And the winner is

Well, according to our local paper, "from a pork sausage with orange marmalade to an ice-cream made from sheep's milk, yesterday's Taste of the West awards ceremony was full of surprises". Oh really? Yes, the so-called "Oscars of the West Country Food World" were announced yesterday, but unsurprisingly, my mum and dad's bed and breakfast in St Ives was not among the nominations yet AGAIN. Another summer of my reluctant culinary talents - such as artfully arranged items on a plate spelling the message EMMETS GO HOME, and breakfast marmalade spiked with chillies and raw onion - wasted.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

I've been discommunicated from blogworld for the last two weeks (not that anybody will have noticed) THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN other than, to quote the words of the Buzzcocks, by having fallen in love with someone I shouldn't've fallen in love in love with someone ever fallen in love in love with someone I shouldn't've fallen in love with. Which is quite appropriate somehow as the object of my MISPLACED love (if that's what it was) happens to have a compulsive repetitive speech disorder, and this is pretty much the way she actually talks. But that and the Tourette's were always going to make kissing an unpredictable experience.

This is just one aspect of a very complex spectrum of learning difficulties she has actually, now I've mentioned it. OK, I know what you're thinking. When we first met at the youth club (it's a day centre actually, but I only go in the evenings) I thought we'd got a lot in common (my spectrum's probably less colourful than hers). The main things we have in common are 1) that we both dislike authority (I'm often thought the Tourette's is never half as bad as she makes out), and 2) for some reason we've both found it quite difficult to get a girlfriend/boyfriend up to now. So for at least two reasons and probably more if I could be bothered to think about them, which I can't because the whole thing is still just too PAINFUL, we seemed made for each other. I'm sure a lot of people who go through difficult SEPARATIONS look back and think the same. How wrong they are!

Anyway, when she read the blog I wrote, about the night I'd suspected her of cheating on me and meeting someone else outside the cinema and I'd gone to check up on her and run into Robbie Williams in the Co-op instead, she had a fit. I don't mean she was mad with me, I mean she had a fit, full on, thrashing about on the floor eye-rolling pissing herself fit. This was in the library of all places, because she's not allowed to use the computer at home. They had to call the ambulance. While she was in the hospital waiting for her mum to pick her up she sent me a horrible threatening text which I'm not going to repeat. But then you don't take threats to injure you all that seriously when they come from a self-harmer, do you? Like if she'd said I hate you so much I'm going to carve your name in my arm with a compass point I'd have thought she meant it. She'd got as far as the E in Jed last time, after all. As it was I just went to bed.

The next afternoon, I'd just got home from school and she showed up just as I was about to start doing my geography project. I'd got my laptop open and it was all just loading up. Mum had let her in and she'd come up to my room, and the first thing I knew she was standing behind me. She hadn't said anything, and when I realised there was someone there it made me jump. I was just turning round when her left hand came round my face and I felt her smear all this stickiness in my eyes. Next thing I heard a noise like a wet fart and all this cold wetness spread over the back of my hands, which were still on the keyboard of my laptop. And then she laughed, this mad, out of control inhuman laugh, like Stacey Solomon when she gets voted through to the next round on X factor. Next thing I knew, mum was in the room and my mad ex-girlfriend was sitting on the bed, shaking. I couldn't open my eyes, they didn't hurt, but I physically couldn't prise them open, and as I rubbed my hands together bits of skin seemed to be coming off them like a badly made up extra in the Thriller video. It all lasted a split second, and then the panic and her laughing then crying and my mum shouting what's going on, what's going on?

As if I knew. I thought I'd been blinded. But after a few seconds I realised I wasn't in pain, it wasn't burning and whatever it was she'd smeared all over me wasn't life threatening. Far from being burned and disfigured for life, it wasn't even going to clear up my eczema. The familiar smell was the first clue, a strong Salt and Vinegar crisp smell, and then the tackiness and the way the skin on the backs of my hands and my face began to tighten and go shiny and wrinkly like an old man's. It was PVA glue, not the sort of glue you sniff and get hooked on but the sort you spread on your hands and let dry and then peel off when you've nothing better to do. She'd got it all over my face, my hands and down my front, and now as she sat on my bed, her head in her hands and shaking uncontrollably, all matted in her hair as well. All she could say was ss-orr ss-orr ssss-orr, which wasn't even a proper apology. My mum stayed with her while I went to wash it out of my eyes and my dad phoned her mum to come and get her.

While I could wash it out of my eyes and peel it off my hands, I couldn't get it off the keyboard. It had gone right through the gaps between the keys and into the works, and the laptop was totally wrecked. Mum tried to encourage me by saying that we could get it replaced on the insurance, but I could tell by my dad's face that the insurance people had probably never even heard of us, let alone be prepared to pay out. I didn't even ask him. So that was my Fatal Attraction moment, and why it has taken three weeks for me to get a new (well I say new, secondhand out of The Cornishman, £120) laptop.

So next, having posted this blog, I'm going to change my status on facebook to single. But cautious.

I'm loving Angel Delight instead

Facebook was going MENTAL last night with rumours that Robbie Williams was in St Ives. Between about 7 when the news first broke that he was in the Hub and about 11 when he was allegedly spotted buying some chips in the Balancing Eel, the hourly rate for babysitters went through the roof as all the thirtysomething 'rents in town tried to get somebody in at the last minute so they could go out and check out the rumour for themselves. Which was a bit of a pisser for me, actually, because I came within twenty minutes of having my first ever proper date. It was with a girl who doesn't go to our school, but who's mum teaches her at home because she's a bit disruptive. We were supposed to be going to the cinema together, but just as I was in the bathroom wondering whether she'd notice my nervous eczema, she rang up to say that somebody had asked her to babysit up Belyars right at the last minute, and because she didn't know them very well, or really know me very well come to that, she thought it best if I didn't ask if I could go with her.

Fair enough, I've never seen the point in all those teen slasher movies why lads want to go babysitting with girls, I mean I can't think of anything worse than having to sit there watching telly just waiting for the slasher to ring or some six year old to wander downstairs demanding a drink of water. But it just seemed like an excuse to me, and I got the impression she was winding me up, so I wandered over to our appointed meeting place anyway, the Co-op opposite the cinema, just on the off chance that she'd had a better offer and was meeting someone else instead. I'm not sure what I'd do if she was.

Well, I got there about five minutes before the time we'd agreed to meet, and hung about in a doorway where I could keep an eye on the Co-op and the cinema as well, but there was no sign of her. I gave it until ten minutes after the film had started before I gave up. I wasn't going to have to face her at school today, and nobody else knew, so at least this humiliation was just a private matter between me and my eczema. And not being funny or anything, but 'a bit disruptive' in this case means borderline special needs, so as a first date, actually I think I can probably do better.

Anyway, when I got fed up and cold with waiting, I go in the Co-op and there's this little guy in a long leather coat with a wooly scarf wrapped round his face and a furry trapper hat, hanging around in the instant desserts aisle. You couldn't see much of his face, but what you could see was quite tanned and a bit rodenty. I thought he was behaving a bit furtively at first, as if he was hiding, probably nicking stuff I thought, but then I decided that he wasn't used to shopping and didn't know what he wanted. My favourite is butterscotch angel delight, but there was only one packet of it, and he didn't seem as if he could make his mind up whether to buy it or not. Do you want this? he says, pointing at the angel delight. No, I said, I'm going to have this, and picked up a chocolate one. But if I were you I'd take that, it's the best decision you'll ever make. And I gave him the packet of butterscotch angel delight. He looked me straight in the face and smiled at me with these incredibly white teeth and really twinkly eyes. Do you think so? he said. I'll do that then. Yes, I will. Thanks for your advice, son.

I've never taken much notice of Robbie Williams, so it never crossed my mind that's who I'd just met in the Co-op, until I got home and facebook was going MENTAL about the rumours of him being in town, and then it all clicked into place. So when he announces he's rejoining Take That, I for one won't be surprised. I'd like to think that the story of how he made his mind up with the help of a spurned teenager with eczema and a packet of butterscotch angel delight in a Co-op in St Ives would become the stuff of legend. Mind you, he'll probably think it was a close encounter of the third kind and give all the credit to extra-terrestrials.

OMG! JEDMANIA! It's official.

I knew it was only a matter of time, but no matter how much you believe in yourself, the world has a way of bludgeoning your self-esteem and self-confidence in a million little ways on a daily basis. Believe me, coming home every day not knowing whether you're going to find all your stuff in a bin bag on the landing because some GUESTS are in your bedroom, and having to sleep in the attic, is not good for your self-esteem. Anne Frank is not a good teenage role model.

My school once did a production of The Diary of Anne Frank for the school play. The head of English (who was a complete lovey tosser) directed it, and didn't he just love ordering all these kids in Nazi uniforms around? Anyway on the opening night, I swear, I was in the audience (Mr Cox has begged me to be Anne's brother, but I'd refused to be in it, basically because I'd got it mixed up with The Sound of Music, and I didn't want to sing) and when the Nazis first come on the stage somebody at the back shouted She's in the attic! which spoiled the tension a bit.

Anyway, enough of Anne Frank (no disrespect to the victims of the Holocaust). But you would think they'd have heard her through the floor banging away on that typewriter wouldn't you? Today of course she'd be blogging or on facebook, but whether it would have had the same impact on generations of school kids reading The Blog of Anne Frank I don't know, and a typical facebook entry might have read: 'Nzis R sURchng 4 me dwnsrs. Ditnt fnd me. Not goin out 2nite. lol'

I mention this because I not only have a blog, but a facebook page as well now. I set it up a few weeks ago to try to get more people reading my blog. I've got more than 400 friends already, but the comment I get most often is Who the hell is jednbreakfast? It's weird what people ask you. Like someone asked if I was Nigerian, because my name was Jed Nbreakfast. Another one asked if my face was disfigured and that was why I didn't have it on my profile photo. Mind you, my profile photo's not that revealing to be fair, for obvious reasons. I'm sticking my neck out more than a bit with this blog, cos if my mum and dad ever found out I was writing it they'd be well pissed off with me dissing their B&B. And obviously if any of their GUESTS found their way to it they might recognise themselves and not be very happy either. I've had a few people ask me what my mum and dad's B&B's called, as if I'm going to tell them. I can't understand why, I mean, do they think it might be a good place to stay? I imagine not.

Anyway, this morning before school I went to the Co-op, which was pretty quiet this morning given that all of the emmets have gone home and the rain was bouncing down like javelins, and I had a hole in my shoe, not that that had any effect on why the Co-op was quiet. Just inside the door on the right they keep all the papers and magazines, and I usually have a quick look at the front of the papers as I go in, but avoid the magazines because mostly they all have photos of Jordan or Cheryl Cole on the front and I can't stand either of them. But check out the cover of Heat! this week - JEDMANIA is official, apparently. OK, turns out that the JED that is the focus of this MANIA is a pair of tintin-haired geeks who can't sing and can't dance, from some telly X-thing with Cheryl Cole in it, but WTH, as we say in facebookland, JEDMANIA is here. If it says so in Heat! it must be true. How good was that for my self-esteem? What did I care that my shoe squelched like Squidward Tentacles with every step all the way down to the milk aisle and back to the checkout? I stepped outside bathed in the spotlight of JEDMANIA. The absence of paparazzi could only be due to the heavy rain.

Bedtime Story

This time of year, when it gets dark before it gets light, when the Cornish rain fizzles in the street lights and soaks you through before it even touches you, when all the visitors have gone home and only the locals are left behind, this one night of the year we lock our doors and close our curtains and wait for the dawn that one of us will not live to see.

For on the night of Halloween, every year he comes and takes one of our kind with him to that place from which no one but he returns.

On a high tide when the wind moans and rocks the boats tied up in the harbour, and flecks the black water white under a full moon, he emerges from the sea on the final stroke of twelve. The steps he climbs from the harbour to the Wharf have been no more than a memory for two hundred years. He is tall and stooped under the weight of the water that streams from his salt-caked oilskins and the long boat hook he carries over this shoulder. Wrapped around his body and trailing behind him as he begins his terrible walk is the tangle of netting they say dragged him to his death.

He walks with slow, heavy steps, the water pouring from his laden seaboots. The few who have seen him have described a discoloured face bloated by the sea, the eye sockets empty holes beneath a mildewed seaman's cap, the lower jaw and lips completely gone. No one knows what this sightless face searches for, as he makes his slow deliberate way up one of the steep, narrow streets that lead up from the harbour. Those who lie awake in terror behind locked doors for his passing hear the scrape of his boots, the tapping of his boathook on the cobbles and the heavy, rotting net dragging behind him.

A couple of years ago the old woman who lived next door to us was found dead in her bed the morning after Halloween. They say that when they went into the house the carpets downstairs were soaked, and there was a trail of water all the way up the stairs and across the bare floorboards of her bedroom. The room was filled with the stench of rotting fish and mildew, and her bedclothes were stiff and white with salt and seawater. The old woman lay in bed, her grey hair wet and matted across her face, her mouth wide open in a soundless scream. Her papery hands were held up in front of her as if clawing at the air. And you know what, says my dad, who swears he was one of the men who found her, her face and neck were covered in criss cross marks as if she'd been caught in a fishing net.

What to Do in St Ives on a Pissy Wet October Half Term Week

First day of October half term, town's heaving as usual with emmets despite the fact that it's been raining all day. Here is my guide to What to Do in St Ives on a Pissy Wet October Half Term Week.

1. Wear shorts just like it was the summer - you're on holiday after all!
2. Don't forget the crocs, ideal for walking the slippery wet granite pavements.
3. Of course you can go crabbing in October.
4. Dogs are allowed on the beaches now, but make sure when they shit you cover it up, especially if there are surfers on the beach who are likely to stand in it.
5. Don't miss the Damien Hirst pickled unicorn at the Tate, and ask about their free admission to people wearing wetsuits
6. There's nothing incongruous about drinking hot chocolate whilst sitting out on the terrace of the Porthmeor beach cafe in a Hawaiian shirt.
7. Why not light a driftwood fire on the beach to keep yourself warm?
8. Is John Dory in season? Well, you could ask.
9. Visit one of St Ives' two specialist chocolate shops and ask Why?
10. Remember, Fore Street is now open to traffic from both directions.
11. Why not have your own Soggy the Bear bonfire?

Hayle is other people

Just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, this morning I found myself gazing across the Sargasso Sea of drifting humanity that is the Hayle Car Boot Sale. A car boot sale is where the dispossessed, repossessed and terminally sad go to trade rubbish between each other. Imagine a refugee camp stripped of its shanties and basic amenities like toilets, and replaced by transit vans and N-registered estate cars with open tailgates surrounded by wallpapering tables, and you have some idea. Basically it makes the market in Eastenders look as exotic as a souk. Compared to the average stallholder at Hayle Car Boot Sale, Stacy Branning, no, even Stacey Branning's daft mum looks as unapproachably glamorous as the perfume counter lady at Leddra's. The more enterprising stallholders rig up improvised rails, from which secondhand clothes hang dejectedly, like scarecrows round-shouldered with poverty. A lot of them just spread out out the flotsam and jetsam of their impoverished lives on candlewick bedspreads laid on the muddy grass. The customers who drift dead eyed between the stalls are straight from the mad, bad and dangerous to know catalogue of whatever casting agency has offices in Krakow and Tallin as well as Camborne. My mum and dad dragged me along because among other things they were selling my old clothes, fake surfing brand T shirts with embarrassing slogans on the front that I would never wear. Mum said that if people saw me there they'd be more likely to buy my old stuff than if it was just her. Some of them spent ages fingering everything on the rail and holding it up against their kids to check the size, and then they'd hold up two or three things and ask mum the prices, and then spend ages deciding which of them to buy, and finally haggle over the price of just one thing. Dad was getting really annoyed, you could see that, like first he was watching really suspiciously in case they were nicking stuff, and then he'd say things like do you want that then or not? and then he insisted with one woman on 50p for a hoodie that said I Surf Overhead on the front, when she wanted to pay 30p, so she walked off without buying anything after wasting at least twenty minutes deciding what she wanted. In the end dad got bored and went off, and to be honest we did a lot better after that, although I did get spotted by a couple of girls from school who no doubt would have spent most of next week ripping the piss out of me if it wasn't half term. Anyway, after about four hours, we'd made £24.60, minus the £6 it had cost us to get in, so that was £18.60 profit.

Dad turned up again just as we were packing up the car. He'd got a carrier bag and a slightly sly look on his face. Look what I got, he said, proper bargain these were. He'd only gone and bought a pair of secondhand binoculars and a boxed set of Wycliffe videos. Videos, not even DVDs. How much did you pay for those? mum asked him. £5 for the binoculars and £18 for the videos, he said. The bloke wanted £20 for them but I bargained him down.

The Many Heads of God or whoever

Great. The GUESTS who were in my room for the last two days (two old people at that) have gone off this morning and when I went in to check everything was OK I discovered that one of them had broken the head off my laughing buddha. When I asked my mum she said she didn't know what I was talking about, and no they hadn't said anything to her about it.

I had got very fond of my laughing buddha. Since I bought him we'd gone through a lot together, what with the whole Trev thing and so on. I could talk to him like I couldn't talk to my mum or dad. I've searched all over my room but there's no sign of his head either, so I can't even try to stick it back on with UHU.

Without a head, a laughing buddha loses his identity. Whatever he was before, without his head he's just a headless fat bloke. Where he was friendly, and I felt safe talking to him, now he's gross and well, a bit pervy to be honest, what with his man boobs hanging out and everything.

So what I've done is cut the head off of an old Action Man and I've glued that on instead. It's just about the right size, so doesn't look too bad, except obviously it's not a laughing buddha anymore as Action Man's face is a bit scowly and he's got this big scar on his cheek and he isn't bald like buddha either. I'm going to spray him gold all over so that at least his body and his head are the same colour.

Will that turn him back into buddha? That got me thinking, because obviously buddha didn't laugh all the time, so just the fact that he isn't laughing any more shouldn't be a problem. In some ways I think I'll prefer confiding in a buddha with a bit more gravitas than one who looked as if he was pissing himself at my worst fears. Or will he just look like an Action Man who's let himself go a bit, paralysed by drink, self-doubt and post traumatic stress?

When I think back, I remember it was a toss up between buying the laughing buddha and a little Ganesh, who I liked because he's got an elephant's head and a name that reminds me of Dennis the Menance's dog. I'm glad I got the buddha now, because if the Ganesh had got his head broken off, I think it would have been a lot harder to replace. If the worst comes to the worst with buddha once I've sprayed him gold, I can always turn him into a Christmas decoration.

Suspended animation

You may have noticed I haven't posted any blogs this week. Well the reason for this is that on Tuesday BT suspended our broadband service because my dad hadn't paid the bill. I knew times were hard, but not that hard.

Anyway it turns out that my dad HAD paid the bill, except instead of writing £194.92 on the cheque he'd written £174.92, so it was £20 short. For this they had suspended our broadband service. When I left for school yesterday morning he'd just started trying to explain this to somebody in India on the phone, which is apparently where most people who work for BT now live. When I got back at half three he was still on the phone, having by then driven himself mental by talking to half the population of India. He'd paid the £20, but it was going to take them four hours to reconnect our broadband. He said this wasn't good enough, and asked to speak to somebody who could do something about it, who told him it would take eight hours. The next person told him it would take 24 hours, and by the time I got home (roughly five hours after he'd started) the man he was speaking to was saying it would be 48 hours, but if he could do it over the internet it could be done straight away. My dad pointed out that if your broadband's been cut off you can't use the internet to get it reconnected. The man said he was 'customer facing' not 'service facing' so it was the best he could do. If he could do any better he reassured my dad that he would, and in my dad's position he'd be a bit pissed off as well (or words to that effect) but it was how the system worked, ie. it didn't.

Then my dad had a big bust up with the man in India, and asked for his name so he could report him. The man said his name was Rufus. My dad was a bit sceptical about this, and said Rufus what? Rufus, just Rufus, the man said. What, so I ring BT and say I'm complaining about the customer service I've had from Rufus in India? Yes, the man said, they'll know who I am. Now, given that the population of India is millions of billions, OK, not all of them can be employed in BT call centres, and there can't be many guys called Rufus in India, but it's still a bit presumptuous isn't it? Hello, BT? Is Rufus there? Yeah, Rufus in India, that's the one. He is? No, I'll hold..

So anyway, after 5 hours my dad finally got cut off, he reckons because Rufus put the phone down on him having been confounded by the precision tool of his remorseless logic, but probably because it was night time in India, and having got his £20 out of my dad Rufus decided it was time to go home, where he probably spends every night working on his PhD in quantum physics.
The broadband came back on at about 11 this morning. Result. My dad was still going round like a dog with two dicks when I got home this afternoon. Thanks Rufus of India.

Dead Shark Terror

Apart from Trev, there was another shark cruising St Ives last week. Well I say cruising, this one wasn't exactly cruising, it was more bobbing, in that it was dead. Mind you, even dead it was a pretty impressive twelve feet long, although being a thresher shark half of that was its tail. They 're not called thresher sharks because they hang around outside off licences, but on account of this massive long thin tail that's supposed to be able to break your arm with one swipe, although they say that about swans don't they, so it's probably a bit of an urban myth. Anyway this one caused a massive commotion in the local press because it was found by a late -holidaying emmet from Lincolnshire who spotted in bobbing around in the sea and WADED IN FULLY DRESSED to pull it out, not knowing what it was, and then a local surfer saw it and kakked himself because he recognised it was a shark. The headline in the local press was something like 'Surfer menaced by massive shark', which was stretching things a bit really, in that the shark was 1) dead and 2) has a mouth the size and shape of a hen's arsehole.

Big Deal No Deal

It rained a lot last night, and what with being worried about Trev doing the deal with the other place and having a stash of cash burning a hole through my pillow, it was hard to sleep. The rain belted down on the slates, and now and then as the wind shifted direction it would suddenly hit the window like somebody had blasted it at point blank range with a sawn off shotgun, or a giant invisible dog had cocked its leg against the glass. A couple of times I was jerked out of a fitful sleep, thinking that the window was going to explode and shower me with fragments of glass. Through the rain running down the uneven panes, a pixillated Godrevy Lighthouse blinked blearily in the distance.

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because it was just getting light when I was woken up by the sound of the loose floorboard on the landing outside my room on the floor below. The rain had stopped. I lay listening for a few seconds and then heard the creaky step three from the bottom. A few seconds later I heard the front door opening. Someone was going out, rather than coming in. I didn't hear anybody else moving, so I got up, put my hoodie on and scooping up all the money from under my pillow, stuffed it in my front pouch.

I got down two floors and to the top of the hall stairs just in time to catch sight of Trev slipping out the front door. Vaulting down the last few steps, I pulled the door open - his hand was still on the catch, and standing there in his light grey suit, he looked shocked, I guess because all I was wearing was a hoodie and my pants, and he probably couldn't even see my pants. I've got your money, I said, reaching into the pouch of my hoodie, and pulling out handfuls of coins. Here, count it, it's four figures like you said. He held both his hands out as I poured the money into them, pound coins, fifty pees, ten pees, even brown money spilled and slid between his fingers onto the wet doorstep. You said we had until the end of today, didn't you? He filled his pockets with his fistfuls of small change, and bent down to pick up the coins that had fallen on the ground. Then he straightened up, and I held out my hand for him to shake. That's how deals are done, I thought to myself, and satisfied I went back to bed.

It was quite a nice morning when I woke up again. The seagulls were making their usual racket on the roof. I went downstairs to find my dad, my mum and a policewoman in the kitchen. What's up? I asked mum. It's Trev and his wife, said mum. Turns out they've done a runner without paying their bill. It's not the first place they've done it either. This lady here says in the last three weeks they've done it in Polzeath, Padstow, Newquay and Perranporth. My dad shook his head in disbelief. We're sure it's the same couple, the policewoman added. The woman passes herself off as his wife, sometimes a production assistant. He's a highly plausible con artist who passes himself off as television producer, and as well as disappearing without paying his bill he often cons people out of large amounts of money on the pretext of featuring their property in a tv programme. Well at least he only got away with not paying for a couple of nights B&B here, right? Dad and I looked at each other. I wasn't going to say anything, and I got the feeling he wasn't either. That's the thing about being conned. As the policewoman said, you feel stupid, as if it's your fault, and you aren't going to go on Crimewatch telling everybody about it are you?

Four Figures

Trev said to dad as he was serving his breakfast this morning (no sign of Mrs Trev) that he'd had a call from his producer who was really interested doing this prog at our place, he said it had got everything they wanted, whereas the other place - well - he did a sort of side to side shake thing with his hand, which for a minute made me think he'd got Parkinsons or something and that was what he meant when he said he didn't want to show his hand, but it was meant to convey that things were uncertain, things were in the balance, and I'm sure the balance in question was the bank balance.

My dad was torn between excitement at doing the programme, being on telly, transforming our run-down B&B into a profitable business, and anxiety that Trev was about to do a deal with somebody else for an undisclosed sum that, whatever it might be, would be beyond his abilty to match. It's a measure of how much on a financial knife edge things are around here, let me tell you, that if my dad has to replace a light bulb I see an immediate impact on my pocket money at the end of the week, especially out of season when we don't have many people staying and there's no regular money coming in. My dad doesn't get much building work these days, probably because people can see what a pig's ear he's made of our house, I should think.

Anyway, Trev's phone rang and he went out to take it, and while he was gone I yoinked one of his sausages off his plate when my dad wasn't looking. He wasn't gone long, and when he came back he was shaking his head and had a serious face on, but it turned out to be one of those X-factor judge's looks that's meant to make you think one thing before they tell you the opposite. Fear, relief. Well, he said, it wasn't easy, but I've managed to persuade my co-producer that I need another day to complete negotiations here in St Ives. I bigged you up with him, I stuck my neck out for you, I said look, this place is just what we're looking for, we just need a few more hours to firm up the deal. So, this is it, I've rescheduled the production meeting until tomorrow, so I've got another day here, but that's all I can do. If we can facilitate the er, facility fee by close of play today we've got a deal. I can't go back to London tomorrow without the deal. Know what I mean?

We knew what he meant. I wondered how he'd managed to get so much into the conversation with his co-producer in the very short time he'd been outside on the phone, but I suppose that's how you get to run your own production company. Not wasting time. Being persuasive. Not taking no for an answer. We're looking at four figures, Trev said to my dad. I shouldn't be telling you this, but that's the other offer. I'm sticking my neck out for you here, right? Four figures, and we've got a deal, but it's got to be today.

Well, he'd made it pretty clear. Now he'd taken us into his confidence we were all in this together and we all had to make it work, or everything would be down the drain. We were looking at four figures, Trev had said. I went upstairs, put a chair against the door, put another chair under the the skylight, stood on it so my head and shoulders were poking out, and lifting up the loose slate, from the space in the roof took out the box I call my Escape Fund. I keep it in an old cashbox wrapped in a Co-op carrier bag to protect it from the wet, wrapped in a piece of sheet. It's money I stash away for when I need it to escape. Escape what, and how, I don't know yet, but I'll know it when the time comes. It could be to run away when it all gets too much, or buy a boat to take me off half way round the world, or pay my way through university, because sure as hell mum and dad aren't going to be able to afford it when the time comes. Keeping it hidden under a loose slate in the roof, I don't know, sort of keeps my options open in case I need to make a quick getaway.

I've never really thought through the logic of this quick getaway across the rooftops thing, because I keep the key to the cashbox sellotaped inside the back cover of my French dictionary, so I had to go downstairs to get that before I could go back, put the chair behind the door again, and count my stash. There was £34.87 in pound coins and change. That was four figures. Stuffing the money in my jeans pockets, I chucked the empty cashbox under the bed and went downstairs to find dad.

Deal or no deal?

It's not even an original concept, is it? You don't imagine with things as they are at the moment that anybody would be interested in yet another telly programme about doing up houses, even if they're B&Bs, so not proper houses that anybody in their right mind would want to live in.

The original bit of the concept appears to be that Trev wants my dad to pay him what he calls a 'facility fee' for him agreeing to use our house to do the programme, instead of one of the others he looked at. Turns out that what I thought about him looking at the other two first before he got to ours was right then, except one of the other B&B owners - he said he couldn't tell us who it was for confidentiality reasons, but I definitely thought it was woman's voice - actually rang him on his mobile while he was talking to dad and offered him what Trev said was 'a substantial sum' for doing it round at hers. When he said he was in negotiations with another owner, she doubled her offer apparently, there and then! He said he'd get back to her before he left St Ives tomorrow, but as he said to dad, that's the sort of dog eat dog business television is.

Trev really wants to do the programme round ours I can tell, he just thinks it's got better potential than this other place. As it's a programme about doing places up, I can imagine it has. The manky hand of Fate, giving with one and taking away with the other!

Access all Areas

So, seems my dad's got a new best friend. We don't have much privacy here as you'll already have gathered, so imagine my annoyance last night when I went into the kitchen to find my dad sitting at the table with a man whose voice I immediately recognised (even without it being filtered through the floor). I also spotted straight away by the dexterous way he was pouring my dad's touch this at your peril Jack Daniels into the glass he was holding that, unless he'd got an extra hand (which you definitely wouldn't want to show to anybody if you had one, would you?) there was nothing about either of his two visible hands that you wouldn't want not to show. Perhaps he was hyper-sensitive about the fact that he bit his nails quite badly.

This, said my dad, looking at me warningly, is Trev. Trev this is Jed. Awright Jed said Trev in a way that you could tell straight away he wasn't used to talking to kids my age. Your dad here's told me all about you.

Yeah right. That I'm mental and go to a special school and am only allowed out at weekends on the condition that I have to sleep in the attic so you needn't feel guilty about chucking me out of my room.

You'll never guess, my dad said, Trev's only a television producer - I run a production company, Trve corrected him. Off of the telly though, my dad insisted in his unreconstructed way. He's visiting St Ives to assess its potential for a new programme concept. He reckons that the family atmosphere small properties like this provide for their guests is so 1970s, but they've got real potential for upgrading as boutique B&Bs for more upmarket er - he looked to Trev who fed him the line like someone chucking a sardine to a seal - clients. Dad swallowed it headfirst. Yeah, clients, not guests, different thing altogether you see, isn't that right Trev? He glanced at Trev just to check that he'd got it right. He reminded me of one of those people you see on telly reading from a prepared statement. I've said that myself, haven't I son? my dad was saying, deviating recklessly from his script. Isn't that just what I've said before to you and mum? "Boutique B&Bs." He didn't quite hook his fingers in the air but I definitely heard him nail the quote marks around those words as he repeated them.

So the idea is, Trev chipped in. I could just about hear the page of the script turn over in Dad's head. Well yeah, that's the thing you see son, Trev here reckons that his production company'll put up the money for us to do this place up, gut it from the inside out, turn it into a boutique B&Bs, and it's all on the telly, a series like. It's just what he's looking for! What do you reckon to that then, eh? You know, one of those 'how we did up a property' programmes. Then to tie in with the programme, Trev's got the press contacts, journos from the travel pages, Sunday supplement features, the works. We're lucky Trev and his wife found us, they were going to stay at Porthminster while they looked round, but it was full and you'll never guess, someone at the hotel, someone actually at Porthminster Hotel, recommended they should try us. Trev nodded at me. That's right, he said, well, they said, we don't know if they'll have any vacancies, but you should try there, it's one of the best three B&Bs in town.

I wondered which the other two of this dubious trinity were, and whether Trev and his wife had tried them first before settling for us. See son, my dad said, full of himself, what I have always said to you, treat your guests well and the word gets around. One of the best three B&Bs in town. You can't buy that sort of recommendation.

I wanted to say if our place was so good why would Trev (or my dad come to that) think it would be improved by being converted into an upmarket boutique B&B. Our guests stayed with us because we were cheap and right by the harbour and near to a lot of frankly much better B&Bs that invariably filled up before we did. To me, we are this resort's B&B of last resort.

So much wrong with that

Turns out that when Mrs Mikey was talking to me yesterday she wasn't introducing herself at all, but asking for her key. So her name's not Mikey or anything like it. What sort of a person starts demanding things off of somebody they've just found on the floor with most of their internal organs ruptured by falling downstairs? She told dad I was messing about on the stairs and nearly took her legs out from under her (in those shoes?) and then wouldn't answer her when she asked me for her key. That's because I didn't understand her stupid accent, which to be honest made Jordan sound like Monica Stewart. But my dad's way of dealing with it, which he seems to think was an OK thing to say given that he was having to think fast on his feet, was to tell her I had 'special needs' ie was a bit mental, and went to a special school up Truro. Nice one dad.

Don't Have Nightmares

When you live in a bed and breakfast house the last thing you can expect to get on a morning is a proper BREAKFAST. I wait for the clatter of plates that means dad is clearing up, and then get myself down to the kitchen to see if there are any leftovers. All I got this morning I got half a piece of toast that one of our GUESTS has left on the side of their plate.

Anyhow, I was standing in the kitchen washing this piece of toast down with the dregs of a carton of Tesco value orange juice when my dad came in. Are you deliberately trying to drive our GUESTS away? he demands, do you want us to end up out on the street? I didn't know which of these questions to answer first. My first thought, obviously, was that he'd found my blog. This blog.

These people, he went on, gesturing to the door that leads to what my mum and dad optimistically call the 'guests dining room', are LOADED, they don't need to stay here, they could afford to stay anywhere in St Ives, they could probably BUY the Porthminster Hotel and still have change for a crab sandwich at the Tate, but you, you, you're just as RUDE to them as you are to everybody else. Anybody'd think you RESENTED people staying here.

So he could have found my blog, but by now I'm thinking this wasn't about the blog, but something else I've done. I'm standing there looking at him, and the little flecks of spit in the corners of his mouth that he gets when he's mad, trying to think how I've been rude to any of the guests. As I'd only just got up and hadn't even seen any guests this morning, it couldn't have been something I'd just done. All I can think of, standing there, thinking on my feet and licking my Tesco value orange moustache from my top lip, was that a few days ago dad made me take some suitcases out for some old couple who'd stayed in my room, and I'd deliberately put one of them down on a coil of dogshit that just happened to be outside the front door. I'd even half liked some guests we'd had in the last week or two (baby Wanda and family).

We work like (regretable offensive racist term, which I REFUSE to repeat - deep inside my dad, I'm sorry to say, is a pretty unreconstructed working class lad from Leeds, who sometimes regresses into an extra from Life on Mars) day and night to keep this place running (day AND night? What exactly do they do when our GUESTS are asleep them, I can't imagine my dad sitting up all night on the off chance somebody rings down for room service) we hardly earn enough to get by, and then when we get somebody staying here who's got some real money, who's actually prepared to put some of behind the place, you treat them like, like ...

He ran out of words here or I stopped listening, one or the other, I can't be sure. That happens sometimes, it's like someone flicks a switch and it diverts my brain as decisively as the points on a train track. It was the idea of someone putting money behind the place that did it. Was this bloke some sort of Brinks Mat type armed robber, offering to give my dad a cut if he could stash his cash behind our house? That wouldn't be much good, because as I've said before, the back of our house is overlooked by the back of the houses on the next street. I had no idea where dad was going, but me, I off on The Usual Suspects. Standing there facing the line up with a steely gaze. Narrowing my eyes as I scrutinised each one of them. They all have faces straight off of a Crimewatch reconstruction, but have any of them got a manky hand?

No He Isn't! (and hasn't been for some time)

OK, so it turns out it can't be Jeremy Beadle as he's unfortunately and sadly died a couple of years ago after a long illness bravely borne with the unfailing humour you'd expect of one of the nation's greatest pranksters. Now you say that, actually, I realise I hadn't seen him on the telly for a bit, he hasn't 'been about' like he used to be. There was one time you couldn't switch on the telly without him being on it, playing tricks on people, making them walk through that scary doorway and coming out as somebody else, saying Tonight Jeremy, I'm going to be Michael Jackson, or whoever, or presenting University Challenge. So, I'm really sorry to his family and fans and the people who make plaques for where famous people have stayed, for any upsettedness caused by me thinking he's staying downstairs in my mum and dad's B&B in St Ives at this moment. Good job The Sun or one of those papers didn't get hold of it before I could post this retraction, or else they'd have had the place beseiged with reporters and papparazzi and page three girls by the time we wake up in the morning. And I'm sure Mrs Beadle wouldn't have described our B&B as a 'shithole' either. If Mrs Mikey thinks downstairs is a shithole she ought to come up here and look at what I have to put up with.

Watch Out! Beadle's About

No ill effects to speak of from my fall down the stairs, apart from the slightest speck of blood in my urine and a bruise shaped like Australia on the inside of my right my elbow. Can't say the same for my iPod though, which is bust. So, living in the attic like Mr Rochester's wife's less sociable brother, and no music to listen to. What a fun weekend this is going to be.

You know I've said before how people often argue on their first night here? It must be something to do with the strain of driving down, spending hours cooped up in the car together and then drinking too much wine to 'wind down' or something. Anyway, you get it a lot, or rather I get it a lot, because being in the attic above my bedroom I often hear our GUESTS arguing with each other through the floor. I found out about sex that way as well, it took me a while to work out what was going on because it was just noises, like just hearing the soundtrack of a film without being able to see what they were doing, until I matched the noises up with somebody actually DOING IT on the telly, and put two and two together.

Anyway, Mr and Mrs Mikey are at it now (arguing I mean, not the other) and it seems to be about money. Turns out that he might have got more money than sense, but he still isn't satisfied and is trying to make even more, which is what they're doing here. She says why has he brought her to this 'shithole' and he says he doesn't want to draw attention to them by throwing his money about, and he says he doesn't want to show his hand until he's got the deal in the bag. So although I haven't seen him yet I think he must be either 1) famous or 2) mean, and 3) be a bit self-conscious about people seeing his hand. Perhaps that's why Mrs Mikey looked a bit funny at me with the black bin bag wrapped round my hand, because if he's got a disabled hand or something, she might have thought I was taking the piss. Anyway, I've racked my brains but the only famous people I can think of with a disabled hand are 1) Doctor Strangelove, who was a man in a film so it isn't going to be him, and 2) Jeremy Beadle off of the telly. I don't know if he's mean, but he fits my profile in every other way.

So, I'm sitting here in bed, convinced that genial prankster Jeremy Beadle is spending the night at our B&B, just beneath my feet. I can't imagine her driving in those shoes, and it's understandable that if an overstrung celebrity has had to drive down all the way from London, he's going to be a bit fractious on his first night in a strange place. It may be my first brush with celebrity, (unless you count me spotting that man off Casualty that used to be Dot Cotton's lodger in Eastenders in the fish shop on Back Road West on day last summer) but I know you can't expect them to behave like ordinary people. There's a B&B just round the corner that has a plaque on the wall just because some bloke nobody's heard of called Daphne Maurier stayed there in 1940, so I imagine we'll definitely get one now because of Jeremy. Then all we'd have to do is wait for dad to eventually get round to putting it up.

Brief Encounter

Got home from school today to find a bin liner with my stuff in it on the landing. That's mum's way of telling me there's some ANNOYING GUESTS using my room. Great. Livin for the weekend and all that.

Just as I was making my way up the twisty breakneck stairs to the attic, like Ann Frank sneaking back upstairs after a secretive night out, I catch the bloody bin bag on a nail in the wall and it splits open, turning the stairs into a sliding scree slope of school books down which the smaller and more breakable of my few personal possessions - like my iPod and my little laughing buddha - bounce and spin like a freefalling downhill skier. A couple of pairs of jeans and a t-shirt fall out, sprawling on the stairs like the victim of a bored serial killer. I stand there with the flaccid remains of the black bin bag in my hand, the sleeve of a sweatshirt spilling through the slit like a disembowelled body.

I was really worried that my iPod had got broken, so I jumped down the stairs to get it, which I should have done a bit more carefully, because I slipped on my bloody FRENCH book and clattered down the last few stairs on my kidneys, which was very painful. And as if that wasn't bad enough, as I'm lying there on the landing trying not to cry, the door of my bedroom door opens and this woman comes out. She's an expensive looking woman with blonde hair and long legs and white strappy high heel shoes, and I wonder how she's managed to get up our stairs without breaking her neck. She has those sorts of toenails with the rims painted white that my mum says are a sure sign of somebody who has nothing better to do with her time and whose husband has more money than sense. If my first thought was how she'd managed to get up stairs without breaking her neck, my second was what the hell was somebody whose husband had more money than sense doing in staying in our house?

She looked at me a bit taken aback. Are you all right? she says. She has a accent like a premiership footballer's girlfriend. No, I want to say, I think I've burst my kidneys and you're in the wrong house. But I just nod and bite my lip. And she smiles and picks up my i-Pod and says Is this yours? If I speak I know I'll cry, so I just reach up to take it off her, and then realise I've still got the eviscerated black bin bag in my hand and I must look like a twat, as if cannoning down the stairs like a Skeleton Bob hadn't already made me look like a twat. You must be Jed, she says. Your dad told us about you. Then she throws me her name, which I don't catch. It's one of those two syllable country and westernish names which is really just two vowels strung together with a hyphen, like Jo-Lee or Kay-Lee. She says it in one of those voices that sounds like a question. I nod like a spacker, and in my head I call her Mikey because although that's a boy's name that's what it sounds like, and having already made myself look like a twat I can't ask her to repeat it. She looks at me for a bit, gives me the i-Pod, and goes back into my room leaving me sitting on the landing surrounded by all my scattered belongings with a shredded bin bag in my hand.

Changeover Day

In case anybody's wondering, I know what old rubber johnnies smell like because I once found two under my bed after some GUESTS had gone. That shows how crap my mum is at 'doing changeovers' as she calls it. Of course she makes a bit more of an effort if there's a GUEST coming in, rather than just me getting me bed back. Sometimes she doesn't even bother changing the sheets. I once found some pubes in my bed as well, AND long black hairs on the pillow. That's what I have to put up with.

So, today's Friday and baby Wanda and her mum and dad went home this morning and there aren't any more GUESTS at all on the books for this weekend, so the good news is that I've got my bedroom back, but the bad news is that now mum and dad haven't got any money coming in the pocket money's likely to dry up in a week or so.

Anyway, while I still had some, and as I'd already been persecuted for my religious opinions (see yesterday's blog) I went to the hippy shop on St Andrews Street on the way back from school today and bought a little fat laughing buddha who is now sitting on my windowsill. He looks a bit like baby Wanda.

Buddha v Jesus - no contest

At school today we were doing Buddhism. There was this picture of a laughing buddha in a book, a big fat guy sitting with his legs crossed and waving with both hands, and he was laughing his head off, not just a fake laugh for the camera (not that they had cameras in Buddha's time) but a real LOL belly laugh. What with the waving and everything it looked like he was on Youtube. I said to our teacher who I WON'T name here for fear of reprisals how cool it would be to have a god who laughed instead of one who just looked miserable all the time. And he said what do you mean, and I said all the pictures you see of Jesus he looks dead miserable like this, and I put my arms out and pulled a sad Jesus face. And he said 'That's because he's being crucified you wassock!' and SENT ME OUT.

Patchouli oil and old rubber johnnies

Thank God the festival is nearly over. I've started wearing one of those paper face masks that Japanese people wear on the tube to avoid catching pig flu, just to block out the smell of PATCHOULI OIL or worse on the streets. They had Gordon Giltrap at the Western the other night, which sounds like a primitive sort of fishing net, but is in fact the name of an old guitar man from the sixties. I bet it was hard to tell a microphone stand from a zimmer frame on the front row of that gig.

I've been turfed out of my room AGAIN because there's a couple with a baby using it, they aren't too bad actually, the baby's called Wanda and the man gave me a notebook made out of old tyres they bought at the Eden Project yesterday (the notebook, not some old tyres).

There's a bit of an end to end thing going on at the moment, which I imagine is down to the good weather, but there's a story in The Cornishman this morning about some people who went down to Lands End to start their walk or whatever it was to John O'Groats and because there was nobody there they set off anyway. Then, ten days later they get to John O'Groats and knock on the door and say 'We've just walked all the way from Lands End', and nobody believed them. Well surprise, surprise! Not even Michael Palin would expect to get away with that one would he? Anyway this bloke's kicking off because none of his sponsors are paying out. Serves him right.

I'm started using my new notebook to draft my blogs in, then I stopped because it makes my hands smell of old rubber johnnies.

Dexter's Return

Well, turns out that some of the geriatric band were pals of Trader Gray's from over Long Rock, so they managed to double up their gig at the September Festival in St Ives with his wake in Penzance and then carry it on over ours for the next three days. My dad said he'd never seen so many empty Southern Comfort bottles in one place since he was at university in the 1970s. He took them for recycling at Tesco's (the bottles not the band). I didn't go to their gig, but they seemed happy enough with it. So I got my bedroom back LAST NIGHT, but it stank of booze and fags so it's set my asthma off this morning, TYPICAL.

Anyway, it being Thursday I went over to get The Cornishman, fully expecting to see a photo of Dexter on the front page with a ransom demand or his ear cut off, but turns out (on page 13) that he (I'm doing it now, it's a stuffed toy not a living thing), IT hadn't been nicked at all but had been found by someone who worked at the Blue Bay Cafe right opposite where the bloody thing had been left 'guarding' the emmet family's bikes surprise, surprise ON THE VERY SAME DAY that it had been lost.

OK, so here's a scenario. Kid takes teddy bear for an ice cream (oh, don't teddy bears just love ice cream? no they DON'T), maybe so that mum doesn't see she's not left him 'guarding' the bikes after all (the mum comes across as a bit of a control freak), but has sneaked him onto a chair under the table on the pavement outside the cafe. When they've had their ice creams (Ooh, didn't Dexter LOVE his ice cream, he's got it all round his greedy disfigured little face), kid FORGETS poor Dexter in the excitement to get to Land's End, and by the time they find he's missing the kid is too shit scared to admit that she's left him at the cafe.

Oh, but an honest and kind hearted Cornishwoman who owns the Blue Bay Cafe has Dexter handed to her by one of her honest waitresses, and instead of throwing him in the bin (which is what it deserves) or holding him to ransom they put him on the counter where everybody can see him, waiting for him to be reclaimed. How so unlike the scheming, theiving, piratical Cornish as portrayed in up country fictions! Anyway, whilst apparently the emmet family managed to contact The Cornishman and get their story tugging at the heartstrings of the locals who are made to feel guilty, shamed and humiliated BY THEIR OWN LOCAL NEWSPAPER at the low cunning of their fellow Cornishmen (and women) who would stoop so low as to steal a teddy bear (a scruffy and evidently much loved teddy bear at that), they didn't think to go back to where they last saw him, where they would have found him sitting on the counter in the cafe. Obviously it's easier to perpetuate the myth of the devious Cornish than own up to the fact that you've left the anthropomorphised bundle of rags you've had in your cycle basket all the way from John O'Groats on a table outside a cafe.

But if that wasn't bad enough, the cafe owner not only offers to reunite Dexter with his careless family of end to end emmets, but actually takes it to Land's End first so 'that he had completed the final 10 miles of his trip from John O' Groats.' The paper even printed a photo of it sitting on that signpost they have at Land's End with the date on, to prove it had been there. I'm sorry, but to me, and I don't care who it is, teddy bear, leukemia sufferer or celebrity cricketer, technically this does not count as completing the journey. If I'd sponsored them, I'd refuse to pay up until the entire family had gone back to John O'Groats and done the whole bloody thing over again, en route picking up Dexter in Penzance, and giving a public apology from the steps of St John's Hall for maligning the Cornish and the people of Penzance in particular as teddy bear thieves.

But sadly this will not happen, as it is already apparently back with the careless emmet family in Bournemouth who are 'delighted to have Dexter back.' Not a word of thanks in public print, let alone an apology to the honest people of Cornwall.

The Soggy Syndrome

I started this blog to write about my frustrations with my mum and dad's stupid bed and breakfast and their annoying GUESTS who have made my life HELL this summer and turned me into a REFUGEE who doesn't know from one night to the next where he is going to sleep, except I know it won't be in my own room.

I've written quite a few of these postings now, and I've realised that they're not just about my mum and dad's B&B, but about what it's like to live in St Ives which most people think is idyllic and tell me how lucky I am to live here, but which is actually a daily purgatory of annoyances and frustrations which in my small way I am constantly fighting against. I feel like that little kid on the trike in The Shining most days, you're just going about your ordinary everyday life and then the lift doors open and a massive tsunami of something not right bursts out and totally innundates you.

In the local paper, The Cornishman, this week there was a story about an end-to-end family (that's a family doing John o'Groats to Land's End) on bikes for charity, which turns out to be raising money for their local Scouts. That's not much of a real charity if you ask me and more like a middle class form of begging, but that's not the point of the story. This family had this teddy bear called Dexter who was like their mascot, a really scruffy bear with an eye patch, dressed up in a tee shirt, and having done 955 miles of the journey they stop off for an ice cream in Penzance, that's about 10 miles from Land's End, according to the paper 'leaving their bikes parked opposite on the railings to be guarded by Dexter.' Well, Dexter turns out to be pretty shit at his job, because surprise, surprise, when they come back the bikes are still there but somebody has nicked him. Haven't these people heard of the Pirates of Penzance, or do they think because we're lucky enough to live in a lovely place we don't have any deprivation, crime or people opportunistic enough to nick teddy bears from emmets' bikes?

According to the paper, Dexter had already been lucky to make it this far, his 'adventures' en route having included 'almost losing him when he fell into a waterfall in the Lake District.'

Now, this idea of a teddy bear having 'adventures' is the problem isn't it? If a teddy bear falls into a waterfall, it's not that it's being 'adventurous', but that the kid or whoever is supposed to be looking after it has been careless enough to drop it over the edge. And if a teddy bear is left to 'guard' a family's bikes while they go off to enact some Famous Five fantasy involving ice cream, it's not surprising that when they come back it's going to have gone missing. Not because it's having an adventure, not because it's chased off a gang of thieves who were trying to nick the bikes, help a seagull with an injured foot or rescue a mermaid from the fish counter at Tesco, and then got itself lost, but because somebody has nicked it.

Which brings me to the real subject of this posting and the question who is responsible for all this? It's Soggy the Bastard Bear, that's who. This summer it's been impossible to walk past the bookshop on Fore Street without having to push your way through throngs of emmet kids dragging their dads (usually their dads) by the hand to see the window display of the latest cash-register ringing 'adventure' of Soggy the Bear, the local teddy bear hero, who despite having a Parkinson's sufferer's inability to stand up in a moving boat without falling over the side, manages to beat off pirates and find buried treasure before washing up in St Ives, with his stupid, smug self-satisfied smirk and his spiky Bjorkish fur. This anthropomorphic nonsense gives emmet kids the impression that by randomly chucking their teddy bear off the back of the Scillionian or Old Man's Head or burying it in a hole on Porthmeor Beach and waiting for the tide to come in, it'll eventually turn up just when they least expect it, dripping seawater on their pillow as they sleep, but otherwise, none the worse for its 'adventure'.

My guess is that Dexter has either ended up in the harbour or possibly is being held to ransom by someone who saw an opportunity to make a few quid out of some gullible end to enders who'd been daft enough to leave their teddy bear in charge of some bikes that no doubt advertised the fact that's what they were. I wouldn't be surprised to see a story in next week's paper about Dexter having been 'kidnapped', perhaps with a photo of him holding the paper with the date on it, and a ransom demand for £100 to be paid to a charitable cause, and it all ending happily with the family reunited with their adventurous teddy bear. In the Stockholm Syndrome (which would make a really good film title) hostages start to empathise with their captors. In the Soggy Syndrome, kids are lied to to prevent them from realising that some grown ups, their parents included, are actually quite manipulative and irresponsible tossers.

By the time I got to Woodstock I was eighty years old

Bit of an uneventful week, except I started back at school, we've had some amazing weather, and the average age of people walking down the middle of Tregenna Place has gone up by about thirty years overnight. There are times when you feel you're in the middle of an audition for a crowd scene from Shaun of the Dead.

The Beige Sisters went home yesterday and I ended up having to walk them to the station. They were both called Marge and had one set of clothes between them that they kept swopping over like those blind sisters in the olden days who had one grey eye between them. They stayed beige all week except for their faces, which were the colour of Campbell's condensed tomato soup by the time they went home. Anyway at the station they gave me 50p each which more than made up for not being able to sleep in my own bed all week. Not.

The St Ives September Festival is on for the next two weeks, and we've got a band staying at ours for the next few days. Yes, an actual band that's playing in the festival! For once I was actually looking forward to meeting some of our guests. I ran all the way back from the station. There was this mingin old man standing outside, well I say standing, he was more sort of leaning on one of those metal crutches that looks like a diver's spear gun, and he looked a bit of a hobo to be honest. He looked like Amy Winehouse's grandad. He'd got all this luggage round him. Next thing there's about another six of them, all old men in Levis with saggy faces and this really thin, lank long hair, all smoking these disgusting little stringy fags and taking the piss out of each other. Turns out it's the band, who reckon they were really well known in the seventies, but are all in their seventies themselves now. I should have known, the average age of St Ives September Festival goers being about ninety, stands to reason that the bands they froth over are going to have played Royal Command Performances for King George VI.

But my dad had apparently heard of them, because he behaved like a twat and went on about Donovan and Woodstock and that, and helped them in with their luggage, something he'd never do unless he had to. And then one of them sees the No Smoking sign, and my dad says, "No boys, don't worry about that, that's not for our VIPs." VIPs? So now I've got to spend a week in the same house as a load of geriatric old tossers stinking the place out with their shitty little fags and probably chucking my telly through the window.

The Beige Sisters

Fish Street and Back Road West was like the retreat from Moscow, not quite soldiers huddled inside dead horses for warmth, but a line of slow moving cars with emmet kids peering out of steamed up windows and defeated emmet dads staring at the car in front as the windscreen wipers flicked V signs in their going-home faces. The Gods of the Locals had even contrived to lay on a rainbow over the harbour in celebration (one or two emmets I noticed photographing their children standing in front of it, missing the symbolism entirely).

I got some chips and a Fanta from the Shrine of the Balancing Eel on the way home, dead stoked because I was thinking I was about to get my room back. But when I got home there was a hard wheeled suitcase exactly the size and shape of a small fridge outside the front door, and I was just in time to see the bottom half of my dad disappearing up the stairs, lugging another suitcase, followed by two old women in beige coats and beige tights and those sandals with fat straps (also in beige) that old women wear, already fussing about how steep the stairs were and encouraging each other by betting that the view would be worth it. Knowing that there's isn't a view from my room, unless you count the view of the house across the street, didn't make up for the fact that unless the Beige Sisters cut their stay short, I'm not going to get my room back for yet another week.

Exodus of the Emmets

Yesterday afternoon, about 5 o'clock, I was walking along the Wharf and it totally bounced down with rain, like you could see the raindrops, not drops really more like knitting needles of rain, hitting the cobbles and ricocheting like the spears in that film Zulu off Michael Caine's tin hat. It was hitting the awnings above the shops along the Wharf with a tearing noise as if it was going to go through, and then sluicing off the edges right on top of the emmets sheltering underneath as if somebody was pouring buckets of water on them. Ha ha.

What with the rain and all the cars you had to be careful, you had a choice between getting rained on, having a load of dirty water sloshed up your legs by a car, or just getting run over. Yes, at 5 o'clock last night the Exodus of the Emmets was well under way, and like to think this rain was St Ives' way of waving them off. There was a near biblical line of cars all the way from Back Road West, down to the Sloop and almost as far back as the Alba, as all the emmets queued in the one way system to get out of town and begin the long back to wherever they come from, because today a load of the up-country schools go back and they were all those who'd left it till the last minute before going back home in the middle of the week.

Battle of the Nanas

The other thing I saw today was a woman wearing a blue hoodie with Kara's No. 1 Nana written on the back in red letters. That got me thinking what Kara's other nana will think about that, when No. 1 nana takes Kara home from her holiday in St Ives? Or whether they'd had a Kara's No 2 Nana hoodie made as well, and how she'll react when they gave it to her?

On Porthmeor Beach incidentally, whilst the lifeguard hero of the towel wars remained anonymous, I did spot Lifeguard I22Y (that's an I, two 2's and a Y), who had hair the colour of the oil that hangs around the edges of spaghetti bolognese, and Lifeguard Naomi (that just doesn't work somehow, does it?) patrolling the beach.

Sweet Molly Malone

If that wasn't bad enough, about an hour later the emmet mum and emmet dad were playing bat and ball when the emmet boy, who was called Tom and about 11, came up with a massive mussel, not just the shell but an intact mussel half the size of my fist, which obviously had something (a mussel) living in it. He showed it to his mum, then threw it to her and she whacked it with the bat! And then they both did it again, another twice. By this time it was obvious that they were trying to smash the mussel open, and then the emmet girl, who was about 8 and wasn't called anything, brought a rock and put the mussel on it, and the mum emmet, dad emmet and girl emmet watched Tom emmet smash the defenseless mussel with a big stone, like the ape that discovers tools in 2001 A Space Odessey. And then predictably enough, straight away the emmet girl went 'Yuurgh!' and lost interest, and the emmet mum poked at it for a bit before THROWING IT TO THE SEAGULLS! How many ways can one family show their total lack of understanding of beach life? That mussel must have taken at least 20 years to grow to that size, and they snuff out its life just like that. I hope it haunts them or that at least they get a bad dose of campylobacter in retribution for the wanton destruction of a harmless filter feeder.

Towel Rail

I was on Porthmeor again today, sitting just behind this family of emmets. They'd been in the sea and got their towels wet, and I couldn't believe it when their mum took all of these towels and hung them over the rail of the lifeguard's board ski which was standing on its side in one of those special rests, right next to them. You know what I mean, the long yellow ones with the straps that say LIFEGUARD on them in red, which are meant to be 1) visible, and 2) accessible, in case of emergency. Anyway, as the tide was coming in pretty fast it wasn't long before the lifeguard came along to move the board ski back up the beach. He couldn't find it to begin with, obviously because it was covered in towels, and then when he realised that these emmets were using it as a clothes horse he did a total double-take. I was just waiting for him to say something to the emmets, because you could tell he knew that the towels belonged to them, but what he did was even better than that. He just picked up the towels one by one off the rail of the board ski and dropped them on the wet sand! Then without a word he picked up the board ski and moved it a few metres back up the beach. I don't know his name (because being a real lifeguard he hadn't got it written in big yellow letters across his back), but whoever he is, he is a legend!

Anyway, the emmets didn't notice for a bit, then the dad spotted the heap of towels on the wet sand and obviously it took him a while to work out what had happened, but then he noticed the board ski had been moved, and I could tell he'd worked it out. I nearly asked him if he'd like me to ring an ambulance so that he could lie their wetsuits across the windscreen to dry, but I didn't.

I See Wed People

You know in that film The Sixth Sense when the little kid sees all these dead people nobody else can see? It felt a bit like that on Porthmeor yesterday. I was just walking down the rampy bit down to the beach, next to where the lifeguards sit to watch the girls through their binoculars, when I see these two people who've obviously just got married. He's in a cream suit and she's in this big cream dress cut really low at the front with no back, showing off her sun bed tan, that dragged in the sand as she walked. It was all frothy at the bottom, she looks like an upside down Mr Whippy. She's trying to hold it up out of the sand and you can tell at first she's really worried about getting it messy, but he's trying to get her to stand on one of the yellow swell boards that's lying on the sand in front of the surf school, so that they can have their photos taken. And eventually she stands on it with him on the sand, and and they both stand there in stupid Scooby Doo and Shaggy surfing poses that they imagine makes it look as if they're surfing but really just makes them look like total dorks. Then they go down to the edge of the sea, with this big stupid dress dragging in the sand and sweeping up the bits of seaweed and fag ends, and stand there while this dickhead buzzes round them like a fly taking photos. And I'm watching them and trying to imagine what these photos will look like, because standing behind them, while they're posing and looking all lovey-dovey, are all these emmets in the sea with bodyboards, and those of them that aren't wearing wetsuits look all red and purple with the cold, and and they're going to be in the photos as well. And then the obvious happens, and the newly-weds stand where the tide's coming in just a bit too long, and she gets her stupid dress wet, and they laugh ha ha ha because they want everybody to know that's the sort of people they are.

What - twats who spend hundreds on a stupid dress to wear for half an hour and then go and get it wet in the sea? Who get married in the full white dress and cream suit but want to have their photos taken on the beach in their wedding gear just to prove what cool and unconventional guys they are? Hey, and we even went on a surfboard in our wedding gear - yeah, a kook emmet's hireboard foamy that no real surfer would be seen dead on. Yeah, and they've got the photos to prove it. Real surfers would have gone to Bali or somewhere to get married, and then decide they couldn't be arsed and just go surfing anyway.

I made sure I wasn't in any of the photos myself, but I was thinking (in a way that they obviously weren't) while I was watching them that these two have already managed to embarrass their kids before they are even born.

What a twat D. H. Lawrence was

I've been reading a book about D. H. Lawrence who wrote about sex and lived in Zennor. I can't believe someone that famous would bother living in Zennor, but apparently his wife was German and very fat and quite well known around St Ives for wearing really brightly coloured stockings and waving at zepplins when she went shopping (at the Co-op I suppose), and as this was during the war they probably couldn't get away with living anywhere else. She was quite famous in her own right for having 1) been a cousin of the famous Baron von Richtofen, the 'Bloody Red Baron', who was a German communist fighter pilot, 2) for being very fat and smoking all the time and 3) for waving at zepplins. DHL (as he liked to call himself) was thin, had a beard and a whiny voice and was from Nottingham. She called him Lorenzo except in a German accent. Sounds like an ideal couple, ha ha, not, because they used to fight like Itchy and Scratchy and chase each other round the kitchen table and hit each other over the head with frying pans.

They lived in Zennor for two years trying not to mention the war and singing Hebridean songs round the piano until they got kicked out for singing rubbish, having cameras in their rucksacks concealed in loaves of bread and waving at zeppelins. Believe it. And I'm expected to write something meaningful about these tossers by the time I go back to school next week.

I've got my room back at least. And I found a pubic hair on the soap in the shower which might have been Gemma's or Jade's. What would DHL have made of that?

Wuthering Heights

Turns out it wasn't Gemma's bikini bottom but her fag ash dad's speedos. The 's' had peeled off the little name thing, so it just said 'peedos'.

I had a dream last night about Lifeguard Gemma and Lifeguard Jade and woke up in a wet bed. If I was that kid in The Shining who pedals round the corridors on his tricycle waiting for the lift doors to open and flood the corridors with blood, I'd end up being flushed down the stairs, out of the front door, down the street and into the harbour.

Loading Only

I'd like to think I've had something to do with this, but that would mean 1) some one reading this blog, which they don't (yet) and 2) someone noticing me taking down the registration numbers of all the cars illegally parked on Tregenna Place when I go to the Co-Op every morning. That autistic looking kid with the notebook, yeah that's me.

Anyway, the other day there were a load of road cones on the road, which most of the silver 4x4 driving emmets who are the worst culprits had just ignored and driven over. I wrote down all their numbers in my book and took a few photos on my phone. The next morning I was a bit late going to the Co-op because I'd followed Gemma and Jade (who were off-duty, in that they weren't wearing their hoodies, so I couldn't tell them apart) down to Porthgwidden and watched them messing about on the beach for a bit. There was a fat woman with white trousers and a stupid dog on a really long lead that had been shaved so that it's blotchy pink skin was showing in parts and it had these daft long hair bits round its feet. (I think the secret with anything you're shaving is that when it starts to go pink you stop, but this woman obviously thought her dog made her look like Kerry Katona or somebody).

Anyway by the time I got to the Co-op, 1) all the croissants had gone because the bloody EMMETS had bought them all, and 2) the Council had painted white lines saying 'Loading Only' on the road outside. So unless the silver 4x4 driving emmets think that means they can park there while they load their cars with our croissants, that should be that. I wrote down one number, but that was a delivery van to Yeungs the Chinese take away.

Gemma (or maybe Jade) left her bikini bottom in the bathroom.

Product placement

I appear to have attracted a Google ad for Fred Perry hoodies on my blog. I would just like to say that I have never bought, owned, worn or seen a Fred Perry hoody in my life and have nothing to do with this product which my blog appears to endorse. As far as I'm concerned they are shite and I would have nothing to do with them, even if I knew what they were. How come some flesh-creeping e-spider can crawl over my blog and find me, but no living person has found me yet?

Not that I care, because a girl from Bonley with chipped electric blue nail varnish who identifies herself as Lifeguard Gemma and may or may not be a kleptomaniac, thinks I'm hot and to prove it she has nicked my PULL-INs.

Ball of Confusion

I'm sure that Lifeguard GEMMA and Lifeguard JADE have nicked loads of my stuff from my room. They went off back to 'Bonley' this morning, which turns out to be BURNLEY, as I discovered because their dad was stoked when they beat Man U the other night, which made his week (just as well because the weather has been SHITE). All he and Mrs Bonley did all week was argue with each other, well, not quite, as he spent a lot of the week standing outside in the RAIN smoking fags one after the other and reading The Sun. My dad said he said to him that he was happy enough just being on holiday and away from it all, whatever it was, with his fags and his paper. You wonder if they don't have somewhere a bit nearer to 'Bonley' he could have got to do that, but maybe Lifeguard GEMMA and Lifeguard JADE have got them banned from every B&B between here and Bonley, because they turn out to have been complete frikking KLEPTOS, and nicked loads of stuff from my room. I went in there today after they'd gone and not only was there loads of stuff missing but a bloody note on my bed that said: 'Hey Jed we bin watchin u an Gem thinks ur HOT lol' and a crushed Coke can in the wastebin.

Fast Car

I was in Norway Stores a few minutes ago when the two girls from Bonley who are staying at ours came in wearing red hoodies with St Ives Lifeguard GEMMA and St Ives Lifeguard JADE written in yellow on the back. I'm sure I saw one of them nick a Coke from the fridge on the way out and wink at me as she hid in her hoodie.

Here's Johnny

Thing with a lot of the houses in Downalong, right (that's what they call the old part of St Ives where I live) is that when they were built nobody cared about how they looked. They didn't think of them as houses even, just as a space that they threw four walls round and called a room, then proceeded to pile more and more rooms on top until they had what they wanted. And what they wanted was a place to keep things, a place to fix things, a place to do things with the things they'd caught using the things they'd fixed, oh, and a place to sleep. So typically you got these dingy spaces all heaped on on top of another, where these old fishermen guys used to press a few pilchards in the cellar, stash their fishing gear and mend their nets on the next floor that opened out on the street, bring up their eighteen children in two rooms on the next floor and take it in turns to sleep in one bed probably on the floor about that.

There's a granite channel that runs down our street that used to be full of offal and oil from the pilchards, which just got sluiced away down into the harbour. There are holes in the walls of our basement that according to my dad are where the big beams, that had weights on the end to press the pilchards, used to slot in.

When the pilchards stopped coming, the visitors started. At first they were posh people, and artists and that, who liked the look of Downalong but didn't like the smell, the streets full of fish heads, or the living conditions, or the fishermen's kids, who used to throw stones at them. So the artist's 'colony' did what colonisers do, they built their own bit of town from which they could look down on the locals without actually having to get their posh shoes covering in fish guts or risk getting cholera from the bad sanitation, and paint the quaint fishermen without the risk of having stones thrown at them. It's called Upalong (obviously), and that's where all the hotels and terraces of big guesthouses got built when the railway made it easier for people from up-country to get here.

Downalong turned into a bit of a slum, most of the fishermen did what the fish had done and went somewhere else, loads of them going off abroad to dig for gold and that, and those who were left did what most people do down here, a bit of this and a bit of that. Like Alfred Wallis, this mad old rag and bone man who hung around the end of the Digey painting bits of cardboard and waiting to be discovered by Jack Nicholson.

Then somebody had the bright idea of doing up some of the old rickety houses and before you know where you are Downalong becomes full of places the locals can't afford any more. Builders like my dad do OK out of it at first, but (not just because my dad's a crap builder) the work starts going up-country, and they're putting Smallbone kitchens and AGAs the size of a small town's crematorium into these tiny little fishermen's house (the houses are tiny I mean, not the fishermen, although they had to be, because the beams in these places are so low). And all the plaster gets chipped off the walls revealing the bare granite, and internal walls get knocked out to open up the rooms, and before you know where you are there are no LOCALS left and Downalong has been colonised by the sort of colour supplement reading twats from London who don't see any irony in framing an Alfred Wallis print to hang it on their whitewashed exposed granite wall.

Blogging as an allegory of life

Just to let you know what does happen if you try to post two blogs with the same title, it's this. You get an error message which flashes up for just a split second, long enough to let you know you've done something wrong, but before you've had time to do anything about it, the screen changes and tells you the blog has been posted anyway.

So that's just like life really. You say the wrong thing, your tongue being quicker than your brain, and just have enough time to realise you've fucked up in the split second before it's too late to put it right.

Inside the Whale

I went off at a bit of a tangent the first time I tried to write this blog, so I'm going to start it again. I really like the title Inside the Whale, so I'm not going to change it. I don't know if it'll let me post two blogs with the same title though.

I ought to say before I get going by the way, that it's not my original title. It's from this book by a writer called George Orwell who was actually called Eric Blair. It's not about whales, and neither is this blog.

As I was saying, going down the stairs in our house is like being swallowed by a whale. And on the way, if you go from the attic, where it's light and like the last glimpse you'd get of the sun and the sky as you went headfirst into the whale's mouth, you go down the narrow gullet of the stairs, onto the top landing, where you can either carry on down the stairs or go into one or other of the two rooms. If you carry on, you come to the next landing, with two rooms, and if you carry on, down, down, down from one floor to the next, eventually you get squeezed out through the front door and down the steps into the street. If the attic is the whale's mouth, the rooms are like its internal organs, like its liver and its kidneys and its stomach and its bowels and its intestines. You can work out what that makes the front door, which when we open it to VISITORS we must always do with a welcoming smile on our faces. And now you know what it is I'm smiling at when I open the door.

Inside the Whale

OK, so if you were going down our stairs, say from the attic (where I have to sleep when there are bloody annoying VISITORS using my bedroom) down to the front door, it would be just like being swallowed by something big, like a whale like that Joaner dude in the bible.

I see that's twice in two blogs that I've mentioned somebody in the bible, viz Jesus and Joaner. Don't get the idea I'm into all that stuff, but have you noticed how often they crop up in everyday conversation? Jesus is a constant presence in our house, my dad probably shouts his name more often than he shouts my mum's actually, often in the following grammatical construction: "Jesus + present participle verb + Christ!" When I was a kid I actually thought f...ing was Jesus's middle name, like mine is Jed.

Bet you thought Jed was my first name. As if I'd use my first name in a secret blog dissing my mum and dad's crap attempts at running a bed and breakfast. As if.

Let's do the time warp again

I've just noticed that when you publish a blog on this blogspace, the time at the bottom is totally wrong. This sometimes makes it look as if I'm some sort of obsessive nutter or geek writing at odd hours of the night, which is not the case. Just thought I'd point this out to my followers, if and when I get any. I say followers, obviously that's what they're called, not because I'm some sort of messianic freak who thinks he's bigger than Jesus. Although that does remind me of my favourite joke, which is 'Why did Jesus fall off the cross? Because he bit his nails!' I don't believe in God, but I like to think I've got something in common with somebody who had to get born in a stable because all the rooms were full of bloody EMMETS. I imagine Jesus was pretty damaged by this experience, so he probably did bite his nails like Gordon Brown, and get a bit stressy with his disciples from time to time.

Welcome to the House of Fun

Dad isn't convinced that I thought they were Jehovah's Witnesses. Turns out he was coming down the road and they asked him if there was anywhere they could get bed and breakfast, didn't they, because the one they had just tried was full.

So anyway, once you've swung your way up the stairs, as I say there are two rooms on each floor, one at the front and one at the back. The rooms at the front overlook the fronts of the houses opposite - the rooms at the back overlook the backs of the houses in the next street. That's how you can tell the difference. You can't see the sea, even though (allowing for the tide) it's only at the bottom of the street. The only room you can actually see the sea from, ironically, is the shitty attic room I have to sleep in when VISITORS are using my bedroom, like this lot from Bonley (wherever that is) are doing now. Dad made me take them upstairs and show them to 'their' rooms. There's a man and a woman and two girls wearing Hannah Montana teeshirts that are way too short for them and chipped electric blue nail varnish. The man's bad tempered because he couldn't find anywhere to park after driving all the way from Bonley (I just had to take his word for it, but it's a long way apparently), and the woman's pissed off because I told her we didn't have any vacancies. I bet Newquay would have been a lot closer to Bonley, but I just stopped myself from saying that because they might have taken it the wrong way. Which would have been the right way.

So now I can hear them having an argument in that special voice people save for having arguments in bed and breakfast houses when they've only just arrived (which is different to the voice they use when they're having an arguement after they've been there a few days), and the girls are jumping on the bunk beds which are all there is space for because my dad insisted that we had to have an en suite bath room on that floor which takes up half what was previously the back bedroom. He calls it the family suite, which is a bit of a joke because he apparently doesn't see the irony that one of his 'family' (ie me) has to sleep in a shitty attic so that people like the Bonleyites can play happy holiday families in my bloody bedroom. Still at least from the sound of things their holiday isn't getting off to that happy a start. Ha bloody ha.

No Vacancies

OK, let me describe my house.

It's on a really narrow street running down to the harbour. The street's cobbled, and when dogs pee on it (as they often do right outside my house) it runs down the gaps between the cobbles turning left and right as if it was chasing through a maze, like a sort of urinous pacman game. There isn't room to get a car up the street, but you wouldn't believe it, emmets sometimes try to and get stuck and then complain because they can't park right up outside the door of their holiday let. The houses are quite tall and thin and painted white. If you want to look up at the sky you have to bend your neck right back and make yourself dizzy as if the high white walls were closing over your head, but if you want to look at the sea you just look straight ahead, although you have to squint a bit as if you were looking down the sights of an airgun, and there it is, all silvery at the bottom of the street, unless the tide's out and then it's just sand. For those of you who don't know, most of the day the harbour in St Ives doesn't have any water in it at all, which is a bit of a bad place to have built it but OK if you're a fisherman who doesn't like fishing much because its a good excuse not to go out. It was probably meant to keep out the Spaniards or something so they wouldn't have anywhere to land.

There's a chip shop near us called The Balancing Eel, and that's a bit what our house is like, tall and thin like an eel would be standing on its end, and a bit unsteady and liable to fall over any time. There are four or five windows up the front, depending on how you count them, one on each floor, including the basement and the attic where I have to sleep while mum and dad's VISITORS are using my room, which is most of the summer. It's like a child's drawing of a house, if the child was autistic and thought houses were a stupid shape. When you get up to the attic there's a chimney, but you can't see it from the street so I don't know whether to include it in my description or not. I think I will, because it means I can tell you about the seagulls. Every year the seagulls nest on our roof and my dad moans about them but always leaves it too late to do anything about it, but they make 1) a mess 2) a lot of noise as soon as it gets light, like at about four o'clock in the morning 3) my dad moan.

The most annoying think about our house though is the stairs. I think I mentioned the stairs in my first blog. Yes I did, I've just checked, but I'll mention them again here because you probably can't be arsed to go back and look.

Ha ha, bet you did now, but I didn't say much at all about the stairs in my first blog did I? OK, so there are a number of granite steps up to the front door. Let's say there are six, but there isn't. When you knock on the front door, let's say you're lucky and somebody opens it, the first thing you see in front of you (apart from whoever opened the door) is some stairs. Steep stairs, going almost straight up, so steep that they've got a rope instead of a rail. And they're really narrow as well, so narrow that some people can't get their bags up and sometimes people arrive who you know are going to be too wide to get up the stairs themselves, let alone their bags. If you look just beyond the shoulder of the person who opened the door (say it's my dad, he's quite short) you'll see the stairs twist round a corner and there's a narrow wooden post about as thick as the top of my leg, with wedge shaped notches cut in it and a metal ring where the top of the rope is tied. And just about level with where your head would be if you didn't duck there's another beam going across the top of the stairs, and you have to sort of swing from the first rope to another at the opposite side of the stairs, just round the corner, where there's another ring in the wall. That's how you get up and down from one floor to the next, swinging from ropes and trying not to fall down the stairs. There's two rooms on each floor, one at the front and one at the back, and a little landing about the size of a portaloo joining the whole lot together. It's just an unsteady heap of floors held together by a series of ropes threaded through a twisty staircase, like one of those bangles the guys with dreadlocks sell to emmets on the Wharf.

Ha ha, someone just came to the door and asked if we had any vacancies for tonight. Mum's at work and dad's out, so I said no.

Advice to visitors to St Ives

1. The best time to shop in the Co-op is between 8am and 8.30pm, where you'll meet plenty of friendly locals buying the odd pint of milk or loaf of bread, more than ready to wait behind you while you chat to the woman on the checkout.

2. The most convenient place to park during the day is in Tregenna Place, as it is close to most of the shops.

3. Although you wouldn’t risk it at home, it is perfectly acceptable to walk down the middle of the busier streets like High Street, Tregenna Place and The Wharf as if they were pedestrianised zones, and you're sure to get a friendly wave from the locals!

4. St Ives is a pretty laid-back place, so if you overrun on your ticket in one of its privately-run car parks, don’t worry, the clampers will be cool about it, just tell them you're a visitor.

5. If you're a second home owner, a useful tip to remember is that putting a notice in the window advertising it for let, with your home phone number on it, is sure to get you a response!

6. On changeover days, if you are staying in Downalong leaving your car in The Digey or Fore Street while you unload/load it will save you having to walk far.

7. The Tate gives discounted entry to people in wetsuits.

8. Haggling is quite acceptable in restaurants – in fact many restaurant owners are insulted if you don't try to bargain down the price of your meal

9. Jogging down Fore Street in a shortie wetsuits with a foam bodyboard under your arm will gain you immediate acceptance into the friendly St Ives surfing community

10. Wearing a St Ives Lifeguard hoodie with your name on it is an excellent way of blending in with the locals (see my blog from Tuesday).

11. On a crowded beach ensure your privacy by getting down early in the morning and creating a large private enclosure of windbreaks.

12. Talking loudly in a braying voice in restaurants about how much your house is worth will get you respect and extra special attention from the waiting staff.

13. If you want to chat with locals, remember that asking them how much their house is worth is always a good ice-breaker!

14. Surf wax is used locally for cleaning car windscreens, and many locals are happy to surprise visitors with their free windscreen cleaning service, especially if your car is parked in a popular location.

15. If you spot a seal in the harbour shout 'seal!' loudly and wave your arms. They are nature's clowns and like nothing better than performing for a crowd, the bigger and rowdier the better.

16. If you're a second home owner, don't miss the chance to let people know you are, by remarking loudly how much better the place is out of season when all the visitors have gone home.

17. Don't forget that without you St Ives would have no economy or jobs whatsoever to speak of, and locals are grateful of being reminded of the fact.