Nov 7 2012

And now, a post Halloween story by Nunmoreblack-a loyal reader

This so beats spam about viagra…Thank you Nunmoreblack-you have made me very happy. And I will soon be seen wandering around in fields near Preston :-)

 

LANCASTER, JACK AND ME.

The thing is, I’ve moved from west London and I live in this place called Lancaster. It’s way, way up north. It’s a city, only small. I work for Dave. Dave’s a builder. He hasn’t got no City and Guilds or nothing, but he’s got ladders so that’s alright.
A while ago we did this job for this old bloke. Jack. He’s the oldest person I’ve ever known. Dave says he’s about ninety five. I like him. Dave says Jack makes up stories. Tells fibs. Whoppers.
While we was working there Jack did tell us stuff. About when he was young and that.I used to listen to him. Once he told us about being in some war. I think he called it the Second World War. That or some other one. That was when he told us about the ammunition.
See, in Lancaster, there’s this little hill. And on it is a castle. Or a jail. It don’t matter ’cause soon it’s gonna be a Primark. At last. I need knew trainers. Anyway, during this war, they melted down the cannons from the castle to make ammunition. Jack told us that.
Also, he says he got something called Victoria’s Cross. I don’t know what that is. But I didn’t tell him. He says ho got it for something he did in Tunisia. Or somewhere like Tunisia.
Later, in the pub, I asked Scarface Ray what Victoria’s Croass is. He said it’s a medal of some sort. Made by some queen. I pulled my phone out and looked it up. I found Jacks regiment, the Duke of Lancaster, and they’ve got what they call an Honours List. Only Jack isn’t on it. Fibber. I don’t mind though.

 

One time Jack tells me and Dave about this crime that happened. It was in a place called Dalton Square. This fella goes nuts and kills his missis. Then he kills the maid. Then he chops them both up in the bath. It was 1935.
There was this song that everyone sang in the pubs about it. Jack says it was him that made it up and wrote it on the bog wall, in a pub called the Square. He sang it. I didn’t know it. Something about red stains on the carpet. Jack says the tune for it came from “Red Sails in the Sunset”. I don’t know that niether. But I think it might have been Coldplay.
Later, in the pub, I asked Scarface Ray about it. He says he thinks he heard about it at school. So I pulled out my phone and looked it up. The fellas name was Doctor Buck Ruxton. He was from India. Or somewhere like India. He gets jealous ’cause his missis might be playing away. She’s called Isabella. So he strangles her. Then he strangles the maid. She’s called Mary Jane Rogerson. Then he chops them up, wraps the bits of bodies in newspapers, and dumps them in Dumfriesshire. That’s in Scotland. Or Ireland. Same thing.
Antway, he screws up. One of the papers is a special edition of the Sunday Graphic. You could only get it in Lancaster. Plod traces it straight to him. It says on my phone that this started modern police forensics. I thought that was CSI.
In the bit I read, it says they took the bath out of Bucks house, took to somewhere called Preston, and put it in a field so police horses could use it. Northern horses must be very small. I’m only joking. I think they were really talking about his hot tub.

Another time Jack told us about this lady called Ella. She sang on the stage. Jack knew her. It was 1952 and she snuffs it during a show. Jack says he was there. He says it was in some theatre called the Grand. At the time Jack was a member of something called the Footlights. I don’t know what that is.
Later, in the pub, I asked Scarface Ray about it. He dosen’t know what I’m talking about. So we both pulled our phones out and looked it up. The Grand is the third oldest theatre ever. Some people formed the Footlights in the 1920′s to support it. They bought the whole place in 1951 to save it from getting knocked down. They’re still around. I might go and look at it. I’m not gonna see a show or nothing. Don’t be silly. I told Scarface Ray.

Scarface Ray said he might go too.
The ladys’ name was Ella Shields. She was from Baltimore. That’s in America. Or somewhere like America. Early on, she can’t make a living over there ’cause of something called the ‘Depression’. I think my brother had that once.
So what happened was, she came over here and got famous. She was bigger than Adelle and everything. She played the very first night at something called the London Palladium. I’ve never been there. I think it might be near McDonalds. Also, in the 1940′s, she did the Royal Command Performance. That’s a big show for the King. I think Ant and Dec presented it.
In her act, she dressed up as a fella and sang a song called “Burlington Bertie from Bow”. Bow’s in the shitty east. At the end of the song she collapsed, and died later. She was seventy two. The bit I read said a nice thing about her so I read it out to Scarface Ray. I said, Ella showed great courage in the face of adversity, and her fortitude was an inspiration to women everywhere. Scarface Ray said, was she a dyke.

 

This week, me and Dave have been working on this womans house. She’s alright but keeps talking about her son which is boring. He’s in the army. And Afghanistan. There’s a picture of him on the sideboard. He’s a right ugly sod. I didn’t say that to her though.

Next to his picture is stuff about his regiment. He’s in the Duke of Lancaster regiment. Same as Jack. Except here it says the regiment was formed in 1970. That can’t be right. So I pulled my phone out and looked it up.
Before it was the Duke of Lancaster regiment it was the Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire). They’ve got an Honours List too On it is Jack. I wrote this down ’cause I knew I wouldn’t remember the letters.

CAPTAIN JOHN(JACK) STOKELY CRAGG. VICTORIA CROSS. 10th MARCH 1943. GUIRIAT EL ATACH, TUNISIA.

I told Dave I was gonna go and see Jack and tell him he wasn’t a fibber.Dave said I might not get a response ’cause Jack died a couple of weeks back. I felt bad about it.
Later, in the pub, I told Scarface Ray. Scarface Ray said I shouldn’t feel bad about it ’cause Jack was well old. Scarface Ray said the only fibber was Wiki. He’s quite clever sometimes. Anyway, I got myself another lager and sat on my own to think about it for a bit.

And here I am.

See, it’s about this. Since I met Jack I look at things differently. I see things around me more. Sometimes, if I’m bored, I just wander about. If I see something I like,like a big building, or a street or something, I pull my phone out and look it up. There’s nearly always a story about it. That’s ’cause Lancaster is a city full of stories. Jack told me that. I think I’ll stay in Lancaster.
Next week, me and Scarface Ray are going to the library. I’ve never been to one before. Scarface Ray went to one once. The internet was down so he left. Obviously. A library is the best place to look things up. Jack told me that too. He said I should go there. So I will.
So it don’t matter that I didn’t tell Jack that he wasn’t a fibber. Or that I didn’t tell him I found the stuff about Victoria’s Cross. All that matters is that I don’t forget all the stuff that Jack told me. So I wont.
I feel better now. I’m gonna get myself another lager and tell Scarface Ray about it. Tomorrow I’m gonna tell Dave.

Footnote.

For Ella.
Ella Shields (Ella Catherine Buscher)was touring the UK for the last time and her show in Lancaster was the last show of the tour. I am not certain that it took place at the Grand, but I cannot think where else it could have been, given that she was such a huge star. I stand to be corrected.
She opened with her trademark ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’ but instead of singing “I’m Burlington….”, she sang “I WAS Burlington….”. She finished the song, collapsed, and died three days later in Lancaster without regaining consciousness. Her body was taken to Golders Green crematorium where there is a plaque dedicated to her. She remains relatively unknown in her native United States.
A popular myth at the time suggested that the line, “The Prince of Wales Brother, Along with some Other”, in Burlington Bertie, referred to Jack the Ripper……

For Buck Ruxton.
Red stains on the carpet, Red stains on the knife, Oh doctor Buck Ruxton, You murdered your wife.
Then Mary she saw you, You thought she would tell, So doctor Buck Ruxton, You killed her as well.
I believe the bath is still in a field near Preston where it is used as a trough for police horses.
Note. Horses to NOT bathe in hot tubs whilst sipping Martinis.


Nov 1 2012

Halloween, Samhain and murder by the state.

In a place where hundreds died in agony, superstition and fear, a nylon witch in a pound shop triangular hat is pretending to sweep away leaves in the gift shop.

In a place where hundreds and thousands saw their family members enter in chains and never saw them again, a cartoon cardboard skeleton represents fear and terror. The skeleton is giving a jolly rictus grin.

We are not allowed to take photographs here despite it not being a prison anymore.

I take photos of the gift shop. No one has ever been slung in jail for hovering a mobile phone over a £1.99 Celtic ring. Apart from possibly in America somewhere.

Tonight is Halloween.

I love Halloween. I love the sound of the words Samhain and Allhallows Eve, beautiful mysterious antiquated words that should not exist in a time of Argos, Amazon and Haribo.

 

To really portray the horror of this castle, where many innocent people died in terror in front of their family, the tour guide of this special Halloween night time tour pretends he is an undertaker.

Undertakers are scary.

 

He is a jocular undertaker and I think that no one anywhere has ever wanted a jocular undertaker. But I am a misery and on this darkened sudden winter eve, I wanted to hear in hushed tones about spectral icy fingers on prison wardens’ backs, not genial laughter at a girl in a sexy pussycat outfit.

‘Leave spookiness alone and stop making it sexy and silly and with cheap flattering accessories!’  I want to shout.

Because I want to close my eyes in a silent ancient terrible place and think of what has happened here at a time of year when worlds and spirits are meant to collide but instead a girl with suspenders and a ‘sexy’ bloodstained nurses uniform is giggling with the smirking cat.

The dead are quite justified in staying dead. Unless they are slightly lecherous.

The fake undertaker walks us through shadowed toppling history and sometimes someone with green hair jumps out and shouts ‘BOO!’ just as we were cheerily admiring real scolds bridles and ankle chains.

The fake undertaker does try to portray the horror of a not so recent past and we are to be fair here at an event where ‘prizes are awarded to the best costume. ’

I did not read the small print.

But I find it a queasy amalgamation of light laughter and miserable deaths.

We hear gut wrenching horrendous history about people, real people who were hung a mere step away and it is hard to then suddenly do a LOL at a light joke.

At a place where witches who probably weren’t witches died a hideous death.

And where people like us stood to watch.

Will Auschwitz have tour guides with jocular banter once enough time has past?

As it was Halloween and as Lancaster Castle is famous for it’s supposed supernatural activities, I was expecting the emphasis on the many many statements of people who have stated they have seen or felt ghosts here over the centuries.

But a sheet over the head is more terrifying than centuries of torture.

And legends mean nothing anymore.

But we will still stand to watch.


Oct 20 2012

Romance is Dead

It is about six years ago. I have just moved to Lancaster. I am in my twenties, have rented a tiny prettily shambolic terraced house with a dodgy boiler but a walled garden.

I set out to explore my new territory. I was living in Bath and was thus residing in rarified glorified surroundings. Every time I went for a walk, I saw picture postcard beauty, calendar shots and soaring white wedding cake architecture. And tourists.

I was living in a city which did not feel like mine. The rent was impossible without help from family and few seemed to live in Bath without help from family, whether alive or deceased.

A leek from the farmers market would come to such a price that I would back away nervously and pretend I had been mugged and thus had no purse. I loved it very much but I could not continue to live in a theatre and did not have the funds to do so, only the debt.

My boyfriend lived in Fleetwood in a flat big enough for two but after an embarrassing experience involving looking for feta cheese in the town, I did not want to live there.

Lancaster looked nice on the Internet so I gave in my notice at work in Bath and trusted my life in the safe hands of Google Images.

In our new snug (tiny) terrace, which cost less than a leek in Bath per month to rent, when my boyfriend went to work, I was suddenly alone to explore my new city.

I wandered along the road to the quay-neglected and empty where toppling red brick factories surrounded me, smashed windows and such urban dereliction that I nearly wept for sheer delight.

And on a parched stretch of weedy wasteland, there was a boat. A tired old fishing boat, paint shattered, broken yet jaunty and with its name still written on the side. I phoned my boyfriend to tell him, forgetting he was working and he could not understand my excitement.

I saw the boat before the river and at first thought it was parched and dry on an inland isle.

Then I saw the huge river Lune over the sudden drop. There is something so magical about seeing something unexpected and unknown-every road in Bath was worn-out by semi-empty tourist busses.

There was no magic left, even despite the beauty it was a worn out to well traversed and photographed husk, a dry fake representation of a fake past where nothing apart from Georgian elegance had apparently ever existed.

A parched wreck of a fishing boat would not have existed in a city like Bath; it would have been cleared for a new All Saints shop.

I was somewhere different.

And I loved my little fishing boat.

I walked past it every day. I became pregnant and then walked past it with my baby every day.

There was something about the incongruity of a pretty major city with two universities, three theatres but yet still yet a few minutes from town, the dry weedy Strongbow can bedecked dock of a little boat, crumbling gently against the shadow of the old factories, their old windows disintegrating gently in the wind.

I saw a local performer, Rat Bit Kit’s accordion punk video performed in the wired off area of wasteland around my little boat and even though in some strange way it felt like my little secret, it made it more romantic and anarchic.

The little boat dilapidated over the years but you could still see her name.

When the planning permissions about the old factory buildings were plastered up, it meant little.

It’s a recession. Nothing will happen to change this Ozymandius walk to the city where the great red buildings crumble and slightly shatter, where a fox or feral cat might be seen skating from one behemoth industrial building to the next.

But now suddenly it has gone.

Were this Bath,  this would have been Heritage. But Heritage does not exit unless women in multi tiered gowns have gently supped tea in it- not the working class so now the bulldozers have been removing real peoples lifetimes by the scoop.

I saw them coming towards my little fishing boat. It was on the other side of the road, that tiny strip of wasteland between the road and the river. No good for building, no good for anything.

They kept coming closer but my little boat was solid and sensible just like it always has been, a barometer for my life, no matter how I’m feeling, that little boat has always been there, this little jetty of jetty of romance and mystery.

I walked past it every day, every day and thought about it and how it came to be here. I walked past it when I was unemployed and bored, pregnant and scared, then with my little boy.

I thought about who owned it and when, where it used to go and how it came to be here-so high up on concrete it could only ever hear the river, its bright blue paint disintegrating.

The diggers came nearer but I watched carefully and they didn’t travel far each time.

My boat was still there safe on its concrete tide.

They came closer and then it was gone.

It had evaporated. I visually searched the huge piles of dirt left where it had sat and concluded that someone had rescued it. There was no sign, not a single shattered weather-beaten blue board to show that a little blue fishing skip had once sat here, so close to the river it had not felt in so long.

Someone has saved it.

I talk to a friendly man who is working on the site.

‘It’s been smashed into smithereens,’ he says and smiles at my son.

You can never make a new beginning.

 


Oct 18 2012

Blog North Awards-Deaf Institute, Manchester

 

I am only here due to an epiphany in the second quarter final of The Great British Bakeoff.

When I found out I was shortlisted for The Blog North Awards and had an email asking me to attend the awards, I was initially suspicious, then nervous then a fleeting thing called glee flashed quickly across my narrow slightly smelling of damp horizons before deciding that A, I won’t be going to win anyway with my sporadically updated three year old WordPress themed ramblings about pizza and ghosts, B, I can’t go anyway because my boyfriend is working late, there is the existence of the Bad Toddler and even if I found a babysitter, no-one in RL would want to travel to a blog awards as it seems akin to inviting someone from work to a Minecraft convention.

And no way can I go on my own to Manchester as everytime I attempt to catch the train to Morecambe I seem to end up on an Icelandic trawler.

Oh and C- I actually look at the other blogs and feel slightly guilty to be lumped in with them like a tramp in an ill-fitting coat smelling slightly of piss sidling up against elegant cashmere (i.e. capability to use different fonts and a working knowledge of English language)

 

Anyway, it was the second quarter final of the Great British Bakeoff. I was having a guilty mumsy crush on a 21 year old nice young man with sensible knitwear, big glasses and tempting foccaccia whilst spooning slightly stale pickled onion Monster Munch into my mouth.

I was becoming Emotionally Involved in a television programme about baking and I may have even shouted at a judge at one point. I suddenly realized the actuality of a quarterfinal meaning closing to an end and thus nothing to look forward to in the week. I actually felt a chill of self-hatred and terror-the realization of becoming everything I hate.

 

I decide to go to the blog awards. On My Own.

 

There is a babysitter and a very good friend who knows of the worst of the Bad Toddlers proclivities and I mean to warn her of more but then instead of trying to make myself look less of an obvious blogger by using hair straighteners and stuff, I spend two hours trying to unscrew the battery compartment of an Early Learning Centre cash register. It then does not work.

There is a special place in hell for those who give away broken stuff to charity shops.

The issue of the overpriced £4.49 cash register has occupied my mind overmuch and then there is suddenly a babysitter and I am barefoot, underdressed and annoyed.

 

I am dyspraxic and fearful. My boyfriend has patiently shown me how to use Google Maps several times to get to the Deaf Institute-I still fuck up and walk forwards and backwards in a sweaty panic outside Manchester Oxford Road in my one pound charity shop coat whilst mumbling and confused. The comparison with option C in the opening paragraph is startling and worryingly relevant here.

 

The Deaf Institute I have imagined in my head to be an actual deaf institute and thus a draughty hall with plastic chairs. I was not expecting chandeliers and cocktails. And people. Too many people.

I am nervous and turn to a woman by my side and cheerily say that I was expecting a crappy old back room in a pub and then find out she is tweeting the event for Blog North. I feel a slightly rude faux paux may have been committed by me and resolve not to speak again. She is very lovely though.

I had been invited to speak at the event and declined as the thought of speaking to more than two people panics me. I did think that it would be other nervous socially unacceptable people clutching a sweaty piece of A4 and muttering miserably into their microphone in front of a silent awkward market clothed audience of several so at least I would not look quite so bad but I still declined as I would be even more nervous and neurotic than them.

And in a triumph of confidence, I can happily state that my decision to say no and be pitifully insecure was the best decision of my life. The other bloggers readings were amazing. Annoyingly amazing.

Hello, Amy, pretty girl in black with the wide smile and casual eloquence- I don’t read many blogs due to work, the death of my computer and the Bad Toddlers behaviour and subsequent crashing out fully dressed in bed covered in Wotsit dust at 9pm. Thus I was not expecting a confident and humorous account of being forced to wear swimwear when not swimming as part of a crappy job in a sportswear shop

http://inksam.tumblr.com/

 

Then an unassuming guy comes to the stage and brings to life an average day in Huddersfield with such concise vivid yet unassuming detail I was able to quote him the next day. This is a big thing for me as my memory is such that we often go for weeks without washing up liquid. http://themostdifficultthingever.blogspot.co.uk/ He is the winner in his category and I am glad.

Then a man with the aura, confidence and hair of someone famous came and recited smart modern sonnets on modern literature. http://sonnetreviews.tumblr.com/ He is like a good feature from The Guardian come to sudden springy haired life and why Tim Dowling is paid to write and he isn’t makes me confused. And angry. Or maybe that’s the second large house red. I find out the judges include Stuart Maconie and Someone From The Guardian.

In the interval I go outside and conscious that I am on my own and slightly embarrassed by it as other blogs have entourages and I am a female on my own, I try to chat to a guy next to me. He smiles coldly and says he enjoys observing. I go back indoors.

A blogger has recorded the first year of a baby from Moss Side. http://herfirstyear.co.uk/ He speaks professionally, eloquently and compassionately and the family he has blogged about come to the stage-despite the multi tiered crowd, they are a natural family and act as such, the little girl grabs the microphone and beams. The couple on stage are united in the affection and concern of her and are thus are not embarrassed by the audiences attention.

I wish I was like that. James from The Great British Bakeoff was calm and jolly in front of millions. He made Turkish delight for the first time in front of the black blank glares of  television cameras.

I am too nervous to get up to go for a wee.

 

The awards are announced. The screen shots make me cold inside. There are graphics here. This is serious business. There are entourages cheering. I have a WordPress blog, which should be updated regularly, but as I write about vaguely Northern places of interest and since the Bad Toddler, I am terrified of public transport and am also utterly skint and too shattered to write so my blog is sinking in a mire of despondency, boredom and inertia. And so am I.

Apart from when James makes a good pastry on the Great British Bake Off and then blinks in a confused sexy way.

 

I am runner-up in my nominated category of ‘Best Neighborhood Blog’ and nearly fall off my chair-and this is nothing to do with the house red. I am an occasional stabber at an elderly desktop and this to me is blogging. The winner of this category is a blog that speaks passionately and informatively about Liverpool, a place both trendy and loved but sneered at and misunderstood-the Essex of the North

http://www.sevenstreets.com/

 

I get a bit lost on the way home and see a slight fight. I feel guilty for feeling a bit excited about it. Then I go home, sleep and am vacuuming by 8am.

But this time I am smiling.

Until I see that fucking cash register and reality beckons.

 

Thankyou to all at http://www.blognorthawards.com/ for a fantastic night. 


Sep 23 2012

Blackpool in September

‘I’ll turn Hitler on while you take the photo,’ my boyfriend smilingly says to some strangers.  They are delighted by his kind offer and pose in front of the Fuehrer, as his arms raise and an electronic voice shouts ‘nein, nein, nein.’

This is definitely the best fun it is possible to have in Blackpool.

We are at the Grundy Gallery, which is currently running the Crazyland Golf exhibition, a fully interactive crazy golf course designed by artists including The Chapman Brothers and David Shrigley. Saddam Hussein is also immortalized here, a statue in perpetual fall, arms held aloft in perpetual victory.

Outside and the drizzle of summer has disappeared and it is a bright blue mid September morning-not yet half eleven yet the pubs are busy and several men recumber outside topless and clutching their mid morning beers which is probably the second best fun it is possible to have in Blackpool.

Look behind you and you can see tattered filthy perennially closed curtains, empty industrial cooking fat containers and the general detritus of urban squalor.  In front of you lie modern sculptures, bleached sands, glittering sea and the far away blue hazy promise of mountains.

People are desperately trying to squeeze this last little swansong of summer dry, licking ice creams with furious intent and spending spending spending on kids carousel rides and lager. Everyone is smoking with cheekbone chiseling intensity.

Two creosote tanned middle-aged women sing an old fashioned sounding song gently to each other at a bus stop, three female generations of a Glaswegian family tumble off a bus and into the Metropole loudly looking forward to ‘an enormous Baileys in the sun’.

We too enter The Metropole, a grand old hotel, all ambitious curly wurly Victorian plastered glory through the high grand foyer, all collect your own cutlery and meals for under £3.95 in the conservatory bar area. An elderly couple pristinely ironed, smile at each other over a coffee. A punk is talking about stabbing someone at the bar. Oh Blackpool, I do have a soft spot for you.

The Victorian penny arcade on the North Pier with black duct tape over half the coin slots is enough to make anyone’s heart sing as a tattered hundred-year-old ghost half heartedly flutters to life when I place my genuine Victorian penny in the slot of the Ghostly Tales machine. A few metres away in the modern arcade, urgent orange lights tell you to NUDGE!!! or KEEP!!! and shimmy upwards in ever increasingly bright orbits. I like my flaccid grey and silent ghost best.

 

My heart does not sing to wannabe upmarket tourist resorts, desperate to appeal to the Farrow and Balled and cutesy, chintzy and over-priced. Blackpool is the only place not to attempt to sell ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ tea towels and overpriced oversweet over-embellished cupcakes. Blackpool has poppers, Willy lollypops and chips with gravy and cheese. For which Blackpool, I salute you. Blackpool has genuine Victoriana with duct tape or ‘Danger’ emblazoned across it, not a ‘Victorian Experience’ costing seven quid a head and all the chaos, malfunctioning, unmarital sex and working class people removed from the equation.

 

Blackpool with its hideous aura of post war surburban houses has two quid a pint lager overlooking the best view in the world and is not selling aspirations, anything polkadot or anything pastel. Blackpool is a place to have dirty cheap neon nylon fun and maybe be a bit sick into your full English breakfast.

There is no pretence or aspiration here. People from all over the country who are either ignored, hated or pitied come here and have a fucking brilliant time, like they did a hundred years ago.

And be a bit sick in their breakfast.


Jul 18 2012

Hanging baskets, murder and ghosts somewhere near Pendle Hill

It is ruined and it is perfect. Prettily  greenly ruined and without the unpleasant detritus ruins often attract such as suspiciously sodden and bulbous looking condoms, smashed Vodkat bottles and colour bled Walkers crisps bags shoved into ancient crannies.

And there are so many ghosts here that I can’t breathe for fear of inhaling a Grey Lady.  There is obscenely good homemade cheese and onion pie, mushy peas and gravy for £3.50.

I am now suspicious. This is too good to be true and thus I am probably annoyingly dead, smashed under a Vauxhall Vectra in an embarassing part of town and not even wearing clean pants.  I am sad about this but appreciate the irony of an afterlife full of ghosts from another dimension written about enthusiastically on plastic covered information boards.

Then the badness comes. ‘Is there a pub?’ ‘No.’

Fuck. I am clearly in Hell.

But such a lovely hanging basket bedecked one. Wycoller is a village prettily planted deep in East Lancashire, the perennially dark hump of Pendle Hill nearby. But Wycoller is ablaze with flowers, Cotswold grey stone quaintness and death, murder and vandalism.

It is a place that is mired in tradition, village life and industry but where high heels from Burnley replace the tired clip clop of centuries of  weavers heels and dark dark deeds still occur at night.

Wycoller Hall is paradise in decay. A ruined manor house is the epitome of smugness to an alive and financially broken viewer-ha ha you are dead and someone has had sex and a Snickers bar in your fireplace. It makes the Conservatives’ evil financial thrust almost bearable. Almost.

Yes, the fireplace in your hall that servants had to knock to timidly enter now has the working class from industrial towns poking about in short skirts whilst drinking Pepsi Maxx whilst you are dead, dead, dead.

Oh how I love it. There are the most worn steps in the world (and you can quote me on that) leading to nothing and well worn steps leading to nothing are probably my most favourite thing on earth (I would not be good at speed-dating) and you have to envisage what once was by looking at grand heraldic shields where the emblems on the shields have dissolved due to time and East Lancashire weather and nothing but the generic shield shape remains, truly the most ludicrously lucid and stonily obvious sign of wealth, fame and mortality being so pathetically transient.

Ha! You are still dead! And I am alive and poor and laughing because I can.

Despite the peach tiles in my small bathroom, you now envy me because I am alive and you are not except in a weird way because all the dead in Wycoller are now ghosts. It said so on the well displayed laminated board in the barn. Even the animals.

Yes! If I thought a well priced quaint tearoom (although sadly unlicensed) selling the aforementioned cheese and onion pie with glistening metal trophy-like tureens of pickled red cabbage, raw onion, mushy peas and gravy (it’s a Lancashire thing) for £3.50 was not quite wondrous enough, now here is a man who is a manager or owner or something (I forget easily these days) who tells me in a no nonsense Lancashire way the story of how a regular at the tearoom sensed the bad vibe in the backroom where we are now stuffing chocolate fudge cake down our gullets and would never enter.

When the renovations were over and the bull keep was uncovered, from a previous farmer notorious for his ill treatment of his animals, she walked in and without knowing what had happened, said she felt she could be in this room again. This is an appalling third hand transcript and I can see you rolling your eyes from here. I am not good at relaying anecdotes and my badly recollected memory has made you all now disbelieve in ghosts. Sorry. But if you were in that tearoom, listening to the dark haired, dark eyed owner/whatever talking soberly about That Experience you would be shitting yourself every time you ate a Big Mac. Good.

 

The barn next to Wycoller Hall is donated to information and harking at well kept beams.  A woman talks sourly about vandalism. There is so much vandalism we can only wonder at what was ‘chucked into the river’ to a Greek chorus of sighs. There is an animal missing from the wicker garden. The inner globe is missing from the Atom, a top of the hillside sculpture, all eyes and mirrors of the encompassing four dimensional landscape with the inner globe for you to gaze upon, witchlike to see all the countryside reflected in its mirror sheen, Well, you would of, it had had not been merrily broken and stolen.  Again.

But Wycoller is multicultural when it comes to its ghosts – there is also a West Indian lady, a bride of a Wycoller who chose her in her native country, married her and then thought ‘fuck that’ and threw her overboard. We’ve all been there…

 

But rather than just be dead or have a whine on Mumsnet, she followed him home and apparently still haunts the place. I would go back to where it’s warmer, love.

 

More ghosts! This one is spectacular as it is not just a ghost. Everyone gets a bit bored of just one ghost misering about the place. Wycoller Hall has a ghost murdering another ghost and you can hear him kill her and her scream and die and everything! This is pure ghost porn!

It apparently happens but once a year upon the darkest most appallingly weathered day of the year and that ghost must be really suffering right now studying the long term forecasts or just be prosaic and pop out doing a light stab every week or so when the sky is yet again black and cold. I suspect he was not counting on global warming or just does not want an audience.

 

There is a Grey Lady too who flits about sadly, the epitome of passive aggressive, “I was wronged, I am sad, I hope you are scared when you see me, that’ll learn him…”

 

The Neolithic slab bridge in the village is a gloriously slumped and sturdy ancient rare thing and is said to be where Druids lead their human sacrifices over but I think the Romans used the whispered rumours of face eating chanting Druids in some kind of propaganda method to hide their own barbarity. I still quite want the Druids to have existed though. They are such romantic sounding murderers. And I do love a good ritual.

But hark! Dear reader, Wycoller has yet more tricks up its heraldic Druidic Romantic well priced cheese and onion pied sleeve- There is yet another ghost and it is the spectre horseman who goes galloping along that ancient packhorse bridge by the ruins of Wycoller Hall and that self same bridge and Hall is also said to have been the inspiration for Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Make of that what you will. A man imprisons his mentally ill wife in the attic then lies about it and has an affair. That is no romance, that is sordid but the best a woman could possibly ask for.

Apart from a well-priced cheese and onion pie whilst gazing misty eyed out at ancient misery.

It was a good day.


Jul 6 2012

The Kirkstone Pass Inn and the potentiality of ghostly Wotsits

A lone pic shot on a camera phone to follow…

I want to go to the Kirkstone Pass Inn because someone tragically died there of course but long enough ago to make it romantic and nice not all horribly miserable and actually deathy. It is up a squizzle of a road through the Lake District, which is surprisingly not too hideously filled with middle class children, crammed into people carriers with an unfeasible amount of mountain bikes carried proudly and smugly aloft. On one such occasion we worked out there were two bikes per winsomely grinning face (we were in a queue and bored)

The rain is of course pouring down because it has never ever ever stopped.

So the woman who died trying to traverse the Kirkdale pass with her baby many years ago, long enough to make the suffering romantic is of course a ghost. I am bored and would like to see a ghost to brighten up conversational gambits I occasionally have to make and also because its raining and I can’t think of anything more interesting than to see a ghost and a large house red in hospitable surroundings. Instead of going to reduced bit at Asda again. And I already have far too much slightly rancid but well priced tzaiki.

I am by nature slightly credulous, hence the guilty library rental of local ghost books with their unfailing belief in Bogarts and bad photographs of gateposts to old manor houses but before the arrival of our Kia in the car park I was thinking ‘how could anyone die two hundred or so (the library book has gone back and I have a vague memory) years ago in a place where there is English Lakes Ice-cream for sale every few miles?

Then I nearly died walking from the car park to the pub.

It is enticingly windswept, grey stoned and ancient looking and I look forward to meeting a tragic ghost clutching a baby to a cold cold breast and letting her know that mother to mother, she is not a bad parent for giving up her life going to see her sick father and nearly so nearly killing her beloved babe in arms and that I have left mine in the car asleep with his neck at a unfortunate angle and his father murmuring crossly at the cricket on an appallingly tuned radio.

But then the chilling realisation that I will not see a ghost in a pub which sells key rings, has a rhyming poem telling people not to use the toilet unless they are customers and where some loud women are cackling about how they thwart the school packed lunched rule by hiding chocolate in lunchboxes underneath sandwiches. There is no magic left anymore in the world, dear reader.

Until my second glass of wine by the fireplace, the discovery that there is no phone signal and the finding of The English Book Of Ghost Stories by the fireplace.

In fact I am still there now.

If you, dear reader, ever travel up that squizzling zigzag path to the Kirkstone Inn, look out for the ghostly red dented Kia from which the sounds of an ancient cricket game can still be heard. And give the baby a packet of Wotsits.

I’m on the house red. Ta.


Jun 30 2012

Cartmel is posh but I am not.

Cartmel is the poshest place in the world. Seriously.

And I used to live in Bath.

This scares me.

I do not know where 20 fags and some Tampax could possibly be purchased here. The residents here must live on over embellished cupcakes, unpasteurised ewes milk cheese cut from a block and a sense of their own self-satisfaction.

It is undeniably a staggering beautiful village, the sort of village you imagine in a trench when about to be shot to death because it is the Essence of England, like something Cath Kidson has spewed up in a dotty bunting bedecked dream in the Cotswolds.

Being sort of hidden somehow between Lancashire and Cumbria, on minor A roads, you are expecting a small village that excels in its rightly famous sticky toffee pudding and the Priory that you have read about somewhere and feel you should really go and look at and pretend to be interested in even though you are actually only interested in the haunted gatehouse that you read about in a rubbish local book about ghosts you were embarrassed to be seen ordering from the library.

Oh and L’Enclume, the famous Michelin starred restaurant which has unlikely foams and things and you secretly hope that there might be a two for a tenner lunch special even though you are actually aware that won’t ever ever happen.

There are waving meadows in front of hanging basket-bedecked cottages, the cottages all have names engraved on little slabs, and tasteful dust free antiquities are displayed on quaintly gnarled windowsills.

A woman is splashed (oh so slightly) by a car and when I smile and make a sympathetic joke, she keeps repeating the word ‘idiots’ and she is very angry indeed. It was only a small puddle but the car had young people in which I suspect may have been the problem.

The centre is bigger than expected; should one wish to have a nice cup of coffee, there is so much competition there is clearly controversy galore as one coffee shop also delighting in the excitement and daring of selling sodding cupcakes, (prostituted tarted up fairy cakes) has a sign that says ‘best coffee in town or your money back’. I like Community in Action.

I am nearly run over by a Bentley, which I am a bit pleased by. There is a fiver in my purse and some coins and I feel rich rich rich with my paper money knocking splendidly about but a sticky dense loaf of three cheese and marmite bread from the bakery and a Cartmel Apple and Toffee Crumble Bake has knocked me into overdraft.

The Priory is glorious but I feel guilty as do not have the politely requested three pound donation so post all my remaining cash through the slot where it gleams with accusing copperiness. The bread won’t fit through, anyway the marmite and three cheeses will surely jam up the hole so I run around quickly, trying not to get three pounds worth of viewing. If it crumbles into a ball tomorrow, it is my entire fault. But the bread was worth it.

A Farrow and Balled pub up a side street has the classic meal deal of soup and sandwich but for a tenner. The nearby L’ Enclume is indeed so classy and non ‘two for a tenner’ there is not a menu outside, nor indeed any sign it is in fact a place to eat. It could be a media hub in Shoreditch or an Anorexic clinic for supermodels in Richmond were it not for the fact that there is an ancient cat on a windowsill opposite sticking its tongue out at me and yet another pony has just gone past.

It is hard here, to imagine the reality of the recession, which is why it might be so bustling.

If you can afford the petrol to get here and a tenner to spend on cupcakes and coffee, you feel like a Barclay Brother. A woman cheerily bemoans to the staff in the bakery (a bakery so posh it sells virtually only bread) that she will simply never get the time to read her ‘papers’- (the Daily Telegraph was tucked under her arm) but she ‘buys them anyway’.

I look at my toddler leaning dangerously and angrily away from me, coated in Smartie Batter and consider leaving him here. Like a pub cat, he would be fed on lovely tit bits by tourists and well heeled locals, be patted and smiled upon and probably be extremely happy.

Then as I look upon a cheeseboard and wine platter, displayed vividly and erotically upon a chalkboard, I decide to simply sell him instead.


Jun 24 2012

Lets not think about reality but stroke animals we like in the rain.

I do not like attractions aimed at families. They normally seem to feature bad Clipart, an extortionate price for a Ribena Light and a cafe which is unlicensed.

Oh and other families.

This means occasional brittle smiles, small talk and quiet competiveness whilst the Other Children are always over enthusiastic as the Good Families over enunciate and over explain to show what Good Parents they are and frozenly smile when my baby is cheerily hung upside down for perhaps slightly too long.

I am of course just jealous. I envy and bitterly admire their fluid unselfconscious discourse, their nice but not too nice cars and ability to not say ‘Fucking hell’ when seeing the price of the Soup of the Day.

I do not like family attractions where a badly punctuated laminated sign is waterlogged and thus the protective laminate has come free, bellows emptily into the swirling wind and the Comic Sans ink has bled into a red then pinkish  swirl.

I do not like the children’s menu being cheap bland fatty shit sans any veg and consisting of battery-farmed animals, the like of which £5.95 has only an hour ago been spent upon petting and loving.

And I totally fail upon visiting petting farms. Other people see cute calves. I see their heads piled in vats in an abattoir. And don’t even mention the chickens. It’s gnarled piles of tangled whorly feet or bloody  yards of spiky shards of blue and grey beaks in my head.

It’s like that thing where people taste colours but with misery and death. To be fair I am the same anywhere and can spin a story of glistening spilt organs from a trip to TK Maxx.

Having a car means no looking at the glistening view of the Trough of Bowland snaking foggily into the far horizon but more of all encompassing sense of tragedy as I vividly imagine the death of a cat very soon under the wheels or look back despite my partner barking at me not to, to ascertain from the velvety ears still so poignantly visible from the red mush on the road whether it was a rabbit or a hare so recently killed.

I have been to a few petting farms before and the jolly peeling signs about ‘These male cows will be leaving our jolly farm when they are 9 months old!!!!’ makes me want to pleasantly ask if we can visit them in their new home. I scrutinize eggs so much I pretty much need to know the chickens by their maiden name.

But Docker Park Farm does not feature ‘wellie hire’ in a star shape as one of the attractions as did one leaflet I picked up in Morrisons that made me consider infanticide if my boy pointed at it and said ‘Dat’.

It is pleasingly remote and the shattered tree debris of a shit June litter the road.

It is a £5.50 entrance fee for the adults who would definitely not be here unless it was for their children whose entrance is free. I could labour upon the inherent irony here but I have donuts to put in lunchboxes and gin to drink.

And I like Docker Park Farm. I like it a lot. There are no stupid families who I actually just envy here because some parents think their kids melt in the rain. I am liberated which means I let my toddler get soaking wet and as I am in my own private parkland I thus attempt a climbing wall. I will not do so again.

There are alpacas, my best of animals due to their ‘should not actually exist’ quality. Or when Disney has swept up all the cute bits from the abattoir floor and reassembled them with extra long eyelashes.

I like the goats which if they were rebranded and remarketed as ‘God’s hoofed angels’ would still have people going ‘Satan Satan’. It’s something in the Satanic eyes. I feel like that about Boris Johnson. But I would rescue a goat from a fire first. An unlikely but intriguing hypothetical event.

There is a large soft play area in a barn and we were warned about the puddles beforehand. There is an isolated bouncy castle swinging and banging into itself in the harsh unsummery breeze. I   like this very much. The background is blue hills coated in swirling rain heading this way.

The signs about the animals are neat, well punctuated and informative without being patronizing. And in a grown up font with no  bad pictures of a cartoon pig with a fork holding sausages.

There is a lake, Shetland ponies, a donkey and her baby and the Millionaires Shortbread is big enough to bury a body underneath. Which is all I look for in a farmyard attraction. And the chocolate is not waxy.

We spend a good few hours here wandering around without being force-fed into a clearly designated track with ‘No Picnic’ signs. My boy loves the plentitude of plastic JCBs, I love the snuffly rabbits and the lack of smiling at other mothers and asking polite forced questions.

We will come here again. But only if it is raining.


Jun 10 2012

Penis shaped stones in the North

The sky has finally darkened up here in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. The lantern procession has begun. At the front is a gently lit and frailly beautiful paper replica of the Titanic.

There is an awed pause.

A dour voice crops up. ‘I’ wouldna be following that one.’

I do love Scotland.

Bagpipes do their merry droning thing and fireworks shoot off into the skies. I thought Scotland would be a great place to get away from the Jubilee but it seems Scotland will use anything as an excuse to get the bagpipes and plastic cups of beer out. I am slightly disappointed but it means I can stop attempting to say ‘aye’ in a stupid Scottish accent as to be fair, to go to a small Scottish town in midsummer, famous for being where The Wickerman was filmed and where there is currently a random parade of locals is quite simply asking for trouble. Or ritual sacrifice by fire.

Things are bad when I do not look like a virgin and I am thus tragically alive the next day. I decide to go in search of more paganisms and consulting The Modern Antiquarian, Julian Cope’s surprising yet wonderful book about stone circles and the only one thus far which has the word ‘cunt’ in its index, we drive though field and moor, almost getting bored with exclaiming how stunning it all is and yearning for an industrial park  to break up the unremittingly mountainous beauty.

Glenquicken is a lovely stone circle, one which I imagine to be somewhere more Southern would probably be featured in shitty calendars sold in train stations and have overpriced scones with clearly aerosol cream topping in the near vicinity for £5.95.

It is a perfectly round stone circle with an enormous central stone although someone on the Internet has darkly said that ‘it is almost too round…’ the three insinuating ellipses clearly hinting at black too nicely circumferenced deeds. Julian Cope thinks the central stone to be particularly phallic but I can’t see what is possibly phallic about an enormous engorged piece of rock looming powerfully above a small circle.

The area around is strewn with antiquity- graves, cairns and circles abound like some big Neolithic funfair. It has started to pour down; we tramp through the mist and come across another smaller circle, an apologetic little ring surrounded by mist, moor and mud. There is no sign of habitation for seemingly hundreds of miles. We stand and marvel.

Then a man sprints through the rain and miles of nothing in a small pair of shorts to shout across a joke about the weather and point towards a place where he bellows that more standing stones lie in a deep valley. Then he disappears again, waving cheerily as he disappears into a foggy mire of nothingness.

I think again how wonderful Britain is and begin the long walk back to a present civilisation.