Apr 11 2014

I forgot a clever thing I was going to write about Milnthorpe

There was something very clever I was going to say about Milnthorpe.

I was pleased with my splendid wry bon mot. It was definitely a site specific phrase as well. I don’t normally do this but because I was amazed with the fecundity of my brain, I laboriously stabbed it into the Notes app of my dieing Samsung. Just like Charles Dickens. Then did not press ‘save.’

Forgetting and/or losing something you have created instantly make is it the best thing to have ever existed.

Milnthorpe is quite small and I was waiting for a lift anyway so I walked around it again for that ‘oh fuck, that was the inspiration for that amazing witty thing what I wrote then deleted then forgot.’

But the squat grey buildings stared at me impassively.

I have either missed a major artery of Milnthorpe or am just stupid (both equally valid options) because in my head there was a really good bit (now escalated to just like Narnia in my head)  but in real life, just struggling veins clawing out of the main artery of  a few random shops  and a Friday only market where I guilt purchased a small amount of  shockingly priced cheese because the man was nice and I did not want him to think I was poor.

 

Then I sulked about being nice but poor  in a graveyard whilst eating a tiny piece of organic blue Yorkshire cheese.

There was definitely something funny and humorous that I wrote about but I just can’t see it.

 

When I saw it, I thought of my few readers rolling in the aisles at my sly dig at The Funny Thing.

But I looked around Milnthorpe again and did not find anything funny anywhere at all.

This will haunt me for ever more.

 

2 comments | posted in cumbria

Apr 8 2014

They don’t even talk about death in the charity shops

Over my ‘pot’ of coffee, I realise that the shaking elderly man opposite may not be suffering from Parkinsons after all. He has just had a ‘pot’ of one pound coffee from Cafe M. All those genially chatting elderly ladies? They’re not chatting, they’re manically gibbering, froffing cheap coffee from every orifice.

I am a firm believer in quantity over quality but the third mug defeats me, the silver stainless silver pot still impossibly full. Silver haired quivering old dears applaud every bit of my child’s bad behaviour insisting he is ‘just lovely, just lovely’, rubbing his head with wired shaking claws as I chase him out of the cafe into the grim drizzle of a Cleveleys spring.

It is rare for me to feel young but with both hips still mine, mine mine and pure caffeine roaring through my veins I roar up the high street, dodging more signs, more signs for 80p coffee, coffee ‘happy hour’, in and out the charity shops, my child bending his head in a desperate effort to thwart the zombied fingers heading towards him with the shaky chorus of ‘those curls, those curls..’

Cleveleys is a few miles away from Blackpool where even at this early time, a drunk man from Kidderminster will be aggressively trying to chat up a traffic warden under the red eyes of his howling sleepless friends.

Here, people have risen early to put on ties or a nice warm coat, purchase the Daily Mail and have jolly banter outside the butchers, the bakers, the cheese shop or the greengrocers.

 

They don’t even talk about death in the charity shops.

 

THEY DON’T EVEN TALK ABOUT DEATH IN THE CHARITY SHOPS.

 

I am suspicious and scared and leave quickly, wondering at this strange new tribe who have found eternal life by the North Sea.

I shall drink more coffee in future.

3 comments