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?