Unicycle Emptiness

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.

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I hear the words ‘Shipwreck Walk’ and my mind flows rapidly and exuberantly through tragedy, romance and death. And everyone likes romance, tragedy and death.

It is a walk starting in Fleetwood, guided by and funding the RNLI through the treacherous Morecambe Bay and my main concern is when all the earnest men in woolly jumpers are staring earnestly at the barnacled ribs of ancient galleons I might seem ignorant over whether it is from the 16^th or 17^th century as they tramp over the treasure chests peeping out which somehow only I can see and thus get the acclaim and oh the huge amounts of money somehow for finding.

What I was not expecting was no shipwrecks. And a sellout of crisps in the middle of the sea.

Fleetwood is out in force and they are determined to have a good time.  I see few furrowed brows looking at antiquated maps but there are a lot of cans and I am the only one with a rucksack. This makes me embarrassed and I hope for a sudden squall so I can be all resourceful before realising there is only cardigans and a hideous brown banana in the rucksack. Most people here look like they would chirpily die before wearing a somewhat bobbly Bay Trading cardigan.

We walk out into the bay, always an exciting experience when knowing of the ‘treacherous quicksand’ and towards a distant lighthouse. Upon arrival it is Escheresque in its bold hold onto existence, its wooden shackles snapped in so many places it seems impossible it is still standing. Underneath its shadow, a folk duo is suprisisingly playing and crisps and kit Kats are being sold but have sold out by the time we fight over whether with our solitary gold coin to have a packet of Walkers cheese and onion crisps or a Kit Kat.

I see brown skeletal ribs of long sunk ships poking enticingly out of the sucking sucking sand. I cannot wait to touch them and imagine Tragedy.

But when the walk continues, it snakes merrily back to the starting point. The route has changed to encompass no shipwrecks. I was not aware of this and am saddened but nobody else seems to care. This is an impromptu party in the sand and the hiss of opening cans of beers fills me with envy. I have only water and sensible footwear, dammit. It is an unusual situation for me to be in and I resolve to carry beer and crisps with me at all times. Just in case.

The earnest men with maps and books do not exist, the shipwrecks remain a mirage but I have walked across the bay, dodged quicksand, touched the fragments of a lighthouse and soon I will find that the North Euston Pub does a large house red for three quid something.

And it will have been a good day.

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It is Jubilee weekend and I am determined to avoid the queen. I do not like her reptilian smile and beady eyes. I do not like her slight sanctimonious smirk. I do not like her gently folded hands and I do not like anything she stands for, whether it be her and her extended family bopping wildlife on the head or hee-hawing around their Lovely Houses when I yearn to afford laminate flooring from B and Q.

And thus I end up in prison.

And it’s all the queens fault.

Lancaster Prison contained within the castle complex is open for the second time to non-offenders as part of the Jubilee celebrations since it was decommissioned a year ago. I could give you some fascinating facts about the prison being the oldest continual prison in the country and how the courts sentenced more people to be hung there than anywhere else in the country besides the Old Bailey in London but in my excitement and enthusiasm about PRISONS and DEATH and WITCHES I will no doubt spectacularly exaggerate and not bother to look up actual facts and dates  because who would when the subject matter is PRISONS and DEATH and WITCHES.  And then instead of my steady stream of Spam I might, if I’m lucky get an annoyed missive from a local person on a Hotmail account informing me that I am incorrect about something significant and I should correct my facts and I will be all embarrassed and angry at the same time.

And it will be the queen’s fault.

Everything is.

The huge old wooden entrance door to the castle, the ancient wall containing it splattered with musket shot is opened slowly to show the fascinating jumble of archaic cruelty, torture, murder, graffiti in ballpoint pen and toilets separated from the room by a mere screen.

The prisoner in cell one should he/she have pleaded Not Guilty might have had narrowed eyes aimed at him in the unlikely event the judge came to his/her cell and seen the cannabis leaves drawn carefully on the wall. I watch my toddler cheerily attempt to thwart the wire and forbidding notices and go up several flights of forbidden  stairs and feel a sudden pang of guilt that we are not at a petting farm. Then he has a huge tantrum due to not being allowed to dangerous forbidden things in a prison and I want to leave him here.

The cell where the ‘witches’ and other poor unfortunates were kept is almost Disneyesque in its over the top caricature of terribleness.  A stone time worn flight of steps curving into a small hellhole of utter darkness, dankness and depravity. I jokily threaten loudly to put the badly behaved baby in there and no-one smiles. Which is embarrassing. I guess they are too busy thinking about sad and lonely deaths centuries ago or trying to hear the guide to enjoy a weak pun about making a child suffer. Bastards, I will put them in there as well. And the queen. That’ll learn em.

Somewhere a convict is reading this because they Googled ‘escape from prison tips’ or something and my languid prose appeared and they are laughing about the stupid idiots who pay nine quid to go to prison on a sunny bank holiday weekend. For nine quid I was pretty much expecting a ride on a broomstick but the reality was better and I say this rarely. I loved the angular lines of stark modernity against the crumbling walls of the medieval, I loved the Health and Safety notices next to where people were murdered by the state for stealing a handkerchief and I love the way where for a brief minute when recoiling in the sudden sunlight outside the castle, our government, our recessions and even the queen didn’t seem quite so bad.

Then I shivered in that sudden stream of bright sunlight,  told myself to man up and went home to play The Sex Pistols and to try not to think of the living deaths I paid nine quid to gawp at, like a viewer at the Roman Coliseums, excited about misery and death as long as it is diluted by Time.

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They take parking a car in a field very seriously in Wray. About three men in luminous tabards and various facial expressions from ecstatic enthusiasm to somber steady seriousness gently guide us through to a sweet smooth spot next to another car in a field. I feel it was £1.50 well spent.

Wray seems to be a place where many things might be Taken Very Seriously and Decided by a Committee. I went to a cold car boot here last week and all the books had all been very recently featured in Sunday supplements of Good Newspapers. I suspect nipping to the Post office here with a hangover on a Saturday morning might be fraught with discussing meta-textuality within AS Byatt and Victoria Beckham’s Learning To Fly is hidden next to the empty Gordons bottles in the conservatory.

The theme for this years scarecrow exhibition encompasses anniversaries- the Titanic, the Jubilee, etc and the Olympics.

Many villagers decide to try and take on all of these grand narratives by having a sagging straw filled queen saying something about the Olympics beginning with ‘One…’

The first scarecrow I was going to caption was of Boris Johnson but my boyfriend could not bear to take a photo of the mop topped lumpen caricature. Or even his scarecrow…

I have never see such immaculate rubbish in my life. I could quite happily live in this small triangle where I suspect a protractor might have been involved. And this was the rubbish from a fun fair! It was a very neat fun fair to be honest. I wanted some awful chips in a cone and perhaps a wild-eyed carnie but there were kangaroo burgers and soft rock played in quiet measured tones instead.

A canoe, a scarecrow and the queen all united against Cameron. Now THIS is how revolutions happen.

What Jubilee? What recession? In this house we only like spies. Spies are awesome. I was not allowed to have a scarecrow in a holdall. The committee said No.

You know you are in a bad way when looking at scarecrows in swimming costumes makes you compare cellulite with them.

It is also the anniversary of the Pendle witches. And Colonel Gaddafi apparently, looking towards the back.

This looked so much like the actual queen I had to stop and stare and fire five rounds just to be on the safe side.

In Wray, people have spare Dysons just in case of the occasion of gay/queen/Queen/I Want To Break Free video scarecrow puns.

I like the photos of local children in the portholes of this one. Are they simulating drowning or just simulating watching scarecrows drown? Leonardo De Caprio scarecrow’s big rubber glove hand on Kate’s nether regions adds extra pathos and intrigue.

Usain Bolt is actually made of bolts. An astounding feat but I would not want to be neighbours with the dedicated, literally minded welder of metal.

Wray loves synchronized swimming. This was terrifyingly ambitious, splendid and detailed. Apart from the feet. But feet are hard.

There was a parade of giant scarecrows on Friday night. It was somewhat reminiscent of middle England Wickerman. Apart from the fact that nobody died. Unless the Teacup ride at the fair turned nasty later.

Unicycle Emptiness also covered Wray 2011 and 2010. Click the links for more (slightly dated) topical scarecrow related shenanigans than is probably healthy….

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There is no way I am going across that fucking bay. The walk to the toilets from the car park has nearly broken me. It is cold, at least 50 metres and at the end the toilet demands 20p per pee and I have no cash on me. This is it. This is as much as a personal challenge as I can face on a Saturday morning but a nice woman holds the loo door open for me, a delightful example of middleclass anarchism.

I look across the churning sucking bay. There is far too much water there. I seek sanctuary under the awning of ‘She Sells’ eco boutique. I decide I love Arnside so much I do not want to leave it.

Volunteering to do a cross bay walk is easy. The reality is terrifying. You forget about the elements when sitting on a sofa blankly clicking on Facebook.

But it is for the Bipolar UK and I have told a good friend and organiser of the walk that I will do it.

The assembled crowd are jolly and friendly.

The bay is the opposite of jolly and friendly. I look wildly around for escape routes but it is 9am, I do not drive and the pubs are shut. Thus I have no escape routes and am embarrassed by the assembled lively enthusiastic children.

I can see Kents Bank, our destination, twinkling in the distance; it does not look too far away.

Then we wade into the water and walk away from it for hours and hours.

The feeling of doing something you have never done before is discombobulating, terrifying and exciting.  I realize I hate adventure and try and make a break back to the Albion pub that will be open in a few blissful hours but a woman casually walking with a sturdy four year old in her arms and a serene smile makes me keep going. Albeit not in the spirit of charity, more envy and spite at her impressive upper arm structure. I am struggling to keep my bag of crisps out of the water.

The sand is cold, the sand is freezing, we head out across the bay and it is amazing.

Crabs crawl from under our feet; we are still not walking towards Kents Bank, that small village across the bay but to the far horizon.

But from this mismatch of people with rucksacks comes a festival in the middle of the sea. But without the shit music. People chat, share hipflasks, coffee and stories, strangers natter and we hold hands as we go knee high in water, water which is surprisingly warm compared to the elements outside it. The views are amazing. It looks like dinosaurs could still live in those yonder blue shadowed mountains. We walk and walk and watch our destination sitting like a mirage, never ever getting closer.

The sand is colder, colder but alive and fresh and so wonderful to feel nature between your toes, feel the texture and depth of natural materials, assess the sand before plummeting your feet in. I trust Cedric Robinson, official Queens guide to the Sands and his biblical route marked with branches but suddenly feel a sinking sinking sensation in the feet and stomach and a scrambly second of panic before twisting my toes away from the tiny hole in front of me and trying not to think about how it would feel to keep sinking like others have here before me. Horses and carriages lie under these sands.

With the first submersion into proper water comes at first the denial and then rebirth. I cannot escape this so I walk into it, head held high and people around me whoop and cheer.

The second delve through the river Kent and the current makes this impromptu al fresco town realize the true power of nature-it is only up to our thighs but we have to concentrate on walking because there is a surging churning invisible power that is desperate to take us far far away and I can see how it might be easier to give in to it, let your legs be sucked away by the invisible maelstrom beseeching you to go away, away, away, it seems almost easier than this dogged stomp against nature.

This transient population is now alone on a sudden sand desert in the middle of nowhere that could be the Caribbean if it was not for the hazy mirage of Heysham power station in the distance, power and danger again in a squat faint box on the horizon.

We walk through the sea barefooted and biblical, take photos of views we may never see again, we are doing something very special today.

Kents Bank is starting to appear closer. I want a drink and a wee. But I also don’t want this to end, because this experience will never happen again.

I walked across the bay to raise money for Bipolar UK

If you have ever enjoyed reading this blog, it would make me very happy if you could chuck a quid in their direction.

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The hippies have taken over and I can’t afford a thing. The prices in the chain charity shops * are so ludicrous I feel like pushing an old lady volunteer over smartly in the back whilst screaming ‘Are you fucking insane? It’s a kid’s plastic drum with no stick! No wonder people still have cancer! ’ But I am English and thus look at a Primark dress tag in a slightly sarcastic way on the way out. That’ll learn ‘em.

Totnes is not in the Northwest. If it were, people would come on coaches to point and hark. And maybe throw rancid butter pies. It is in Southest Devon, near rubbish Plymouth but edging away discreetly and burning some Nag Champa to hide the smell. It has history, centuries of it but more recently as being a hippy colonized town, banning carrier bags, having its own currency and the rest. The first person I see when alighting out of the car at Morrisons (I could not find a Fair Trade car park and I like their cheese selection) is a dreadlocked man on a skateboard. When walking up the happily antiquated high street, my boyfriend hears someone say extremely earnestly to a child around six years old, ‘how is your chakra feeling today?’ As a professional Wiganer, he is delighted by this and falls to his knees in delight but as we are on a hill, nobody notices.

After going in the Riverford Organics deli and coming out with a whopping big Homity pie, a mustard and cheese pastry, some posh Italian something and a massive chocolate truffle for under a fiver, I decide I want to live here. I’m quite shallow. There is a cat sitting under a war memorial and there is well-priced pastry from a fancy organic shop I have read about in The Guardian. My wonderful life forged in the North can go to hell. I decide to keep this thought quiet for a bit.

And then there is suddenly shopping like my eBay saved searches. Cutesy old fashioned exterior shops selling within dresses with unicorns on, Spanish designer coats and Scandinavian babygros. Three shops in a row sell Moomins handbags. I love Moomins handbags! I run to find the boyfriend and baby who in the general excitement over cheap organic Guardian pie I forgot ever existed and hyperventilate gently at them whilst pointing wildly.

‘Yes, I know you like them but you can’t afford them.’ Oh. I had forgotten about that. ­ The happy bohemian gentility of Totnes comes at a price even a well-priced pie can’t save. The babygros are 30 quid despite and because of their quirky retro patterns. The coats are two hundred. And we are in a small town in Devon in a recession.

The hippies have taken over and with them came counter culture, with the counter culture came the trendiness, with the trendiness came the aspiration, with the aspiration came the desire, with the desire came the money to fulfill the desire. Thus the desire to be counterculture drives out the true hippies, those with the ideas and ideals but not the brand that determines and markets it.

I hear a woman fluting the words ‘positive energy’ with the elocution, and confidence to make it a statement of fact like the Ocado delivery arriving at 12 rather than an ideal found somewhere hidden within oneself. A small terraced house here now costs a Lot.

But The Performing Arts College has closed, many say the hippy heyday is over and my boyfriend declares the chippy we end up going to, to have a slight hint of menace due to a mushy pea related mix up. Somehow, however I am still alive to tell the tale.

But if you go to Totnes,  remember it is a fairy tale version of hippyness, wonder how the fuck people afford to live there and be very very  clear about your order to the softly spoken man in the chippy who has the faint aura of menace.

* the local charity shops  for local animals were sadly all closed

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Today I saw something which ashamed me and filled me with glee. It roused me from torpor and filled me with passion. It made me want to hang garlands of flowers around it, spray-paint bold red Anarchy signs next to it. But of course I did nothing. I was a (very vaguely) respectable looking woman with a baby sleeping in a pram and nowadays I don’t fight the state, I just  bitch about it.

But there is something about seeing menacing signs being subverted by the simple means of spray paint that brings out the spring passion in everybody.

Freeman’s Wood does not soar splendidly. You do not gaze at great gnarled oaks here bearing silent stories and majesty. No. In this strip of wildwood betwixt housing estate and derelict mills are spidery old trees, the only trees for miles around but they still whisper and rustle, still change with the season, wild creatures still live their lives amongst them and people, city people, edgeland people, Marsh people walk or cycle past and feel better for just having seen a glimpse of nature.

And now they are fenced off with spiky topped fencing. They are now being felled despite having a Tree Preservation Order being placed upon them.

There used to be a BMX track here amongst the woods, a kids place, made by and for kids. That has been cleared away and fenced off in a place that used to belong to the people. Well, they thought it did. Now Shadow People have claimed it as their own and despite acting illegally by felling the trees are getting away with it. And for more box like housing in areas where people are desperate to sell their own homes.

When Occupy Lancaster occupied the derelict Railton Hotel opposite the train station, a place I have had to apologise and explain about to every non local friend or family member arriving on the train and always ending with ‘but the rest of Lancaster is lovely’, the police arrived at night and in force to the peaceful people trying to make the eyesore habitable (owned by a Shadow Person who apparently live continents away and has not touched the once beautiful building for many years.  Although the splendid rose bushes were suddenly sprayed with weed killer one unhappy day)

Many police came, many people were arrested, a knitting vigil was held outside the building and this was felt dangerous and anarchic enough to have a police car watching the knitting at all times.

But now, illegal destruction is going on in the woods and nobody cares. Well nobody in authority. But somebody has spray-painted slogans, one of which, the common land and the goose, has been a slogan of disenchantment and anger about stolen land for centuries.

And it  is sad the slogan has had to remain in public use. But in some way wonderful because people still are angry and aware enough to use it.  Tradition lingers and centuries old anger against the state still suddenly flings itself against a metallic sign even though we now have mobile phones instead of geese and apathy reigns supreme. But  some stranger somewhere with a can of spray paint knows about the history of common land and about how it can so easily be stolen from the common person.

If you reside in Lancaster, write to the council about Freeman’s Woods. Look at the blog and  website below to find out more. Get angry. And do something.

If you don’t live in Lancaster, the great land grab is still happening and has happened around you.

And now there is not much land to grab anymore.

http://virtual-lancaster.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/catastrophic-damage-to-protected.html

http://savefreemanswood.wordpress.com/

http://occupylancaster.org.uk/

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This post is dedicated to Lemons who replied to my blog when I thought I could not be arsed to write anything and after the realisation I had a reader, I wrote….

The elegant manor house hides nothing more sinister than flip board charts featuring ‘mind maps’, corporate slang and possibly some comic sans handouts in the cheap tin bins. I don’t know. I never went inside but ghosts do not appear wherever there is designated parking.

Haigh Hall near Wigan looked very haunted on ghost hunting sites on the Internet where in some Ballardian scenario it is now more scary than in actual reality. It was owned by People of Pedigree and a delve through its old parkland, skirting dog poo and having to reply to cheery people saying ‘hello’ did not diminish my enthusiasm and trust in coming face to face with some wraithly ancient nobleman-would he have a 19^th century Wigan accent? And how would I be able to tell?

Then I saw the designated parking. My heart sank. For ahem, some strange reason I never get to actually see any undead but the conference rooms on the first floor looked despicably modern for being in such a glamorous sweep of antique façade and the function rooms downstairs were too red napkinny looking to harbour a visitor from another realm. I suspect he would be asked to pay a sixteen pound a head surcharge in case of potential ectoplasm stains on the canapés.

The view across Wigan is glorious and tinged with a little irony, as now, it is the slightly shabby around the edges manor house, which works for a living. The chaise longues have been carted off to auction and replaced with well-lit fire escapes and I imagine precautionary laminated signs possibly with warning Clipart near the hot taps.

And now the people who used to work at the mills whose chimneys still stand untouched, admired and part of the landscape come to t’ manor to sit in rooms now stripped and unsmocked of velvet and learn in a different less physically grubby way of how to make more money for someone richer. But at least there is probably a coffee machine. I was too scared to enter the building, it being a Sunday morning and looking neither bride or slightly over eager trainee at Footlocker who really wants to maximize her potential by getting there a day early.

The parkland surrounding Haigh Hall is still (apart from the dog poo dodging) timeless (actually I suspect dog poo dodging or the lack of dodging and thus resultant swears might be the only thing that links all of humanity throughout the ages)

A handwritten sign states that the small gauge railway described and pictured on Haigh Hall’s website in a charming glossy chugging photograph is not working today. A look at the rusty tracks says that the small gauge railway has not worked since Chesney Hawkes was number one.

The enshrouding managed nature is extensive and beautiful though and free to wander around in. I liked the high barbed wire walls surrounding the abandoned zoo-such things are a delight to the macarborous viewer imagining the entombed lion skeletons which clearly do not lie within. There is a derelict crazy golf course; surely the perfect setting for a first novel that nobody ever buys. There is a walled garden for people to read in, surely the best use of council tax to ever exist, apart from boring sanitisation.

I like Haigh Hall and respect to the ghost hunters on the websites I guiltily peruse who profess to have found the undead here hanging around the Douglas Suite, possibly like me, wandering what the hell is a slide carousel? I suspect it is not as fun as it sounds.

And what is more terrifying? The possibility that ghosts exist in this Hall or the actual realization that people are forced to sit in a room in it, visualising not the past but future profits and how they can be a key marketer and upsell, upsell, upsell.

This is why I like the past more. But even now the Past has to work for a living.

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I blame the recession and the baby. Well, mostly the baby. I loathe the term ‘mummy blogger’ and pointless baby orientated witterings but to be fair, he does exist and a combination of childcare fees and a one year old who emits ear piercing shrieks when forced to stay still for upwards of a second means perambulations around real ale pubs, musings on the generosity of pizza toppings and well, just general fun are currently curtailed.  I have gone nowhere interesting or done anything interesting for a considerable period of time apart from look at the internet, walk zombie eyed around the utilitarian racks of Wilkinsons, pick toast up off the floor and mindlessly eat kettle chips.

I miss writing the blog, I miss writing but my muse has currently deserted me-everything is familiar, pleasantly so but familiar nonetheless and I can not describe it in interesting terms to the badly punctuating spammers who converge like hungry hyenas on Word Press thinking that a year old post on Morecambe needs a comment advertising Xbox cheats.

A new Sainsbury’s has replaced the old one in Lancaster. Will that do you? I have not stepped through misty wilderness looking for ancient Celtic standing stones but it was a bastard trying to find out where the reduced shelves have gone. And even if they still exist. There. A cliff-hanger to keep my readers. And I am glad there is still some mystery in my life.

Walking over the hill and seeing Lancaster Castle with its flag flying, always cheers me up because what is more picturesque than seeing the sanitised reconstructed reboostered portal to misery-where more people were sentenced to he hung than at the Old Bailey, where the trapdoor to death is cooed at in six pound guided tours and where people, real alive people, sons and daughters, wives and children shook and trembled, their legs giving way before being toppled to their long miserable deaths-sometimes for stealing food to keep their families alive.

Yes, I do love Lancaster Castle. Really. I feel guilty for loving the historic misty-eyed wolves howling at midnight version of the past and being bored of the present where even despite the Conservatives, no one in this country is currently entombed in a black sulphurous cell awaiting their time to be murdered by the state. Nowadays is more a form of prolonged psychological torture in the form of Workfare and Kafkaesque paper forms of eternity and when you realise that in your house there does not exist a black pen for the Form Reading Machine to read and the Form Reading Machine spits black flames at your lilac glitter pen found in a drawer and thus you have to reclaim and you try to phone up to explain but there are no people anywhere to speak to anywhere and you think of standing stones and the mysteries and enchantment there used to be. But at least you have your teeth.

It is cold and every weekend is the same. Yesterday we went to Carnforth Station and had coffee and cake in the refreshment rooms, a paen to the past where an elderly man plays piano and spiky old peoples’ writing in the visitors book reminisce and rhapsodise about a place that only exists because of a made up film, Brief Encounters where the characters in the film go back to their lonely short unhappy lives because society dictates that is how things should be.

I wish they had had excellent sex passion fuelled sex and run away together but that would have only resulted in a different tedium without the thought of ‘what might have been’.

In a small room for children there is a slightly grubby Thomas The Tank Engine Tent which my baby refuses to go in and on the window ledge is an even grubbier Tigger the Tiger, a battle worn much loved children’s teddy, forgotten and unclaimed in this interchange of trains and destinations. Somewhere, a child wants his Tigger.

So (she says in a sparkly hairdresser voice) have you been anywhere nice? Show me you are not a spammer only looking at this blog in an ill-fated desperate attempt to advertise wedding dresses or brides. Tell me about where you have been-and I will shoot bitter envious shoots of green if you go on about Tuscany or somewhere as I have no passport or money. Make the uninteresting, interesting. Because it is for a stranger.  I want to know about Tenby, Kidderminster, anywhere else but here. Standing stones would be good but I love this country because history abounds everywhere. My blackest mood can be lifted by walking along a miserable arterial road blackened by pollution, encrusted with Lambert and Butler packets and seeing an excellent graffitied image of an owl, a dark anonymous building, huddled behind the endless procession of lorries but which has the insignia of ‘1829’ above the door. Imagine the story behind that house! Imagine who carved that insignia, their life, their death, what and who used to traverse in front of that bowed sunken hulk and what was there before.

History is fascinating. The future is terrifying. I will sit here and think of the past because despite the lack of dentists, the dying in childbirth, the babies buried for want of a piece of bread, the harsh gritty reality of it all is softened by time-my baby lacks no food despite the fact I consider myself poor but my eyes soften at a house where probably a woman died in childbirth. Why? Because the Other is always more preferable.

Tell me about your Other. The mundane is only mundane if it is known.

Please?

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I am so far behind the times with this I might as well be espousing the joys of Abba, the pill and flares. Basically I was at my parents in Devon for Christmas and there was an article in The Guardian about the best budget places to eat in Lancaster appearing to be by someone who’s idea of ‘budget’ was whatever place he spotted on a brief perusal of the town before sodding back off to The Ivy.

I was going to write an excellent retort and link to it on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free page but I never got around to it, being too busy doing sweet FA. Apart from eating an impressive mix of carbohydrates eight times a day.

The article pissed me off because some of the places the reviewer espoused were not remotely budget for most of the population. For example, The Sun Hotel, which was mentioned, is an upmarket establishment frequented by quite loud people in suits who have no Farm Food carrier bags and do not shuffle. It is a nice place to eat but your open topped ravioli will be around eight or nine pounds and a medium glass of wine is four pounds. That is not budget. That is a first date.  Genuine budget establishments do not have leather sofas and iPad clutching clientele. A true budget establishment is somewhat sticky and has spelling mistakes more eye catching than the food. Or is just a great place that does not charge through the nose.

So anyway, a month late, here is my definitive list of the best budget eateries in Lancaster.

1.     The veggie food stall in the market every Saturday. Oh yes. Here be griddled Nirvana for only three pounds. This is the ‘veggie mix’, a calorific delight consisting of fried halloumi, falafels, freshly made potato cakes and a choice of sauces all wrapped up in pitta bread then deposited in the somewhat more downmarket polystyrene tray by an immensely cheery man. Should I ever get married, this will be the wedding fayre. Please provide your own plastic Spork.

2.     Windy Hill Bakery, King Street –Excellent bread for around 1.50 and vegetarian pasties for the same price consisting of glamorous un Greggsy fillings like spiced aubergine and feta. Run by the friendliest woman in the world who appears to be from an Enid Blyton book. An aura of bonhomie pervades.  Also do exceedingly good cakes for the magic price of 1.50 or under.

3.     The Merchants. A cosy underground pub which has the papers, good wine for under four quid for a large glass and the best chips in existence: crispy, yet also curiously soggy behemoths and a veritable steaming Everest of them for 2.50.  If you are trying to impress or have recently won the lottery then why not spend an extra three quid on the soup then you can have the endless possibilities that the soup, piece of bread and portion of chips entails. Shall one mouthful be a mini chip butty and the next a soup dipped chip? Or shall I go for the elegant tapas of the more traditional soup dipped bread before having a margarine-smeared chip? I know how to live. Oh yes.

http://www.merchants1688.co.uk/

4.     The Gregson. The main food menu isn’t enormously cheap and the veggie menu seems to have suffered somewhat since I first came here but the light bites menu with all things 4.95 has garlic mushrooms and chips where the garlic mushrooms joyously spurt out boiling hot garlicky oil when you bite into them. It is a cosy bohemian pub/community centre with an always-lit fire with a dog often slumbered in front of it, the papers, a toy chest and friendly staff.

http://gregson.co.uk/

5.     Here, I admit a grudging allowance for one of the establishments on the original Guardian list. The Sultan of Lancaster café has an excellent spicy tamarind and chickpea soup for 3.25 and pleasingly also has curly fries along with more traditional Indian fare.  Many establishments that serve Indian food and curly fries are relentlessly awful but this place manages to be classy and have one consider curly fries a traditional Punjabi delicacy.  http://sultanoflancaster.com/

6.     Sainsbury’s café. A full veggie English with free-range eggs and a slight air of misery for under four quid. See also Wetherspoons. The Sainsbury’s café features fewer alcoholics in suits sitting alone and adrift at their island like table perches with a trembling hand on an empty pint glass but more people with bandages strangely. The Daily Mail is the most popular paper here, which is why I don’t frequent it often despite the excellent value for an admittedly slightly joyless wizened breakfast.

7.     Nice Bar. Not the cheapest place in town but by far the most glamorous if your idea of glamour is wallpaper featuring a Sistine chapel fresco and literary quotes from books you have never read embedded on walls and ceiling.  A meal can be had for around six pounds, which in my book is eminently reasonable. And this is an excellent place to sit and eavesdrop on artisans, intellectuals and the pretentious. http://nicebarandrestaurant.co.uk/

8.     Verdes. For five pounds twenty five you can have a slightly forgettable pizza or pasta and snigger at the slightly lurid painted interpretations of Italy on the walls.

9.     Greenhalghs bakery. Butter pie. 1.20. Job done.

10.  Soupernova.  Another place mentioned in The Guardian, it does big bowls of good soup for around 3.50. You can feel your life expectancy rise as you eat it. Thus it then makes perfect sense to go back to the pub.

http://www.veggieplaces.co.uk/list_reviews.php?place_id=620

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/dec/14/budget-eats-doing-lunch-in-lancaster

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