything, and wondering where to put it all. The cat seems to be settling in well - partly because my mother keeps treating him to tuna, tinned salmon, the jelly out of pork pies and so on. He's spending most of his time hiding in the jungle at the bottom of the garden.

I've been spending the last two days walking around town trying to sort out my dole and replacing all those things that I didn't bother packing,* and trying to buy new trainers.** These are the things that I've noticed whilst doing it:

• There are a few people in Grimsby that do look vaguely sane and attractive.
• There's definitely something in this childhood obesity thing. It's half-term, I think, and the town seems to be full of overweight little girls in too-tight Topshop clothes.***
• However it looked before, it's now full of new-looking railings, traffic lights, narrowed streets and brick paving. The overall effect isn't good.
• People's driving is much worse down here.
• A lot of people walk around squinting all the time. I've caught myself doing it, too. I think it's because not much on the horizon means lots of sky, so lots of ambient light.
• When I lived here before, I never noticed the accent. Now, it sounds so strong.

After noticing all this, I'm planning a new series of blog entries: The Tourist Guide To Grimsby. As we never get tourists here anyway, I can write about whatever parts of the town I like with no risk of people writing in and complaining. "I tried to follow your Guide, but it didn't have any tourist attractions in it at all!"

* Skin cream, emery boards, toothpaste, a new toothbrush, antihistamines, and all that sort of thing. Oh, and socks - my mother threw out all my socks because "they all had holes in".

** as all mine have very large holes in. Like the socks.

*** Maybe the overweight children are just more noticeable. Something to do with surface area. I'm sure there weren't so many fat kids about when I was that age, though.

22:37 Comments (3)