Twat Alert

Who saw Chris Evans on the front page of the Western Morning News yesterday making an even bigger twat of himself than usual trying to surf in Newquay? Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he hid his trademark ginner hair under a floppy hat which automatically set off every TWAT ALARM within a hundred metre radius, and drew even more attention to him, which was probably exactly what he wanted. Nice hat, Chris! Seven on the twat richter scale.


But just as you think it's safe to go back in the water, who should turn up on the front page of The Guardian this morning but David Cameron in a kooky C-Skins shortie with a brand new bodyboard stuck under his arm at Polzeath and set the TWAT ALARM crying like baby Florence Endellion at three in the morning. Nice wettie David! Not. Eleven on the twat richter scale.

Pier Group Pressure

Every summer, generations of kids have been jumping off the pier in St Ives. I bet the minute Smeaton turned his back to put down his trowel and hoisted his trousers back up over his bum crack after having just laid the last block of his pier in 1770, at least twenty local kids pushed him to one side and jumped off the end.

One of the reasons I don't like Michael Foreman's books is that he treats pier jumpers as if they were stupid. At the start of one book, this kid who lives right by the sea and is supposed to go pier jumping all the time, goes running along the pier, past his mates who are shouting to him not to do it, and jumps off the end without looking. As the tide's out, he ends up paralysed from the neck down (adding to the difficulty of him already being paralysed from the neck up). If you live by the sea you tend to know when the tide's in and when it's out, and if you're that reckless, without being harsh, you're asking to end up in a wheelchair in my opinion, nobody in their right mind who knew what they were doing would do that. And it's not that his mates were actually encouraging him to do it, which is another myth of pier jumping. Nobody makes you do it.


I've never been much of a joiner-in myself, but one thing I do do with loads of other local kids during the summer holidays is go pier jumping. It's a bit of a rite of passage for kids in St Ives, and one of the things that seperates us out from the emmet kids, who we don't really like joining in. I'm not one of the ringleaders or anything, and not that daring (like I wouldn't jump off the top of the car park wall by the Museum for instance, like some of them did on the spring tide the other day, that was MENTAL), but when it's a high tide, and living right by the harbour as I do, I'm usually there and I take my turn in the pecking order (which is pretty low down because nobody knows me really and I keep myself pretty much to myself), and nobody tries to stop me joining in. In fact there's some videos on You Tube of the St Ives pier jumpers, and if you know who you're looking for, you can just see the back of my head in the background on one of them (but not jumping off, because nobody could be bothered to film me jumping). I've blown up a still frame from it and stuck it on my wall with a circle round my head.


Sometimes we get emmet kids trying to join in, but you can always tell who they are (well obviously most of the time you don't know them, so you can tell they're emmets), if they're wearing a new, but really crappy make of wetsuit that doesn't fit them properly (because their mums and dads have bought it with growing room for next year as well, not realising that a wetsuit that doesn't retain a layer of water in it next to your skin totally defeats the object of wearing it), but the real giveaway is the shoes that are supposed to protect your feet against weever fish, which are the MARK OF THE EMMET. When they get full of water, these shoes are impossible to swim in, and they either fall off and get lost in the sea or if they take them off we chuck them around until they end up in the sea anyway.


Emmet kids hang about on the edge of things, then gradually get to the front and either take ages to jump off or make a great showy-off thing of it, shouting and waving their arms about. Locals cheer each other on, but we never cheer the emmet kids. Some of them get a bit too cocky, and these are the ones who are most likely to hurt themselves by landing stupidly in the water, jumping too close to the wall or even onto the submerged steps. Lately we've had a bit of attention from the police, to do with jumping near boats or in front of boats as they're coming in or out of the harbour, but to be honest, they've been pretty cool about it, saying that they grew up here like us, and when they were kids they did it, and because they know that if they banned a local tradition like pier jumping altogether there'd be an outcry and nobody would take any notice, so that would be just one more thing that they'd have to do, and wouldn't be able to do it anyway, they're taking the right line in my opinion. They know the locals know what they're doing, and I reckon the story that was in the paper was more for the emmets really, not us. The other hazard is seals, and you have to make sure you don't jump on top of one of them because they hang around right under the wall, especially at the end of Smeaton's Pier where they wait for the fishing boats to come in, and sometimes you don't see them until you're in mid-air. I saw an emmet kid jump off the pier the other day, and as he came up, this seal came up right next to him, and the kid literally CACKED himself, you could see it running out of the bottom of his wetsuit legs as he came up the steps afterwards.

Excuse me, are you a lifeguard?

This week, Porthmeor Beach sees the Greenaway Pro, a surf contest commemorating Tom Greenaway, a St Ives lifeguard who was tragically killed in a road accident two years ago.

I'm not going to write about fake lifeguard hoodies again, because I've already done it before (11 August last year, if you can be bothered to look), and anyway, although I was the first as far as I know to point out in my blog the blatant misrepresentation involved in an ten-year old from Sheffield walking around with LIFEGUARD MINXY written on her back, the national press now seem to have jumped on the bandwagon, and only this morning in McColls, I noticed on the front page of the Western Morning News that two of the shops that sell this emmet-exploiting shite in Newquay are at each other's throats over who got the idea in the first place.

One of these shops in Newquay turns out to be NO WORRIES, a very apt name I reckon for a shop which makes its money out of shamelessly selling this sort of crap which in my view devalues and exploits the status and respect, not to mention the skill and sheer humanitarian valour of lifeguards. I don't imagine for a minute that anyone in imminent danger of drowning is going to frantically wave for help at a ten year old just because she's wearing a red hoodie that says LIFEGUARD MINXY on the back (which would be particularly pointless as she'd have to have her back to the sea for the person in difficulties to read it anyway), but that's not the point. I would like to ask LIFEGUARD MINXY'S parents what lifestyle they thought they were buying young Minxy into (I would have also liked to have asked them what the fuck they thought they were doing calling a kid Minxy in the first place, but that's another thing), let alone the adults who buy these things for themselves. Whatever it is, do they look around them and see us locals walking through the streets wearing them? More to the point, do they see REAL LIFEGUARDS walking about wearing them on their day off? The real lifeguards like those who (as I see from our local paper The Cornishman only today) rescued 10 people from a rip current on Porthmeor beach last Thursday. I really hope LIFEGUARD MINXY wasn't among the people in need of being rescued, but I wonder how many of them struggled back up the beach only to contemplate their narrow escape from drowning as they put on their fake lifeguard hoodies?

Anyway, reading this thing in the Western Morning News this morning about the battle between NO WORRIES and this other shop in Newquay, I realise that NO WORRIES (which should really be called NO CONSCIENCE) is in fact a chain of shops, of which there is also one in St Ives, selling this exploitative crap. Idon't know if this makes it worse, but it certainly makes it more lucrative for the owners of Emporio No Worries. So, I would like to take this opportunity of not writing about fake lifeguard hoodies to point the finger at our local NO WORRIES and the other shop that floods St Ives with these tawdry symbols of lifestyle appropriation every summer, EXHIBIT ONE in Tregenna Place (next to the Co-Op), and say to their proprietors - next time you need a lifeguard, I hope for your sake the only person in shouting range is the likes of Tom Greenaway, and not LIFEGUARD MINXY from Sheffield (age 10).

Baffled by Fog

Doesn't take much to baffle the emmets does it? Obiously they've never seen the John Carpenter film in which a mysterious fog comes off the sea and covers a coastal town in New England, in which case they would not be BAFFLED but shitting themselves and running for their lives.

A Balanced Opinion

There's a fish and chip shop near where I live called The Balancing Eel. When you go through the door there are steps in front of you with a railing down the middle. The idea is that you queue up one side and come down the other when you've got your fish and chips so that all the people in the queue can smell them and know it's worthwhile carrying on waiting in the queue, which can sometimes be well long. I've seen it stretch from the counter, down the steps to the door, and out of the door down the hill as far as the slipway on the Wharf. Perhaps this is where the Balancing Eel gets its name from, because the queue looks a bit like an eel that has slithered out of the sea, with its neck going up the steps and its head resting on the counter.

Of course the queue is only ever this long during the summer when the emmets are in town. If you're a local, you aren't going to queue for your fish and chips, no matter how good they are, as if you were an emmet what you do is get to time it so that you aren't hanging around, and can just go in and ask for what you want. In practice, this often means timing it so that you go in just before they shut, so that you run the risk of them having nothing left. But sometimes if you go in just as they're cleaning down for the night you can get extra chips or even an extra bit of broken cod slipped into your parcel for nothing. So that's why I sometimes find myself walking home from the Balancing Eel with a warm parcel of fish and chips in one hand and the warm metallic smell of vinegar and chip fat on my fingers, going the long way round through Norway Place and along Back Road West, so that I can finish them off before I get home. If you go the most direct route home, it takes about half a minute to get to ours from the 'Eel, but if you want to finish off your fish and chips before you get home, and you go the long way round, it can take as long as you like.

Now, here's a tip for all you emmets. If you get your fish and chips from the Balancing Eel, why not walk down to the Wharf and sit and eat them on one of the benches there? There's nothing we locals like more than seeing you sharing your fish and chips with our seagulls!

Vuvuzela (anag) Zulu Vulva

Who didn't arrive in Rustenberg with the only knowledge of South Africa being Michael Caine in Zulu saying 'I thought I told you only to blow the bloody doors off?' Or that Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi, founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party, played Zulu King Cetewayo in the film?(and not very well, in my opinion).

Anyway, the big turning point in Zulu is of course the scene in which the British couldn't get the lids off their ammunition boxes. Obviously this is because they were wearing gloves made by the same firm as made Rob Green's goalkeepers' gloves.

You know what you can do with your Vuvuzela

If you're in downtown St Ives tonight, come down to the Wharf and listen out for me.

Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can try blowing my vuvuzela
You can try blowing my vuvuzela

Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela, ay ay ay ay ay ay

It's Not Easy Being Green

So there I was watching the football, when somebody whose name we'll never remember has an optimistic punt at the ball. It bobbles off his toe end and skips along that weird grass they seem to have in South Africa (not a place I've ever associated with grass, other than the 'watch where you're walking, there might be a prostrate lion under your feet snoozing off a zebra takeaway' long yellow savannah sort of grass, definitely not the lush green stuff that you may have noticed allows players to slide half the width of the pitch on their knees when they've scored a goal), skips languidly across that weird green grass, two or maybe three times, almost not reaching the England goal at all. Did it actually happen in slow motion, like that grainy black and white footage of the real Dambusters practice run on some reservoir in Derbyshire or somewhere that gets unconvincingly cut into Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd pretending to be in a Lancaster bomber (it's engines uncannily like the sound of a vuvuzela)in the film reconstruction of the Dambusters raid? In fact,amidst the vuvuzela of the moment, was it just me or did the otherwise impecably high definition Hyundai advert that we call England's world cup coverage actually turn into grainy black and white in that split-second? Did I hear someone say 'There are some people on the pitch, they think it's all over?'

The moment the ball met the less than solid resistance of Rob Green's right glove, I had a mental image of Sooty, no not Sooty, not even Sooty's oblivioulsy but obviously gay and downright annoying right hand man (should that be left hand man?) Sweep, but Sue, the girly one of the Sooty menage a trois, going down to a well-choreographed punch in the face. It was as though there was nothing inside his glove. Abu Hamza could have saved that shot, or if he couldn't save it, at least he would have punctured the ball and stopped the fucker from going over the line.

But for Rob Green, let's face it, the worst bit wasn't that he didn't actually save the shot, it was what he did next. At that point, when his glove folded in on itself like an origami orchid, and the ball rolled past him into the goal he should have let it go. But instead, he turns round and starts scrabbling after it on all fours, like a dog pawing at a jellyfish in the sand. We could all have told him there was no point, especially with the thalidomide mime artist's gloves that had let him down so badly. No matter what he does with the rest of his life, that's the moment that will define him for ever. But it won't be The Hand of Rob that will become infamous, like Maradona's Hand of God or even the Tears of Gazza. When England STILL hasn't won the World Cup by 2040, will we be singing 'But I still see that tackle by Moore and when Lineker scored, Bobby belting the ball and Rob Green's arse sticking up in the air as he scrambles for dear life like the last man in the water at a Michael Barrymore pool party.'?

The Poltergeist, the Beachball and Virginia Woolf

When I was little there was this scary film I saw one night when I'd fallen asleep on the sofa and my mum and dad were watching the telly and couldn't be bothered to take me up to bed. What I remember about it was that there was this little girl who lived in a house that had a poltergeist (now I think about it, the film might well have been called Poltergeist) but the thing that really freaked me out was that it came out of the telly, which was scary enough seeing as I was watching the film on the telly, but the very worst thing about it was that it came out of the telly when it was turned off and the plug was pulled out. You didn't see anything, it wasn't like that woman who crawls out of the telly in that other film with the lighthouse and the scary video that tells you you're going to die if you watch it and drips water all over the floor. But the lttle girl knew, and she just stood there and stared at the fizzing screen and said 'They're here.'

And they are, this week. Emmets everywhere. We've had a family in at ours from Essex. Two kids, a girl about 2 and a boy about 4, blonde mum who looked about 15 from the back and about 40 from the front who seemed to have got a permanent cold all the time they were staying here, and a dad who wore pink shorts and an England replica shirt. I saw them on Porthminster beach yesterday, and the boy was chasing his sister all round the beach pushing her over and kicking sand at her when she fell down. All this went on right under the snivelly mum's nose, but she didn't seem bothered. In the end the little boy ran up to her and threw his arms round her legs and buried his face in the camel foot of her white jeans, while she shouted at the little girl for crying. Compared to the memories of her brother's brutality this little girl will take away with her, Virginia Woolf's memory of being touched up by her cousin on the hall table at Talland House during their childhood holidays in St Ives seems pretty tame to me, and we all know what happened to her. When I saw that film The Hours on dvd recently, I suddenly realised during the scene when the Virgina Woolf character (Nicole Kidman) drowns herself in the river, that Virginia Woolf's last living thought may well have been about bathing at Porthminster in one of those old knitted swimming costumes, a thought triggered by the fizzing sensation you get as your clothes fill up with water when you go into the sea fully dressed.

Anyway, I felt sorry for the little girl and thought it pretty funny a bit later when her bullying brother's beach ball got caught by the wind and carried off down the beach. Instead of stopping it for him (which I easily could of) I gave it a good kick, and watched him chasing off after it as fast as his little legs would carry him, until it blew into the sea and was last seen going round Porthminster Point. And that's what made me think of Virginia Woolf bobbing down the River Ouse remembering her childhood holidays in St Ives.

That's the wonder of Woolies

For those of you who don't know Woolworth's in St Ives, it's on the main shopping street, Fore Street, and you used to be able to go in at the ground floor off Fore Street, go down the stairs onto another floor that sold paint and screws and stuff for school, and if you went down another floor you came down to the toys floor which was pretty cool when you were younger,and you could walk straight through there and out of another set of doors and you were on the Wharf with the sea and the harbour in front of you. It was less a shop, more a portal to another dimension.

Now it's going to be a Pizza Express apparently, which a lot of people don't like because they think it's going to compete with all the other restaurants in St Ives. Also there's a rumour that the Fore Street floor is going to become a Tesco Metro, which is bad because that will definitely compete with places like the deli across the road and the few inde shops in town that are left. The emmets'll like it though, it's another step closer to St Ives becoming an outpost of Fulham and forcing real people like me out of town. Although to be honest, if I've going to become a hostage negotiator it might not be a bad thing because I'm sure there are more hostage negotiation opportunities in Fulham than in St Ives. Mind you there are probably even more in Camborne, but I've not looked into that yet.

Anyway I was walking past the exWoolworth's building yesterday, covered in scaffolding which at first I took for an art installation by the Tate, but no, it's obviously evidence that work's underway on the building and that the rumours are true. I looked through the front windows between the flyposters, and inside, roughly in what used to bet the Ladybird clothes section right at the back there was a garden shed! So I'm wondering now whether it's going to be a Pizza Express or in fact a Pizza Hut.

Ten Places to take refuge in St Ives and the surrounding area in the event of a Zombie Invasion

As in the John Carpenter film (in which the nemesis comes in the shape of the avenging ghosts of seamen drowned by nineteenth century wreckers rather than zombies), this list of suggestions assumes you've got a few minutes to take avoiding action rather than sitting on Porthmeor just being baffled by the incoming fog.


Jed's 'walking dead' list of places to go in the event of a zombie invasion

1. Godrevy Lighthouse (ideal, but not easy to get to)
2.Trencrom Hill
3. Gurnard's Head
4. Mulfra Quoit
5.Smeaton's Pier
6.Porthminster Beach Cafe (Zombies couldn't afford it)
7. Dolly Pentreath (the boat. If the tide's going out though, give this one a miss as the harbour dries out at low tide)
8. Boilers (great at low tide, less good at high tide)
9. Frank's at the top of Tregenna Hill (a terminally unfrequented hairdresser's shop)
10. The Three Ferrets (you wouldn't want to be seen dead in there)

Jed's 'walking dead' list of places to avoid in the event of a zombie invasion
1. The Tate Gallery Loggia
2. The Digey
3. Zennor
4. Leach Pottery ( perhaps a bit overcautious, but my dad reckons on the evidence of his pots alone that there Bernard Leach had strangler's hands)
5. 'Beagle Estate
6. Anywhere with a Fogou
7. The spooky old ruined mine at Cripplesease
8. Charity Shops (full of dead people's clothes)
9. Subway on Tregenna Hill (you have to be a zombie to work there)
10. Barnoon Cemetery above Porthmeor (well obiously)

I ought to get out more

First, I'd like to thank all those people who've literally inundated me with enquires about how I am after my recent experience of coma land. I won't name names, because you know who you are. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that my 316 so-called 'friends' on facebook are not real friends at all, no more than the sort of so-called 'girlfriend' who holds you hostage in your own bedroom for four days (including two days on the roof) and then cracks you on the head with a hammer. I've not heard from her either, by the way in case you're wondering.

Anyway today I went out for the first time for quite a few weeks. My hair's growing back a bit weird, so I wore a balaclava and my dad's panama hat so nobody would look at me. It was good practice for when I'm a hostage negotiator, which I've definitely decided to be, either that or a Samaritan, as I reckon that the advantage of being a Samaritan would be that if it all goes wrong you could just put the phone down and pretend nothing's happened.

It's funny you know, when you see something every day you don't notice it, but today it was like I was seeing everything for the first time. Like all the shops in St Ives that you know aren't going to last five minutes that never reopened after shutting down for the winter. My favourite one is the one in Fore Street in the house where John Knill, who was a famous bloke in St Ives a couple of hundred years ago used to live. If he'd been Spanish his name would have been Juan Knill. If he'd gone to my school everybody would probably have called him Fucky Knill. He built a big pointy mausoleum for himself and more or less invented Steeple Hill at the same time, but then died in London so his mausoleum's been empty for like two hundred years, and would probably make a good Affordable Home for somebody, instead of just being danced round every year by fifty virgins who get ten pee for doing it out of his will. Anyway his house got turned into a shop that at first used daringly to call itself tiny penis (sic) but then obviously got cold feet and changed its name to tiny p. It sold crappy t-shirts, with unfunny and faintly offensive slogans, to emmets. I say sold, actually you never saw anybody buying any of them but it encouraged the sort of emmets who've come to St Ives by accident, thinking they were going to Newquay, to hang around outside the shop blocking the street and pointing at the window and reading the stupid slogans out loud to each other and laughing in that self-justifying way people do who can't see what's wrong with Benny Hill, the comedy equivalent of UKIP voters. Anyway, tiny p finally put on its 'HAVE I HAD A WET DREAM OR JUST GONE INTO VOLUNTARY LIQUIDATION?' t-shirt, and shut its doors for the last time, to be replaced by what I can only describe as an Emporium of dark and complicated antiquities that were remarkable for their self-evident lack of desirability. Despite this, I really wanted them to succeed, because they were so obviously not in it to make any money, and yet went to the trouble and expense of installing CCTV which is still there now, its tiny black and white screen flickering high up in the corner of an empty shop like a post-modern parody of itself, monitoring the passers-by as they pass by without looking in the shop windows it was installed to watch over and protect. It's exactly the sort of CCTV monitor that one day unexpectedly captures the image of a ghost. Today though, all it caught was a lost-looking kid in a balaclava wearing a panama hat. We looked at each other for a good couple of minutes before I got bored and walked away. As I walked back down Fore Steet he was walking away as well.

Sunny side up

My dad's keeping me out of the way even more the usual until my hair grows back, he says its so I don't put the GUESTS off their breakfasts, as if I was one of those people off of The Spa of Embarrassing Bodies. That's all very well, but he doesn't seem to mind me cooking their bloody breakfasts for them as long as I do it out of sight. I don't know why he doesn't just put a bag over my head and have done. While I was in my coma, Mum got a new job that involves her being out at night a lot, not that she used to put herself out with the GUESTS all that much, but it means I end up having to cook the breakfasts most of the time, and plate them up for dad to take them through into the dining room.

I have decided to be a vegan because one day last week in a box of eggs from the Co-op I found a feather stuck to an egg with a blob of hen shit, and this very graphically brought home to me where eggs come from. Because I am now vegan, this morning I was experimenting with a new way of breaking eggs so that I didn't have to touch them with my hands. I won't go into details because to be honest while it was extrememly effective as a way of cracking eggs, it was pretty shit really, because it broke the yolks of most of them as well, resulting in me using 36 eggs for 9 breakfasts. Would you believe it, after all that one of the picky bloody emmets just ate the whites of her eggs and left both her yolks on her plate.

Now everyone report to the dance floor

I will NOT go into the details of why I haven't BLOGGED for some months, suffice it to say that having put me in a very compromising position involving ANOTHER WOMAN, my girlfriend acccuses me of having an INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP with my Hostage Negotiator, and goes for me with a hammer.

I ask you, my Hostage Negotiator, she is probably 40 and smokes rollups. (So much for the Stockholm Syndrome). Anyway having held me hostage and then gone for me with a hammer, I am definitely not going out with her any more. (My girlfriend that is, well I say girlfriend, NOT ANY MORE, not my Hostage Negotiator.)

I call her that because after all those days I never got to find out her name. All I know her as is MUM, because about three or four days after it all kicked off (I think it might have been Christmas Day, actually) and I was just chilling on the roof and looking out over Godrevy and having a bit of a rest from chucking slates down into the street below, she'd given me her mobile to ring my dad, and it rang and it was one of HER kids ringing her who just said 'Is mum there?' She looked a bit embarrassed when I said 'It's for you' and threw the phone down to her. Anyway she was pretty cool, and we played UNO which is a bit shit with just two people to be honest, especially when one of them's sitting on a roof and the other one's standing in the street, but at least she listened to me. Then she made the mistake of getting me to come back down into my bedroom, and talk to my girlfriend WHO IS WHY I WAS THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. That was when the unfortunate incident with the hammer happened.

To be honest, comas aren't what they're cracked up to be in films either. I saw Eastenders on the telly the other night first time for months, that Jack Branning(can't believe Bradley's dead, shows how dangerous it is to go up on roofs even when your girlfriend ISN'T a psychopath secreting a hammer in her bra), you watch, he's been shot in the head, he was in a coma for about ten minutes, and I bet he'll be up and about in a few weeks, you mark my words.

I think my Hostage Negotiator and I will be friends forever, although she hasn't been round since I got out of hospital. In fact she hasn't been in touch at all, but that's understandable because she said has to keep quiet about her job. Not even her kids know what she does, mind you I don't know what my mum does either (nothing). I thought I seen her in the Co-op the other day, but they say that's part of my illness, like seeing Robbie Williams. I think now when I leave school I would like to be a Hostage Negotiator instead of a postman.