May 29 2013

Upon the opening of Lancaster Castle

A thousand years shut, they’ve opened the jaws

And welcomed you inside

The crisscrossed mesh, the iron maws

Gawp at where so many died.


Frocked  soldiers in Specsavers smile and beam

History sanitised  by State and given to you

A bad death in irons is given a sheen

And a ‘witch’ always comes with a broomstick too.


It’s an Event, it’s history, it’s bank holiday

So there are unicyles against the wall

To see the grizzly bits you need to pay

Whilst Punch plays on through the pouring  rain.


Desperate graffiti and once stern signs

Ironically photoed on your phone

I am happy to see ‘living’ history

But  those who died here were once yours and mine.


They dropped in their cells , they were choked by their neck

The recent still scary and thus ignored

Why hark at someone’s cell who is still alive

When History makes slaves of us all.

no comments

May 11 2013

Wray Scarecrow Festival 2013

Wray Scarecrow Festival Pictorial

In a genteelly malevolent  way, I wanted this to be a teeny bit crap this year. Like when I look at the weather forecast and get more upset than the situation really necessitates when it is 24 degrees in Norfolk and there  is frost on the window of my bedroom. The phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ was always utterly ludicrous especially when brayed from an Eton educated millionaire but I somehow hoped that maybe the people of Wray were also facing austerity and maybe had to make scarecrows out of Asda carrier bags and roadkill. This is because I am small minded and jealous because I cannot afford to live in Wray.

We went there on a bus in the howling wind and rain ( an average of 25 degrees everywhere else apart from Northern Scotland)  I was unaware of the theme for this years event which added a slight frisson of excitement, especially when I first confronted with a grinning torso of a scarecrow strung up high from a little stone cottage and beaming leglessly down. With a fishing rod. I presumed it was not the Paralympics. I still do not know what it was because my toddler started crying.

I decided the theme was terror and nightmares and here are some pictures to explain why. The Faceless Nun is a particular favourite especially as it was half hidden behind a wall sightlessly staring at a scarecrow giving birth. This would make a good film, the sort of film to be found tragically too late in the faeces smeared home of a young serial killer.

The bunting blows flaps wildy, crows shriek but still Wray,  despite the recession has put on a jolly good show.

Big scarecrow- even the bus sign post  is all Wickermanny.

Writers Block- so good that clearly the creator of the scarecrow is really struggling with their second novel.

This cute Peter Rabbit has a book open portraying  the arrival of the murderer and eater of his father and then a row of ellipses…

 Such meticulous attention to detail it made me nervous in case there might have been Peter Rabbit’s murdered daddy depicted vividly also. I realised then I needed to take a grip.

This one foxed me for ages. I just did not get it. Then I realised it was about eating horses. At this point I really struggled with what this years theme could be.

A surprising find in a graveyard. Thus I felt extra guilty for the sexual innuendo I but possibly no-one else saw in the narrative.

A mouse went for a stroll in a deep dark wood then saw a Gruffalo made of rug. This is another one that has made my child not sleep through the night, I suspect because he is now clutching the clever cunning mouse in his ruggy grasp. That was not in the book. And believe me I know the book. Strangely enough the toddler does not want to read it anymore.

This was a good one. It melded together the concept of a Kindle Fire and ‘witches’ being burned at the stake. The witch was terrifying.

Then I saw this.

This MUST be the first scarecrow representation of an unhinged evil dictator…

Oh, hold on…

I just liked the concept of a scarecrow with a gun

The ‘chavs’ in this are scarily good. The attention to detail both impressed and unnerved me. I decide I may not want to move to Wray after all.

I have never seen a Prince William as perfect as this-even the gaffa tape works.

When you put the computer down, her cold brown eyes will still be staring at you,

You will never sleep again.

I thought it was another appendage as well.


When soft porn and scarecrows collide. Just like you’ve always wanted.

The theme of course was childrens books.

2 comments

Apr 14 2013

Mayburgh Henge, Penrith

We park in a tiny road running along near, very near  the motorway.

The constant thrum of Logistics Solutions nearly wipe out the pathetically tiny birdsong of those who have survived a long long winter and still hungrily hope for spring.


It is country and it is not. There are snow topped peaks not so far away, possibly covering the frozen corpses of lambs who never wobbled, causing brief consternation to those looking at the national papers showing these shocking deaths whilst eating their breakfast or lunch, killed in an abattoir,  packaged neatly in cardboard in a supermarket where the recipe was found in the same newspaper that sobbed  sad tears over the tragic death of a baby animal that never had the chance to be marinated or fried.

It is also hard to think of something ancient and mystical being here, right near this small empty car-parking slot  near a bland gate and where across the fields a suburban estate lies where you imagine the owners glint suspiciously at your tiny figure whilst they wash their Kia.


You become blase about mystical and ancient things living in the UK. There are so many that one that is not in an aesthetically pleasing situation can be sneered at before staying in the car and going to get a Meal Deal at the nearest Moto which clearly isn’t  far away from this site before then going to somewhere where you can’t see the car you drove there in or hear the sound of the traffic you were previously part of.


Where you might have a small tantrum if you can’t instantly  find a place to park before you can look at some relics of history conveniently, quietly and accommodating situated.


There is a small sign, a gate, and a hillock. It beats staying in the car with the snoring toddler and the appalling nappy for which a bin has not yet been found so I step out and scrabble up a shingly hill.


It is astounding.

An enormous ancient amphitheatre lies down before me, made out of a million stones. A huge grass space is its arena and only one standing stone remains, the last sentinel. There used to be more. Standing stones disappeared quickly  and unromantically in a religious or agricultural past.

A Newcastle Brown Ale Bottle twinkles. People still come here to gather.

It is an utterly awe inspiring site, the better for it being so little excavated, talked about and theorised. But as this site lies off a ring road near Penrith, people don’t want to think about the present  when they travel in their cars along the motorway to  look at a past not near a motorway in the way they don’t want to think about cute animals being in attractively packaged  ambiguously labelled paninis.

We are divorced from nature and history but revel it it. We diet and watch food programmes, stay indoors, watch nature, eat nature and watch it slowly vanish.


We are shocked at weather being weather but never shocked at our own nature.

And in looking at a past we can project our own happy ideals on.


Would those who gathered at Mayburgh so many thousands of years ago want to be us though?

1 comment

Apr 10 2013

ZaZa Bazaar-a south western foray into gluttony

This is the end of times. This is everything fanatical preachers rant  and warn you against whilst handing you luridly photocopied leaflets as  you attempt to avoid their gaze and nip into Tesco Express.


‘It’s like being in Las Vegas’ says my awestruck mother and we all agree despite never having been in Las Vegas.


We are at Za Za Bazaar in Bristol.


This may not fit my normal attempt at writing about something interesting and hopefully unloved in the North. We are at the Harbourside in Bristol and we queued for an hour to park the car and then to be seated.


But upon reflection the last place of merit or interest to the passing  Northern residing internet traveller I visited was either TK Maxx or a popular pub with a birds name a few miles away from Lancaster where the food was so coldly blandly disappointingly overpriced and  the waitress so coldly aggressive,  I am too scared to even mention it on this blog in case I get a (tepid) fire bomb through my door.


I think I might prefer a fire bomb to ever spending so much money  on ravioli covered in a surprising topping of  diced carrot again though to be fair.

Anyway. ZaZaBazaar is the biggest restaurant in Europe and features more food than I have ever seen in my life.  A ‘street market’ featuring various world cuisines suddenly appears when you step out of the lift and it is ‘buffet style’ which means to this country ‘all you can eat without or whilst possibly vomiting’.


There is a four sided Vietnamese hut, a Mexican shack, a salad bar, an Italian shed, an Indian joint etc etc. I try and shield my toddler from the pudding palace which has ceiling to floor shutes of jellybeans and swirling greasy walls of cupcakes like some 9 year old lottery winners house.


It is of course clearly brilliant. I am hungry. This is a bulimic fantasy.


There is neon, loud music and hysterical children running around with dinner plates full of smarties and chips.


I am disorientated, don’t know where to turn or what to do.


I am given a map.


This is the zenith of consumer culture. And for £6.99! (with a complicated voucher system)


It is cheaper than the disappointing starter at the pub near Lancaster to eat everything in the world. Possibly literally!


I smirk in my head at the slightly confrontational and bossy waitress at the pub near Lancaster and try to work out what to do.


I eat.  I start at the Indian food stall but accidently put some chips on my plate and then nachos and guacamole. Then marinated mushrooms and hummus. I sit down to eat but am bedazzled by the choices I have not yet made and am terrified of being full so swirl it around into an oily marble effect and then gulp it down  quickly, horrified at the thought of having not yet had the other stuff I can see.


The phrase ‘a paean to gluttony’ is constantly reverberating through my brain. I have no idea why.


My toddler bravely battles through a plate of macaroni cheese. To try to get pizza is like entering a warzone patrolled by 9 year olds with empty plates, forks and patrolling dads as weapons. The music seems to be getting louder.


No-one appears to be savouring their food, the staff all seem to be emaciated but still it is utterly awesome and I bravely mix noodles with pakoras. Because I can.

My partner looks scared, the toddler has noticed the sweet chutes. This is not going to end well.


I start to feel slightly unwell. I try and find the toilets and get lost despite the yellow arrows painted on the floor. This is not a good place for a first date.


I take a handful of breaded garlic mushrooms for nourishment along the way.


The salad bar beckons. Because if you eat some salad it cancels out the flaccid pizza where the cheese slides off like a warm chewy elastic blanket when you bite into it.


The salad bar is good. And there are no feral children there. There are lentils! Soups! I am immediately baptised into health, new life and well being and all for 6.99! 6.99! (with the complicated voucher system)

I am reborn.


Until I see the ice cream machine.


The phrase ‘a paean to gluttony’ starts singing louder.


I am spoilt now. Ruined.


I can disfavour and sully  every pleasant well thought out locally sourced meal  in a quietly attractive Northern establishment  by unfairly comparing it with the orgiastic extravaganza of Za Za Bazaar in Bristol, the biggest restaurant in Europe.

I have however gone off pizza.

And pasta with boiled carrots never works no matter how pretty the setting.

2 comments

Mar 31 2013

Ahem.

I went away.

I went away and decided Unicycle Emptiness was no more.  You probably didn’t notice or have roamed far away to other blogs that rhapsodise about well priced cheesy chips and standing stones in the North that also have far more of an affinity with placing a semi-colon in a correct place. Bastards.


There is a limit also of how much someone can write about local accessible well priced places of interest, excitement and history  but are not popular and where cheap cheesy chips and large house reds can be had but also a toddler can be taken to easily and quickly.


And are haunted.


I stopped doing my blog.


Suddenly the North West area abounded in unusual and unnatural glories. Every overheard conversation was sparkling yet poignant . Everything I saw looked like it would make a artistically gritty yet humorous capsule of love and life in the frozen North.


I missed writing. That little chasm to delve into that was just me, looking at stuff I liked  and writing about it, rather than the Me of making lumpen sliced packed lunches, badly photocopying at work and bidding for boots on eBay I would inevitably be slightly disappointed by.


I went to Oddendale stone circle (otherwise known as Sunkenkirk) a few months ago when the hint of spring sprung and was then cruelly removed like some sort of cost cutting exercise by the Conservatives.

It is a place where I actually felt a sense of what other people consider  religion. Awe, peace, magic and the vanquishment of the self. I grubbed around in mole hills looking for ancient artifacts and as usual found nothing but the potentiality of promise was the reward in itself.

Oh and then I went to Bury market where the mystique and tranquility of a perfectly rounded stone circle, surrounded by mountains,  buffeted by the wind but where  lay recently  picked offerings of  flowers  was utterly overruled by large fresh ciabatta bread for 80p and where fresh herby olives and parched peas made a 2 quid feast overlooking the ring road and a JJB superstore.

I thought of you dear reader. I thought you needed to know about Bury market’s surprising effluence of Greek and Italian food items for the same price as a McFlurry. Its a middle-class recession. I would be letting the side down if I did not. Poor squeezed middles.


And it was there I discovered there was such a thing as smoked shoulder fat.

I think I might have lived better without that discovery. I just clutched my well priced rosemary and garlic olives slightly tighter instead whilst being  slightly more intrigued than the situation actually justified.

But this weekend was the clincher. I went to the grave of a witch in Woodplumpton and thought the internet must know about this!

A small boulder on top of an otherwise unremarkable plot and a plaque stating in an unembellished and tragically fancy free way that an ‘alleged’ witch’ lay underneath.

Nothing to say that the stone was there to stop her rising again! To do bad things to crops of corn! Despite being dead!  To move vats of milk cruelly around a farmyard despite the thwartingness of being buried! To make your pants slightly too tight and your curry slightly too hot! To put your Nectar card somewhere it takes you just over a minute to find whilst  a man smiles politely behind you but in a slightly cold way!

The ‘alleged’ bit in commas on the neat brass plaque is neatly and coldly  mocking me for my hopeful belief, sneering in copper but some dead daffodils lie on the stone, someone felt sorry for Meg and her old dusty smothered bones and only recently so.

Outside the churchyard there are old stocks supported by carved stones of such antiquity the average Australian or American might possibly explode in sheer disbelief. And the fact they were there unremarked and unmuseumed and uncharged make me stop bitching about the fucking weather for nearly an hour.

Then I went to Preston and took  some photos. I was happy. Then cold. Then I bitched about the weather and was over sentimental about dead lambs.

It is all business as usual.

4 comments

Jan 24 2013

The unrelenting ‘Meh’ of nothingness

Its snowing everywhere except here. Here lies sleety Lambert and Butler fag ash grey, soggy pavements, the overfamiliar and the uninspiring.

Nowhere is going to be nice and I hate everywhere. I can’t afford to go to the other sorts of everywhere that might be nice but charge an admission or that consist of high falluting foods I can’t afford or understand.

On BBC 24 lies snow covered Nirvana. Children on sledges woooosh down Narnia hills in Luton. In Peckham, gangs lol with snowballs and all join in together to make snowmen with slightly larger than expected testicles.
Oh, its such jolly jolly fun everywhere. In the snow.

Or with money, not in the snow.


I hate January. I hate January in the only non-snowy place in possibly the world. I hate people in January with their festive new hats and coats on. I discover a new hatred of people who wear scarves wrapped smartly round their necks.
A dog walker in neat jeans and a turquoise scarf should be dead by now if ESP actually existed.
Oh and wellies when the ground conditions are really not all that bad at all-they can all die as well (this also applies to beaming girls at summer festivals)

Anyway. I am cross. We are skint.  My sister has arrived from Bristol demanding to see snow but with her only footwear being stilettos. Well to be fair, two pairs.

We try and find snow.

Shap, the devilish  bleaker than bleak Cumbrian fells of Shap will deliver snow. Everyone knows that. Shap has snow, death, and horseless carriages on your average July noon.

We drive to Shap. My sister looks at the snow in Bristol on her iPhone. Shap remains for ten miles of driving, completely free of weather, just that overhang of forbiddingness like a particularly bad hangover or before you visit the bank machine.

There are many stone circles on Shap that require a foreboding walk.

I have always wanted to be here with a day ahead of me to explore a dark Neolithic past, to touch the stones put up centuries ago and try to imagine the landscape how it used to be, to think of hunched grim figures etched against the moonlight, their rituals, loves and deaths.
But some of us have innappropiate footwear.

My sister and I have in common a guilty enjoyment (one more guilty than the other) of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in which Appleby is featured prominently due to the annual horse fair meeting in Summer in which Channel Four cameras record continuously revel in every tiny seedy speck of the travelling community they can possibly find and then BOLD, HIGHLIGHT and RECORD.

It being a freezing depressive day in January, I am quite interested in seeing Appleby. In my head, it is summer there because I saw it being summer there once on Channel 4.

It is not summer in Appleby. And there are no travellers. There is possibly the best cat I have ever seen there though although I appreciate this may not make a popular television show.

Appleby for possibly  summer related reasons has no signs to carparks or parking spaces so we stopped in a street where if you were paranoid you could feel every eye in the street looking at you. The best cat in the world came up to us-light, fluffy and friendly with big fluffy cat pantaloons, she followed us until I imagined her dead under a car when we crossed the road so thus my partner hissed at her and she ran away.The crisis in Syria has not upset me so much as seeing a lovely cat hissed at.  This is why I am English.

Appleby is an ancient small town, greyly pretty and wide-streeted and it would take but an hour for a film producer to make it into a film set from a few centuries ago. There is a village bakery which happily produces vegetarian cornish pasties, a few independent clothes shops you feel guilty for looking around and not buying anything and a glorious butchers which features suprisingly enormous animal parts displayed neatly on matt white paint. I think of serial killers and loft apartments, the neatness and the blank clean space.


Along a cobbled alley is a cafe and a wine bar. We are the first people there that day and eat simply and cheaply (the old chips/soup /wine combination) but it is good and we watch the snow finally properly fall against the window.

And for one minute, I like January again.

2 comments

Dec 21 2012

Bad porn in Preston Market

(some bad camera pics to follow)

A woman who looks older than she probably is, is trying to sell a wilting 50 Shades of Grey rip-off for 50p.

‘Its dead good-there’s like a dead good plot and that and yeah, the plot’s really good.’

I do not see whether the over-deliberating potential purchaser ever purchases the dog eared clit lit  but I would still quite like to know what the plot is.

Maybe the sharp suited enigmatic older man and his beautiful naive protegee go to Preston Market and buy some slightly peeling and ill-fitting PVC hotpants before having a baked potato with a toppling pile of chewy  grated cheese and coleslaw in a polystyrene container with a cup of parched peas from the baked potato man with the calloused hands before going for a quick bad shag in the bandstand in Avenham Park.

Recession Erotism Northern Style. And for under a fiver!

I am at the Flag Market in Preston. The Flag Market remains in these strange impoverished yet relentlessly upselling times resolutely itself.

There are no pastel frosted cupcakes and there is no artisan bread sold by a beaming yet vaguely harassed looking woman with slightly frizzy hair and a Home Counties accent.

There are instead cold defeated looking women in niquabs selling fuzzy Per Una skirts for four pounds. There is the occasional amazing gem (in my case of a brand new black furry mini-dress with grey fur sleeves for three quid  recovered from under a Tsunami of bobbly George at Asda)

There are sticky and garish kids toys in plastic with the peeling stickers from their previous small owners stuck firmly  and faithfully to the  cracking neon.
Split cardboard boxes show yellowing pictures of thatched cottages at Buckfastleigh. No-one could possibly expect to find the advertised 1000 pieces still remaining. It is a recipe for disappointment but only three pounds. Everything has a price.

I like the 50p stall where the bad porn resides and buy a flowery hair-clip, a not unattractive bowl and a china brooch featuring the Virgin Mary.  I realise the brooch fitting element  is broken when getting it home but I am still pleased with it. It is now a Project That Will Never Happen.

I will skip down the stairs in a good mood, the sad face of Mary with the sticky bit I can’t remove will look at me sadly from the sanctity of the fruit bowl containing no fruit and I will be depressed at my inability to Be Crafty or even find and do a Something with some Blu-Tack which are pretty much one and the same thing in my sluttish book (not the 50 Shades of Grey one)

Antiquities clutter for space with hookahs, racing bikes, sexy dresses, foul cardigans and goth boots. There is a genial chatter, occasionally with a hint of threat. No-one is selling a ‘Keep Calm and….’ piece of merchandise and for that alone, Preston Flag Market, I salute you.

I am glad you still exist.

Trans cultural mass produced Victorian street selling should never ever die.

12 comments

Dec 9 2012

I have been nowhere and done nothing

I have not been anywhere so have nothing to write.

However this makes me feel a bit guilty for my twoish loyal followers and the hopeful hundreds who find my blog by googling ‘Dogging in Skipton’ or ‘Sexy Sychronised Swimming Scarecrows’ and are then left bereft and possibly annoyed by the paucity of such lurid content apart from a photo of a straw stuffed hag in a sagging elderly cossie as part of the  Wray Scarecrow Festival and a Word Document moan about dog poo in Skipton.

I like looking at my stats but it also makes me fear for humanity and the dark thoughts that dwell inside the average Google surfer who lands upon my blog.

If you are not thinking about sex, you are thinking about the undead. No wonder the Twilight franchise is so popular.

Chingle Hall, an allegedly splendidly  haunted house near Preston which used to be open to the public but now is not and something I wrote about many moons ago, crops up foremost with feverish viewers asking ‘Is Chingle House open to the public?’ , something I should have typed in myself before driving twenty miles to watch the owner slowly  gardening from a public footpath quite a way away.
Someone could benefit from registering ‘Car boot sale Dumfries’ to help those poor souls possibly writing on a Dell Keyboard with several letters missing (‘Aye,  you can get them letters cheap online’ who want to just instantly find the time and place of a cold Scottish car boot sale on the Borders (and possibly the seller of the cheap laptop) but then get about 1000 words of Southern waffle about Clairol Foot Spas instead.
Today someone  was desperate to find a phallus shaped stone in Liverpool and thus found my blog despite my haziness about writing about willy stones in the Wirral.

When you are not thinking about porn, car boot sales and ghosts, (a happy combination which should surely become a bestseller should I add a few connectives and adjectives) hippies in Totnes seduce you and there has either been one desperate individual or 13 sad unimaginative or perverted souls  (hiya!) who have found my blog by Googling ‘Inspector Gadget costumes’, strangely something I have never ever written about.

So anyway, I have been nowhere far because it is extremely cold and we lack money to go somewhere else-and we’re talking Ulverston here, not the Carribean.

Christmas is coming so Lancaster is heaving, I will probably kill someone or indeed anyone  if I hear the over exaggerated overdramatised over played shriek of ‘IIIIIiiit’s CHRISTMAS!!!!’ in the middle of Slade’s hideous seasonal (and only) hit.
There is a Chestnut seller who roars in a cheerily Victorian way but he is ignored due to the shove towards the Calendar Club shop.
Christmas has already been here for far too long-I started seeing the cards displayed in August and due to the weather got confused and panic bought some christmas cards of Highlander Terriers in the snow.
I saw the first flurry of Easter eggs, the small Creme Egg and Caramel Egg displays that hint at Easter the other day in a Premier shop. Somewhen soon, the relentless  advance of selling will start to chase its tail and it will be at least three years fast forwarded unless the Mayan Calendar has its delighful apocolyptical way.

In which case we are all dead.
Now!

I think?

6 comments

Nov 18 2012

Dabbling in Naval Terror whilst eating chips at the Golden Ball

I’m doing it again.
Delighting and positively revelling in misery, jumping into big muddy puddles of horror  with a splash and a grin and savouring each little drop of disenchantment and despair.

And eating chips.
This makes it even better.
It would have been cheesy chips but I’m on a diet.

It is not a very good diet to be fair.

Ironically enough, I hate all that stupid misery porn so popular with idiots nowadays. Books with titles like  ‘A Figure Over My Cot’ or ‘Please, Mummy, Stop’.
Why the hell would anyone wish to read stories of abuse and misery?
I sigh sadly  to myself before picking up a book about murdered prostitutes in Victorian London. That is different- it was foggy, long ago and there were gas lamps and corsets involved which makes it far less prurient and slightly more sexy. I’m sure you understand.

Anyway, I am eating breakfast chips at The Golden Ball in Lancaster, known for centuries as Snatchems for the delicious and  horrific fact that people who used to drink here were often press-ganged.

Imagine a really shit hangover.

There is no liquid left in your body. You are scooping with shaky hands, 9p economy curry flavoured noodles into your parched arid mouth. You cannot find a spoon.

The noodles are slightly underdone and have a slimily crunchy texture like a nest of tarantulas that have been both rotting and baking under an Arizona sun. The Hollyoaks omnibus is on the telly and it is on too loud but you can’t be arsed to look for the remote.

You need to be leave for work in ten minutes.

That is definitely a shit hangover.

Now imagine this.

You were having a night of much diversion in  The Golden Ball Public House-some fellows came and gave you strong ale and many songs were sang and much merriment was to be had. There were fiddles and raucousness and ale kept arriving in heavy foaming jars.  You had new friends, new jokes to definately not tell the Missus and a glorious feeling of well-being.

Then.

You wake up and you are still, yet moving – timbers creak, the air is freezing,  your head pounds and you try to find a place to urinate, stagger up and up to find that Lancaster lies behind you, disappearing mistily by the second, vanquished by grey angry waves.

There is nothing at all to be seen in front of you apart from more of the same.
And for seemingly eternally so.

Your wife and children will be waiting for you and not know what has happened. You have no phone because they do not exist  and you cannot even write. Your wife is broad with child.
You will probably never see her again. Disease  and death stalks these rotting planks.

A man appears across the deck. He does not smile and carries a whip. More figures start to merge through the freezing driving rain that drives sideways across the deck.
You have been press-ganged.

That is definitely a shitter hangover.

For the slaves that entered and left here, or just died unmourned and left in the quayside morgue that is now The George and Dragon across the river, I suspect Lancaster was never a place of beauty.

The Golden Ball Freehouse has featured on Most Haunted,  possibly has the cheapest house wine in Lancaster and also a loyalty card and a new conservatory.  These are  generally twisty old rooms though, you go down stairs from the carpark to enter the bar area and a big dog is shouting somewhere very nearby.

We are surrounded by estuary, claggy bleak estuary and this pub is sometimes cut off by the tides, seaweed hangs shrivelled and drying from barbed wire fences guarding nothing. Across the River Lune, Lancaster Castle soars and looks fantastic and I sit here and am happily horrified at the thought of old misery.

And the chips are very good and crispy and only £1.65.

3 comments | posted in Lancashire, Uncategorized

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.

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