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.'?