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.