Who saw Chris Evans on the front page of the Western Morning News yesterday making an even bigger twat of himself than usual trying to surf in Newquay? Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he hid his trademark ginner hair under a floppy hat which automatically set off every TWAT ALARM within a hundred metre radius, and drew even more attention to him, which was probably exactly what he wanted. Nice hat, Chris! Seven on the twat richter scale.
But just as you think it's safe to go back in the water, who should turn up on the front page of The Guardian this morning but David Cameron in a kooky C-Skins shortie with a brand new bodyboard stuck under his arm at Polzeath and set the TWAT ALARM crying like baby Florence Endellion at three in the morning. Nice wettie David! Not. Eleven on the twat richter scale.
Saturday 28 August 2010
Thursday 19 August 2010
Pier Group Pressure
Every summer, generations of kids have been jumping off the pier in St Ives. I bet the minute Smeaton turned his back to put down his trowel and hoisted his trousers back up over his bum crack after having just laid the last block of his pier in 1770, at least twenty local kids pushed him to one side and jumped off the end.
One of the reasons I don't like Michael Foreman's books is that he treats pier jumpers as if they were stupid. At the start of one book, this kid who lives right by the sea and is supposed to go pier jumping all the time, goes running along the pier, past his mates who are shouting to him not to do it, and jumps off the end without looking. As the tide's out, he ends up paralysed from the neck down (adding to the difficulty of him already being paralysed from the neck up). If you live by the sea you tend to know when the tide's in and when it's out, and if you're that reckless, without being harsh, you're asking to end up in a wheelchair in my opinion, nobody in their right mind who knew what they were doing would do that. And it's not that his mates were actually encouraging him to do it, which is another myth of pier jumping. Nobody makes you do it.
I've never been much of a joiner-in myself, but one thing I do do with loads of other local kids during the summer holidays is go pier jumping. It's a bit of a rite of passage for kids in St Ives, and one of the things that seperates us out from the emmet kids, who we don't really like joining in. I'm not one of the ringleaders or anything, and not that daring (like I wouldn't jump off the top of the car park wall by the Museum for instance, like some of them did on the spring tide the other day, that was MENTAL), but when it's a high tide, and living right by the harbour as I do, I'm usually there and I take my turn in the pecking order (which is pretty low down because nobody knows me really and I keep myself pretty much to myself), and nobody tries to stop me joining in. In fact there's some videos on You Tube of the St Ives pier jumpers, and if you know who you're looking for, you can just see the back of my head in the background on one of them (but not jumping off, because nobody could be bothered to film me jumping). I've blown up a still frame from it and stuck it on my wall with a circle round my head.
Sometimes we get emmet kids trying to join in, but you can always tell who they are (well obviously most of the time you don't know them, so you can tell they're emmets), if they're wearing a new, but really crappy make of wetsuit that doesn't fit them properly (because their mums and dads have bought it with growing room for next year as well, not realising that a wetsuit that doesn't retain a layer of water in it next to your skin totally defeats the object of wearing it), but the real giveaway is the shoes that are supposed to protect your feet against weever fish, which are the MARK OF THE EMMET. When they get full of water, these shoes are impossible to swim in, and they either fall off and get lost in the sea or if they take them off we chuck them around until they end up in the sea anyway.
Emmet kids hang about on the edge of things, then gradually get to the front and either take ages to jump off or make a great showy-off thing of it, shouting and waving their arms about. Locals cheer each other on, but we never cheer the emmet kids. Some of them get a bit too cocky, and these are the ones who are most likely to hurt themselves by landing stupidly in the water, jumping too close to the wall or even onto the submerged steps. Lately we've had a bit of attention from the police, to do with jumping near boats or in front of boats as they're coming in or out of the harbour, but to be honest, they've been pretty cool about it, saying that they grew up here like us, and when they were kids they did it, and because they know that if they banned a local tradition like pier jumping altogether there'd be an outcry and nobody would take any notice, so that would be just one more thing that they'd have to do, and wouldn't be able to do it anyway, they're taking the right line in my opinion. They know the locals know what they're doing, and I reckon the story that was in the paper was more for the emmets really, not us. The other hazard is seals, and you have to make sure you don't jump on top of one of them because they hang around right under the wall, especially at the end of Smeaton's Pier where they wait for the fishing boats to come in, and sometimes you don't see them until you're in mid-air. I saw an emmet kid jump off the pier the other day, and as he came up, this seal came up right next to him, and the kid literally CACKED himself, you could see it running out of the bottom of his wetsuit legs as he came up the steps afterwards.
One of the reasons I don't like Michael Foreman's books is that he treats pier jumpers as if they were stupid. At the start of one book, this kid who lives right by the sea and is supposed to go pier jumping all the time, goes running along the pier, past his mates who are shouting to him not to do it, and jumps off the end without looking. As the tide's out, he ends up paralysed from the neck down (adding to the difficulty of him already being paralysed from the neck up). If you live by the sea you tend to know when the tide's in and when it's out, and if you're that reckless, without being harsh, you're asking to end up in a wheelchair in my opinion, nobody in their right mind who knew what they were doing would do that. And it's not that his mates were actually encouraging him to do it, which is another myth of pier jumping. Nobody makes you do it.
I've never been much of a joiner-in myself, but one thing I do do with loads of other local kids during the summer holidays is go pier jumping. It's a bit of a rite of passage for kids in St Ives, and one of the things that seperates us out from the emmet kids, who we don't really like joining in. I'm not one of the ringleaders or anything, and not that daring (like I wouldn't jump off the top of the car park wall by the Museum for instance, like some of them did on the spring tide the other day, that was MENTAL), but when it's a high tide, and living right by the harbour as I do, I'm usually there and I take my turn in the pecking order (which is pretty low down because nobody knows me really and I keep myself pretty much to myself), and nobody tries to stop me joining in. In fact there's some videos on You Tube of the St Ives pier jumpers, and if you know who you're looking for, you can just see the back of my head in the background on one of them (but not jumping off, because nobody could be bothered to film me jumping). I've blown up a still frame from it and stuck it on my wall with a circle round my head.
Sometimes we get emmet kids trying to join in, but you can always tell who they are (well obviously most of the time you don't know them, so you can tell they're emmets), if they're wearing a new, but really crappy make of wetsuit that doesn't fit them properly (because their mums and dads have bought it with growing room for next year as well, not realising that a wetsuit that doesn't retain a layer of water in it next to your skin totally defeats the object of wearing it), but the real giveaway is the shoes that are supposed to protect your feet against weever fish, which are the MARK OF THE EMMET. When they get full of water, these shoes are impossible to swim in, and they either fall off and get lost in the sea or if they take them off we chuck them around until they end up in the sea anyway.
Emmet kids hang about on the edge of things, then gradually get to the front and either take ages to jump off or make a great showy-off thing of it, shouting and waving their arms about. Locals cheer each other on, but we never cheer the emmet kids. Some of them get a bit too cocky, and these are the ones who are most likely to hurt themselves by landing stupidly in the water, jumping too close to the wall or even onto the submerged steps. Lately we've had a bit of attention from the police, to do with jumping near boats or in front of boats as they're coming in or out of the harbour, but to be honest, they've been pretty cool about it, saying that they grew up here like us, and when they were kids they did it, and because they know that if they banned a local tradition like pier jumping altogether there'd be an outcry and nobody would take any notice, so that would be just one more thing that they'd have to do, and wouldn't be able to do it anyway, they're taking the right line in my opinion. They know the locals know what they're doing, and I reckon the story that was in the paper was more for the emmets really, not us. The other hazard is seals, and you have to make sure you don't jump on top of one of them because they hang around right under the wall, especially at the end of Smeaton's Pier where they wait for the fishing boats to come in, and sometimes you don't see them until you're in mid-air. I saw an emmet kid jump off the pier the other day, and as he came up, this seal came up right next to him, and the kid literally CACKED himself, you could see it running out of the bottom of his wetsuit legs as he came up the steps afterwards.
Excuse me, are you a lifeguard?
This week, Porthmeor Beach sees the Greenaway Pro, a surf contest commemorating Tom Greenaway, a St Ives lifeguard who was tragically killed in a road accident two years ago.
I'm not going to write about fake lifeguard hoodies again, because I've already done it before (11 August last year, if you can be bothered to look), and anyway, although I was the first as far as I know to point out in my blog the blatant misrepresentation involved in an ten-year old from Sheffield walking around with LIFEGUARD MINXY written on her back, the national press now seem to have jumped on the bandwagon, and only this morning in McColls, I noticed on the front page of the Western Morning News that two of the shops that sell this emmet-exploiting shite in Newquay are at each other's throats over who got the idea in the first place.
One of these shops in Newquay turns out to be NO WORRIES, a very apt name I reckon for a shop which makes its money out of shamelessly selling this sort of crap which in my view devalues and exploits the status and respect, not to mention the skill and sheer humanitarian valour of lifeguards. I don't imagine for a minute that anyone in imminent danger of drowning is going to frantically wave for help at a ten year old just because she's wearing a red hoodie that says LIFEGUARD MINXY on the back (which would be particularly pointless as she'd have to have her back to the sea for the person in difficulties to read it anyway), but that's not the point. I would like to ask LIFEGUARD MINXY'S parents what lifestyle they thought they were buying young Minxy into (I would have also liked to have asked them what the fuck they thought they were doing calling a kid Minxy in the first place, but that's another thing), let alone the adults who buy these things for themselves. Whatever it is, do they look around them and see us locals walking through the streets wearing them? More to the point, do they see REAL LIFEGUARDS walking about wearing them on their day off? The real lifeguards like those who (as I see from our local paper The Cornishman only today) rescued 10 people from a rip current on Porthmeor beach last Thursday. I really hope LIFEGUARD MINXY wasn't among the people in need of being rescued, but I wonder how many of them struggled back up the beach only to contemplate their narrow escape from drowning as they put on their fake lifeguard hoodies?
Anyway, reading this thing in the Western Morning News this morning about the battle between NO WORRIES and this other shop in Newquay, I realise that NO WORRIES (which should really be called NO CONSCIENCE) is in fact a chain of shops, of which there is also one in St Ives, selling this exploitative crap. Idon't know if this makes it worse, but it certainly makes it more lucrative for the owners of Emporio No Worries. So, I would like to take this opportunity of not writing about fake lifeguard hoodies to point the finger at our local NO WORRIES and the other shop that floods St Ives with these tawdry symbols of lifestyle appropriation every summer, EXHIBIT ONE in Tregenna Place (next to the Co-Op), and say to their proprietors - next time you need a lifeguard, I hope for your sake the only person in shouting range is the likes of Tom Greenaway, and not LIFEGUARD MINXY from Sheffield (age 10).
I'm not going to write about fake lifeguard hoodies again, because I've already done it before (11 August last year, if you can be bothered to look), and anyway, although I was the first as far as I know to point out in my blog the blatant misrepresentation involved in an ten-year old from Sheffield walking around with LIFEGUARD MINXY written on her back, the national press now seem to have jumped on the bandwagon, and only this morning in McColls, I noticed on the front page of the Western Morning News that two of the shops that sell this emmet-exploiting shite in Newquay are at each other's throats over who got the idea in the first place.
One of these shops in Newquay turns out to be NO WORRIES, a very apt name I reckon for a shop which makes its money out of shamelessly selling this sort of crap which in my view devalues and exploits the status and respect, not to mention the skill and sheer humanitarian valour of lifeguards. I don't imagine for a minute that anyone in imminent danger of drowning is going to frantically wave for help at a ten year old just because she's wearing a red hoodie that says LIFEGUARD MINXY on the back (which would be particularly pointless as she'd have to have her back to the sea for the person in difficulties to read it anyway), but that's not the point. I would like to ask LIFEGUARD MINXY'S parents what lifestyle they thought they were buying young Minxy into (I would have also liked to have asked them what the fuck they thought they were doing calling a kid Minxy in the first place, but that's another thing), let alone the adults who buy these things for themselves. Whatever it is, do they look around them and see us locals walking through the streets wearing them? More to the point, do they see REAL LIFEGUARDS walking about wearing them on their day off? The real lifeguards like those who (as I see from our local paper The Cornishman only today) rescued 10 people from a rip current on Porthmeor beach last Thursday. I really hope LIFEGUARD MINXY wasn't among the people in need of being rescued, but I wonder how many of them struggled back up the beach only to contemplate their narrow escape from drowning as they put on their fake lifeguard hoodies?
Anyway, reading this thing in the Western Morning News this morning about the battle between NO WORRIES and this other shop in Newquay, I realise that NO WORRIES (which should really be called NO CONSCIENCE) is in fact a chain of shops, of which there is also one in St Ives, selling this exploitative crap. Idon't know if this makes it worse, but it certainly makes it more lucrative for the owners of Emporio No Worries. So, I would like to take this opportunity of not writing about fake lifeguard hoodies to point the finger at our local NO WORRIES and the other shop that floods St Ives with these tawdry symbols of lifestyle appropriation every summer, EXHIBIT ONE in Tregenna Place (next to the Co-Op), and say to their proprietors - next time you need a lifeguard, I hope for your sake the only person in shouting range is the likes of Tom Greenaway, and not LIFEGUARD MINXY from Sheffield (age 10).
Saturday 7 August 2010
Baffled by Fog
Doesn't take much to baffle the emmets does it? Obiously they've never seen the John Carpenter film in which a mysterious fog comes off the sea and covers a coastal town in New England, in which case they would not be BAFFLED but shitting themselves and running for their lives.
Sunday 25 July 2010
A Balanced Opinion
There's a fish and chip shop near where I live called The Balancing Eel. When you go through the door there are steps in front of you with a railing down the middle. The idea is that you queue up one side and come down the other when you've got your fish and chips so that all the people in the queue can smell them and know it's worthwhile carrying on waiting in the queue, which can sometimes be well long. I've seen it stretch from the counter, down the steps to the door, and out of the door down the hill as far as the slipway on the Wharf. Perhaps this is where the Balancing Eel gets its name from, because the queue looks a bit like an eel that has slithered out of the sea, with its neck going up the steps and its head resting on the counter.
Of course the queue is only ever this long during the summer when the emmets are in town. If you're a local, you aren't going to queue for your fish and chips, no matter how good they are, as if you were an emmet what you do is get to time it so that you aren't hanging around, and can just go in and ask for what you want. In practice, this often means timing it so that you go in just before they shut, so that you run the risk of them having nothing left. But sometimes if you go in just as they're cleaning down for the night you can get extra chips or even an extra bit of broken cod slipped into your parcel for nothing. So that's why I sometimes find myself walking home from the Balancing Eel with a warm parcel of fish and chips in one hand and the warm metallic smell of vinegar and chip fat on my fingers, going the long way round through Norway Place and along Back Road West, so that I can finish them off before I get home. If you go the most direct route home, it takes about half a minute to get to ours from the 'Eel, but if you want to finish off your fish and chips before you get home, and you go the long way round, it can take as long as you like.
Now, here's a tip for all you emmets. If you get your fish and chips from the Balancing Eel, why not walk down to the Wharf and sit and eat them on one of the benches there? There's nothing we locals like more than seeing you sharing your fish and chips with our seagulls!
Of course the queue is only ever this long during the summer when the emmets are in town. If you're a local, you aren't going to queue for your fish and chips, no matter how good they are, as if you were an emmet what you do is get to time it so that you aren't hanging around, and can just go in and ask for what you want. In practice, this often means timing it so that you go in just before they shut, so that you run the risk of them having nothing left. But sometimes if you go in just as they're cleaning down for the night you can get extra chips or even an extra bit of broken cod slipped into your parcel for nothing. So that's why I sometimes find myself walking home from the Balancing Eel with a warm parcel of fish and chips in one hand and the warm metallic smell of vinegar and chip fat on my fingers, going the long way round through Norway Place and along Back Road West, so that I can finish them off before I get home. If you go the most direct route home, it takes about half a minute to get to ours from the 'Eel, but if you want to finish off your fish and chips before you get home, and you go the long way round, it can take as long as you like.
Now, here's a tip for all you emmets. If you get your fish and chips from the Balancing Eel, why not walk down to the Wharf and sit and eat them on one of the benches there? There's nothing we locals like more than seeing you sharing your fish and chips with our seagulls!
Monday 14 June 2010
Vuvuzela (anag) Zulu Vulva
Who didn't arrive in Rustenberg with the only knowledge of South Africa being Michael Caine in Zulu saying 'I thought I told you only to blow the bloody doors off?' Or that Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi, founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party, played Zulu King Cetewayo in the film?(and not very well, in my opinion).
Anyway, the big turning point in Zulu is of course the scene in which the British couldn't get the lids off their ammunition boxes. Obviously this is because they were wearing gloves made by the same firm as made Rob Green's goalkeepers' gloves.
You know what you can do with your Vuvuzela
If you're in downtown St Ives tonight, come down to the Wharf and listen out for me.
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can try blowing my vuvuzela
You can try blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela, ay ay ay ay ay ay
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