21
April 06
[this week index]
Alexandra
I have a rule: never venture near the middle of people or countries; both lead to unnecessary unpleasantries. On my recent holiday however I pooh-poohed my own rule as only the sagacious do and toddled up the inner thighs of England to our halfway resting place of Oakham. Oakham is in either Lincolnshire or Leicestershire, I do not know which and I do not much care. If I were to choose between them it would be Lincolnshire. For the biscuits. Red Leicester tastes of dachshunds.
Oakham is placed near a man-made lake (I don’t know which man. Possibly Terry Nutkins) and has in its market place some stocks with five holes (I intend to own stocks one day. I shall place them in the garden next to the delphiniums) and an Oxfam where I purchased tomes from ladies whose faces were folded over and over like yellowed handkerchiefs and who liked to chew over corpses.
Old Lady 1: There’s nothing like a good murder is there?
Old Lady 2: I don’t do anything else.
The following dawn we stuffed our knapsacks with rats and headed north. We passed Sherwood Forest, stopped at a Little Chef (the prices have gone up again) and four hours later were in Scarborough. We stayed in The Grand. It no longer is and stares out to sea with blind-eyed pomposity. It was once a Victorian beauty but faded when the British discovered skin cancer on the continent and was taken over by Butlins in the late seventies. It now belongs to another chain but retains the flatulence of cabbages and the indolence of aged entertainers. We saw several of the latter that evening. First up was a poor chap singing swing hits to a bad backing and falling on his extensive face at the big notes. He mildly amused but then the evening swung round like the ma in Psycho when the warm-up man for Yorkshire TV came on. He made jokes that would have people sacked from the BNP without the slightest whiff of irony. And the old people loved it. They cackled, whooped and hollered like the nineties had never happened. It was like walking into a black mass when you were just after a sherbert fountain. We slunk out and explored endless corridors and danced in an abandoned ballroom straight from The Shining with the taste of dust in our gullets.
Whitby was next on our northern odyssey. Whitby is where Dracula’s casket landed and is now home to a biannual goth weekend where two thousand funereal friends arrive to hear bands and wear hooped hosiery.
“They are no trouble at all,” said the Whitby Museum curator of the goths before, sensing a student of the macabre, taking me to see a necklace which featured a tiny gold rendering of a hanging man encased in glass complete with a piece of rope from his plummet. It would be worn by an enemy of the hanged man as a reminder of his revenge. I was also intrigued by the ponytail of a Chinese pirate sliced off prior to death by a British governor as a double whammy – it was explained to me by the curator (who also had a tiny tail at the nape of his neck but no other discernible hair) that Buddha took men to heaven by catching hold of their ponytails when they die.
But by far my favourite, my word yes, was Whitby’s Hand of Glory. A grey and severed hand in a cabinet will always cheer a lady up but attach to it a legend and you are laughing like Bowie’s gnome. According to said legend, the hand of glory is the hand of a hanged felon cut off while still swinging and then pickled. The body fat from the unfortunate chap is boiled down to tallow to make a candle that is wedged between the dead digits and lit by burglars as a charm to stop the inhabitants of a house from waking. The one in Whitby is supposed to be the only one found. Of course it could just be from when some chap had a nasty slip with a cleaver and kept it in the shed for the grandchildren.
Our return journey took us right through the middle of the moors. The Yorkshire Moors: a pubic landscape of mounds and gashes topped with merkins of gorse and heather tending towards the darkest of reds as if a million Picts were lurking in the earth, waiting for the chance to take England. Of course it actually holds close to itself much smaller secrets.
I ate bhajis and salad overlooking the Hole of Horcum; a great gorge that more than lived up to its fabulous name. There was a slug in my lettuce but, as any whore knows, a bit of salt would sort that out in no time.
Seagulls named – Heidegger and Herodotus.
Unlikely seagull knowledge gleaned – Having watched Heidegger, Herodotus and friends for over an hour I now know that seagulls pair off into a food catching team of one fat and one lean. The chubby one (Heidegger) pounds away on the earth with his feet, setting up a ferocious rhythm until a worm pops up thinking that it is raining. “Ha ha,” says Big Boy and sucks the invertebrate up while the thin chap (Herodotus) lurks and chases off any marauders. The thin ones sometimes get a worm but they have to watch their weight. There were many identical pairs doing the same thing. We have much to learn.
Books Read: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susannah Clarke, A Maggot – John Fowles, The Short Stories – Ian McEwan, The Republic of Love – Carol Shields.
Album Cautiously Approached: Ringleader of the Tormentors
Best Food: A vegetable Balti in a copper bucket.
Best Newspaper Headline: “Tragic Death of Fit Man”
Best Oxfam purchase: The Mammoth Book of True Crime – Colin Wilson. Also My Scrapbook by Tubbs: A Local Book for Local People – The League of Gentlemen;
Best Tea Shop by far: Sherlock’s in Whitby. Beautiful cakes on tiers, candles, red walls, low ceilings, Conan Doyle memorabilia, an apothecary’s cabinet...
Best Buy: A blow up pirate.
earlier posts
20 April 06 Interfrastically
digestible musings of doom...
11
April 06 Escalator
gustovator Wednesday-waiter...
10 April 06 I
can see my carpet! It's beige!...
24 March 06 LOOK
LOOK dancing Swampeyes...
2 March 06 Pummelled
by a novice for four pounds...
2 March 06 Cinnamony
imbecilic Mappy Pong arcadia...
2 March 06 Get
him real drunk, make him dance...
12 February 06 But what is the value of x?...
24 January 06
Drunkenness,
vomiting and 69...
15 January 06 Candlesticks
buffed, underlings nobbed...
10 January 06 Fencing,
pipe-smoking and procrastination...
10 January 06 High-pitched,
mid-volume screaming...
4 January 06 Awkward
midriff, shaven headed and dandy...
20 December 05
All
I want for Christmas, says Heidi, is...
16 December 05 Officials,
pleasantries, obituaries...
9 December 05 Shitdisco,
Depravikazi and too much cheese...
8 December 05 Happy
face or sad face? Damn variety!...
30 November 05
Stars
and sequins twinkling as you tinkle...
29 November 05 A
little Poe and an alarmingly fabulous time...
22 November 05 Geoffrey
and Geoffrey's boyfriend...
21 November 05 Vaginatron,
Test-Icicles and contraction...
2 November 05 'What
kind of high school stereotype are you?'...
26 October 05
Lengthy
ignorance of brief garden appeased...
26 October 05 Jesus.
Forced change is a right fucker...
26 October 05 The
systematic pilfering of my wardrobe items...
26 October 05 Unfortunate
breakage, pure filth and Buffy...
12 October 05 "OI'LL
KICK YER COHNT IN", etcetera...
10 October 05 Repopulated
by a bunch of unpalatable goths...
5 October 05 I
didn't know eyes could bear such sadness...
4 October 05 Nostalgic-optimistic-romantic
tragical-comical-...
27 September 05
Peach
schnapps/morse code machine...
19 September 05
Extra-head
paranoic engine drives fallacy...
14 September 05
Buggery
in oil, magician's box, foreign gent...
12 September 05
Soul-sapping
image capture, DJ Scotch Egg...
1 September 05 'Rhinoceros',
Camber Sands, vain hope...
26 August 05
Valpolicella-quaffing
Satanic Barbie, scones...
22 August 05 Fine
lines, icy bruises, Chris Isaak, absence...
18 August 05 Bruises
of a sick canary hue. And Soft Cell...
14 August 05 Bile,
breakdancing, barely controlled rage...
6 August 05 Moss-moist
eyes, Roman Holiday and ringing...
27 July 05 Begging,
borrowing and stealing. And gowns...
22 July 05 Tris's
"You're Generally Indie" quiz result...
21 July 05 Test-Icicles,
overeducated rightwing baboon...
20 July 05 Buffalo
66, red shoes and a new frock...
12 July 05 Diversions,
hair conditioner, pots of tea and idiots...
1 July 05 Angela
Carter, exotic fruits and pink person-stripes...
29 June 05 Dresden
Dolls, Tori Amos, enticing flatmate...
28 June 05 Welly
welding, ghost trains, vaginas, bitching...
16 June 05 Posh
biscuits; the courting potential of the library...
15 June 05 Martin
Amis, chicklit and money problems...
8 June 05 Rabies
jabs and the History of Western Philosophy...