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.