August 2004

August 31st, 2004. Four more years

The Olympics* is over, and The Mother has nothing to watch on the TV. It's strange, because she's not normally bothered about watching sport, but as soon as the Olympics started, she was glued to the telly. Because it's The Olympics.

"Would you watch Synchronised Decapitation if it was an Olympic event?"

"Don't be silly."

So, she sat through hours of obscure sports whilst doing the ironing or catching up with Church paperwork. Canoeing. Dressage.** Beach volleyball. Boxing. She'd never watch professional boxing, but if it's Olympic - and if there might be a British winner - it's on the telly. This week, her hours are empty again. She puts on Neighbours and Quincy, but apart from that the house is quiet.

* No, of course I'm not following their ridiculous linking guidelines

** Never mind beach volleyball, dressage really is the least sporty of the Olympic sports. It's making a horse dance. Really, why does that count as a sport?

23:18 Comments (4)

August 28th, 2004. [sic]

There are all sorts of exciting things going on in the English countryside, you know. In a local chip shop, for example, I spotted a poster for the 16th Annual Tetney Leek Club show day. Including (this is all directly from the poster):

• See the Leeks and prizes!!!
• Leek soup and BBQ available
• Raffle
• Evening disco + Auction of the Leeks

I'm tempted to go, because there's rarely anything better to do around here. If you're interested it's at the Plough, Tetney market place, next Saturday afternoon.

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August 27th, 2004. Motherhood by proxy

We took the cat to the vet's this morning. Understandably, he wasn't very happy about the whole idea of getting in his box and onto the bus into town. He hadn't been allowed to eat or drink either, which didn't help, and so I have several scratches on my hands.

I'd noticed some pus coming from his ear, and matting up his fur. I've noticed things like that before and cleaned them up myself; but this time it seemed a bit worse. So, we decided, to the vet's with him. "The vet will want to neuter him," said The Mother, "but I don't think we should let him. I wouldn't mind if he was a kitten, but it would be cruel to do it to him now."

Of course, he did. "As a cat, he doesn't need to be complete," he said. "As he gets older, he's going to lose more fights and get more infections. It'll stop him siring kittens all over the place, too."

I looked at The Mother. "It does sound like a good idea," she said. She's swayed even more easily than I am. So, the vet is going to:

• neuter him
• clean up and stitch the abscess in his ear
• pull some bad teeth he spotted
• prescribe antibiotics, for the gum infection caused by the bad teeth
• scrub the tartar off the remaining teeth

It all seems like an awful lot of medicine* for a small cat. I have to phone back this afternoon to make sure he came through the surgery OK. I'm half-expecting the vet to say "Um, we've discovered a dangerous illness; there's only one thing we can do."

UPDATE, later that day: the cat is now back home from the vets. He is hiding under the chest of drawers in the spare room, and he's too sleepy, still, to eat anything. I'd think it would be pretty painful for him to eat, anyway; I remember what it was like after I had my wisdom teeth out.

* well, medicine and dentistry.

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August 25th, 2004. Sense of direction

Never try asking me for directions. Just don't; it's bound to end in tears. When I'm trying to get somewhere myself: fine, no problem. When I'm a random person you stop in the street: don't bother.

Today, for example. I was kneeling in the front garden, hacking away at plants with the pruning shears. Our front border is choked with ugly, overgrown plants that have been there since the house was built. They have flooded the border, have extended our garden several inches into the pavement, so I'm trying to get rid of them. As I'm on my knees cutting away, a car pulls up.

"Do you know where ______ Street is?"

"Sure," I reply. "Down there. Third left." I watch them drive away. They're scarcely a hundred yards away, before I realise that I've sent them to completely the wrong place. In the opposite direction. This is what always happens when you ask me for directions. I sound precise, and confident - I think I know exactly what I'm talking about - and then, a minute or two later, realise I've sent you somewhere completely different.

I went back to my plant-slaughter. These plants have thick, sharp-edged leaves nesting together to form square stems.* In the centre, between the leaves, they fill up with rainwater. And snails. And snail crap. Each leaf has two or three snails, that I had to prise off and throw into the grass; the mother has said: no snails to go in the garden waste bin. She's scared of them, apparently.

"When I was little," she explained, "when my mum was gardening and found snails, she'd spread them out on the garden path for the birds to eat."

"And?"

"Um, that's all."

I was more scared of the car-driver coming back from the goose-chase I'd sent him on. I buried myself in the cutting, chopping and snail-throwing, and hid behind the garden bin until after he'd gone past again the other way.

* they're square plants that look round. No, really, they do look round. Not square.**

** if you spotted the reference, buy yourself a chocolate bar.

23:55 Comments (4)

August 23rd, 2004. Media Priorities Are Not News

TOP STORY: Woman tries to run race, gets a bit tired

in other news: thousands dying in various global catastrophes. But you don't want to hear about that.

Frankly, I thought Paula Radcliffe was doomed from the start. The BBC were hyping her just a bit too much. I mean, they weren't running trailers for "Women's Marathon, Sunday afternoon"; they were running trailers for "PAULA RADCLIFFE, Sunday afternoon". With that much hype, something is bound to go wrong.

More importantly, though, I just don't care. It might be a personal tragedy for her, for her family, but it isn't a national one. It's sport, and sport really isn't important. It certainly doesn't merit Top Headline status.

Incidentally, I was talking to someone recently, who was telling me about a marathon-length walk he'd done around the Edinburgh area. If he'd missed out some of his breaks, it would have taken around six hours; an entirely-reasonable four miles per hour. "Lots of marathon fun-runners," I pointed out, "don't manage that sort of time." It would be an idea to enter, say, the London marathon, set off at a nice brisk walking pace, get an interesting walk round the Docklands and central London with drinks thrown in, and still manage to eventually overtake a lot of the weekend joggers who can't pace properly. Is there anything in their rules telling you that you can't walk? I'm tempted, almost, to try it myself.*

* cue laughter from the ex-boyfriend, who always had to keep stopping and waiting for me to catch up if we ever walked anywhere hilly.

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August 20th, 2004. Green ink

Today, let's dip into the Grimsby Telegraph letters pages. The GT always seems to have trouble filling its pages with news, and resorts to page upon page of archive material, "readers' pictures", new-born babies and (when they're really desperate) white space. Readers' Letters are a handy space-filler, so on many days get a full double-page spread. Firstly, a few days ago there was a nasty accident on the local motorway, and one reader noticed that - shock, horror! - it happened just by a speed camera warning sign:

[H]ow did such an accident happen? Was there something a little more sinister at work here. Something such as a mobile speed camera causing sudden and erratic braking, forcing another driver to swerve equally erratically? ... In my opinion, this is a prime example of the fact that speed cameras do not save lives and do not prevent accidents.

Those sinister speed cameras are out causing road crashes! Gosh! The writer seems to have problems with the difference between fact and opinion. That's not very surprising, though, because he's a local BNP activist.* Has the Nasty Party started using speed cameras in its local election campaigns yet? Maybe this letter is an omen.

On a theme that's probably dear to the previous writer's heart:

I have for some now suspected that somewhere lies a covert government agenda powering the disregard of controlled immigration, with the compliance of the main opposition parties ... We are losing our unique identity into a morass of multi-non-cultural gruel that will diminish and finially extinguish the spark of life that gives every nation on earth the right to exist with its own individual identity.

Never let it be said that right-wing nutters can't write purple prose when they want to. Clearly, there must be a covert agenda at work. Given that politicial parties hardly ever agree to common policies in public, they must be doing it in secret. They're conspiring against good old British fair-play, you know.

I'm worried, on two counts. Firstly, is this representative of the letters the paper receives, or do they deliberately publish the ones from far-right readers? Given that they published my letter, I'm inclined to think it's the former. Secondly, are these all lone attempts at right-wing fomenting, or are the local Nasty Party clique getting together and trying to sway the tone of the letters page?** As I can't really mount my own covert operation to infiltrate Grimsby And Scunthorpe Newspapers Ltd, we'll probably never know. Potential moles, feel free to get in touch.

* It didn't say so in the letter, but I recognised the name. He wrote to the paper recently pushing his party's usual 'patriotic' myths; I wrote in in response pointing out that he was rather short on genuine history.

** See, they're making me paranoid now.

23:26 Comments (2)

August 18th, 2004. Queues

Maybe this town has more unemployed people than most, or maybe it's just too small, but the New! Improved! Job Centre never seems to be able to cope with the number of people it has to process. Every time I go in, there are no seats, and there's nowhere to stand without getting in everyone else's way. There's always a long, long queue at the reception desk, and a bunch of chavs stood outside the door, having a fag.

The computers usually aren't working, either. This week, they were even more broken than normal. Nobody seemed to know when anyone's appointments were, and nobody bothered to tell the dole-scum customers what was going on, either.

One of the chavs was agitated. She couldn't get any money, because the bank wouldn't send her a new PIN. She couldn't get her benefit in cash, because it had already been sent to her bank. I know all this, because she kept telling the reception staff, very loudly, with emphasis on random words. "I've GOT no MONEY. HOW would YOU like it. YOU don't know what it FEELS like. They SAID they'd send me a PIN number but they 'AVEN'T and it's been FOUR DAYS. HOW would you LIKE to go without FOOD for four DAYS? HE said I wanted it for DRUGS but I don't want DRUGS I just WANT FOOOOOD. I have to live on the STREETS you know." She looked like your average healthy chav, but some of the people she was with did look like your stereotypical heroin junky, all bones and spots and things that could be needle-marks. Everybody else stood still, staring into space, waiting for their name to be called. A teenager fed her baby. She burped it, and it coughed up milk all down her tracksuit and over the floor.

23:22 Comments (3)

August 16th, 2004. Weather

Yes, it's so British of me to talk about the weather.

Horrible, hot, muggy, close. In town, I started to get a headache from it all. Coming back on the bus, I felt awful, giddy and ill, had to get off early before I was sick. Mild heatstroke, possibly. I've no idea what the symptoms of heatstroke actually are.

The weather tonight is the same, but there are thick, dark clouds overhead. It feels as though it's an atom's width from a thunderstorm, but it isn't quite there. I want to fly up into the sky and push the raindrops together, to give us a lovely, cooling storm.

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August 14th, 2004. Go and buy this record

The new Aberfeldy single, Heliopolis By Night, is apparently out on Monday. Go and get hold of a copy, because it's really rather good. Trust me: I've heard them play it live. The Guardian like it, too; it was their single of the week.* And obscure bands deserve to have their records bought, not downloaded.

Update, 16th August: if you get the 7" vinyl edition, it comes with a free paper cut-out-and-make Aberfeldy spaceship! Woo!

* complete with stamp-sized press photo of the band hanging about by the Water of Leith, underneath the Belford Road bridge.

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August 12th, 2004. Seafront

I was going to relate all the things that me and W talked about, the other day. I've just realised that I don't remember any of it, because I didn't take any notes at the time. All I can remember is the general feeling of the day.

It was last week; W came up to visit, because he had some time in-between jobs and because it's his birthday round about now. We met up for lunch, and then wandered through town and down to the beach, stopping in all the parks on the way. We talked about Crimewatch, my future career, and anything we could remember to talk about.

It was a blisteringly-hot August day, with the sun beating down. We stopped for a rest by the pond in Sidney Park, surrounded by dog-walkers. We stopped for a rest again when we reached the sea wall; a cool breeze was blowing across the mud-flats, the dunes and the terraced houses across the railway line. The tide was out, and a horde of shipping was waiting out by the lighthouse, to be piloted up-river. This is one of those scenes that I tried to photograph a lot, when I was younger, and ended up with hardly any satisfactory shots. It's impossible to take a photo which shows you how wide and empty the estuary is, and also shows you the busy shipping massing. In fact, it's hard to make the ships appear at all; they turn into blobs on the horizon.

We wandered down the Prom, between all the tourists from Sheffield, Barnsley and Wath. The fairground rides on the beach were doing a roaring trade, and donkeys and ponies walked slowly along the tide-line.

"Have you noticed how many people round here have tattoos?" said W. "Especially on the back of their necks? It looks scary. It makes them all look like football hooligans."

"Are there really more tattoos here than London, say?" I said, doubtfully. It wasn't something I'd been noticing. We wandered along the Boating Lake, paid rip-off prices for cold drinks, and watched theme park rides go up and down, sitting on the roadside verge, until our bus came.

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August 10th, 2004. Did you threaten to overrule him?

Opposition leader Michael Howard has announced that a hypothetical Tory government would free the police from political correctness and bureaucracy, build more prisons, and end early-release schemes. Top Of The Stairs News Agency hypothesised a senior police officer to speak to.

"This is exactly the sort of thing we need," said imaginary Chief Constable Roger Rolledup-Trouserleg. "David Blunkett's 'let's bang up all the shifty-looking people' policies clearly don't work. Neither did the previous policies of Jack Straw, or the failed Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard. The only thing to stop this relentless crime wave is the fresh, new, innovative 'let's bang up as many people as possible' policy of opposition leader Michael Howard (no relation, honest)."

"The policeman of today is hamstrung by political correctness," he continued, unstoppably. "Some of these Labour do-gooders try to push for foreign concepts such as 'equality' and 'open-mindedness'. What this country's police really need is freedom to investigate important crimes such as Driving A Nice Car Whilst Black, or Looking A Bit Foreign. Making the police record exactly which niggers evil criminals they have searched will completely block the average bobby-on-the-beat's freedom to hassle any black or Asian man that he thinks might have given him a bit of a funny look. The police isn't racist, you know - I enjoy an Indian meal just as much as anyone - but we do have to make sure these darkies know their place."

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August 9th, 2004. My Neighbour Is (Still) A Twat

The annoying neighbour still isn't talking to us at all after I told him he's a moron. Not only does he ignore us if we say hello to him, but he's taken to completely avoiding me at bus stops. Several times it's happened, now, in various places around town. As I walk up to the bus stop, I see him waiting, and as soon as he sees me he gets up and quickly slinks away. Maybe calling him a moron made him so angry that he doesn't think he can stand being near me; or maybe he's just worried that I might ask him how his cunning masterplan to sue BT is going.

UPDATE, August 10th: mildly intrigued at the neighbour's plan to get wayleave money out of BT for the cables crossing his garden, I searched round and found that there are lawyers all over the country who specialise in this type of business. You can, indeed, get 60p per metre per year for underground cables, or £7 per year for a pole. However, if the pole isn't on your land, and the cables are just strung across it, then you seem to be entitled to absolutely nothing at all. Mwahahah.

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August 6th, 2004. Punctuation

On the subject of Big Brother: the TV listings often say something along the following lines:

10:00 Big Brother
Latest action from the house

Now, I'm sure that there are some quote marks missing there. I can't decide, though, how many there should be, or where they should go.

Latest "action" from the house
Latest action from the "house"
"Latest action" from the house
Latest action "from" the house

In fact, I think you can put any combination of pairs of quote marks in, and it makes it better than the original.

Latest action from "the" house
"Latest" action from the "house"
"Latest action" "from" the "house"

19:10 Comments (1)

August 4th, 2004. Froth

I haven't mentioned Big Brother much this year; but, yes, I've been watching every day, partly because I've got hardly anything else to do at the moment. Yes, yes, my life is going nowhere, etc.

I haven't been mentioning it because a) if you don't watch it, you don't care b) if you do, you already know everything I'd want to say anyway. One thing, I did notice, though: what Michelle did, when she was evicted last week. Bear in mind that she's already said she'd like to be a 'glamour model'. After zooming through her post-eviction interview with a steely eyed glare and constant "No comment - now where's my tabloid money?" who does she go and sell herself too? Why, the Daily Express group, well-known purveyors of pornographic telly to the masses.* I give her two months, at most, before she's presenting on the Fantasy Channel.

* The Express's owner has, I believe, sold all the porn mags that gave him his start in the publishing industry, and doesn't like being described as a pornographer any more. He still gets plenty of money from broadcasting it, though.

23:19 Comments (3)

August 2nd, 2004. Back onto politics

According to this article, the Nasty Party is being hit by leadership bids and internal strife. Moreover, their money situation is looking a little shaky, and they will be due a big fine if they don't get their accounts in.

What it reminded me of, though, was a series of posts I wrote last year about religious cults, and their common linking thread: paranoia. The part that caught my eye was the quote in the article that said: it's not their fault their accounts are late. The Electoral Commission's accounting regulations were put there deliberately to catch the Nasty Party out. Whether they believe their own propaganda or not, it's rather telling: the rest of the world is out to get them.*

You could argue quite successfully, in fact, that they come under the heading of "religious cult" rather than "political party". For one thing, it's hard to argue rationally with people who believe that they are they only group who really understand the world, and are out to save it.

Then again, you could probably argue that all political parties are rather like religious cults, and not just the fascist extremists. Certainly, the Prime Minister seems to think that he's on the way to becoming one with the Godhead.

* To be fair, quite a lot of the world is out to get them - because of all the violent interracial hatred that their members often try to stir up.

23:21 Comments (3)

August 1st, 2004. As Time Goes By

Now we're into August, it's two months since I've moved house. Two months I've spent mooching around, trying to avoid my mother. Two months I've spent taking surreptitious afternoon naps. My unpacking still isn't finished, there are stacks of things all over my bedroom floor, and I haven't even finished redesigning this site yet.* I've barely started on the website I was going to do for my dad, and I haven't done any of the many writing projects I was going to make a start on.

So, all in all, it's been an unproductive time. The days have been sliding together, and soon autumn will be coming along. I need to make some summer resolutions, and start to make a start with things. Today, I have sorted out two whole bookshelves. I still have books all over the bedroom floor, books all over my bed, and hundreds of other things that need doing. However, today, two whole bookshelves. At least it's a start.

* although my excuse for not doing that has nearly gone, because there's a new monitor arriving soon. In the next few days, even. My computer desktop won't have a horrible brown tinge any more!

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