Coastalblog

What a jolly pleasant few days that was. I always forget how energising just a short change of scenery is. Plus there's the added smug factor of knowing that you've made in effort with family (I'm only half-joking, it is by no means a chore to see my relations, quite the opposite, but my odd days off make it difficult for me to do so, so when I am able to I feel quite the dutiful chap). Lords was enjoyable, even if the cricket was the worst sort of mismatch, and I even found time to get into a ruck with a short fat bearded bloke who felt it necessary to shout racial abuse (as well as a bizarre sequence of non sequiturs) at the action. So that was entertaining. It was also good to be able to put some faces to names vis a vis ILX (and what a strange coincidence that the very next night Jim, Porl and Cel should have their very own close encounter of the FAP kind) and hopefully I shall do so again, as in my sun-dazed state I'm not sure the poor chaps got a great deal of sen...

Right, I'm off for a couple of days to spend some hard earned money on a lovely birthday dinner for my dear old nan, a couple of nights in a posh it up hotel, a day at Lords and possibly a pint or nine with various pleasant chaps and chapesses. Normal service resumed sometime around the weekend (or whenever my hangover clears) Hard old life, isn't it?

I was going to put this here, but pumpkin seemed more it's natural home (besides which I hadn't put anything up there for a while and was starting to feel guilty).

So in order to give myself a bit of impetus with said short stories I've started another blog . Whenever I finish one I'll stick it up there. Okay?

Once upon a time there was a boy who worked in a pub in a small market town. And in this pub in the small market town drank a motley collection of elderly alcoholic perverts, philosophical gas-fitters, drunken cleaning ladies, avuncular portly homosexuals and a whole bunch of other folks. Their stories, banter, anecdotes and miscellaneous crap filled the air with a heady rich of accents and viewpoints utterly alien to the boy. After a few years the boy got the idea to mythologise these people, and to cheerfully rip their lives off so he could pass his masters degree, then he read a poem called "on the neglect of figure composition" by Roy Fisher, which posited a "fresh matter of England" and told the story of an english civil war so absurd as to seem plausible, and so the ormskirk sequence was born. I don't quite seem to be able to shift the sequence from my psyche, the mythologies and characters have burrowed to a level where they are dug in tight, and they are...

Right, this isn't going to mean a damn thing to anybody, but it's something I need to get off my chest (and hey, it's a blog, right? At least I'm not whining about my relationship or detailing my latest self-harm scars), and it is this. LAURENT PERRIER ROSE CHAMPAGNE IS THE BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE. Now, I'm not about to get into that whole inverse-snob anti-champagne bollocks. I love champagne, I'm not even averse to the odd glass of the above-mentioned BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE. My quarrel is with the fans of the slightly overrated aforementioned BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE. It's pleasant enough, but it's not all that. I've tried about fifteen rose champagnes which were far superior, and god knows how many champagnes total. But LP Rose drinkers are the most dogged brand loyalists I've ever met (explanatory sidenote, champagne is made rose due to the skins of red grapes, primarily pinot noir but occasionally syrah, being allowed to pigme...

I wasn't just spouting off when I stated not so long ago that coastalblog is going to become more "writery". I have been working, or at least attempting jolly hard to, but I have this problem to which I have only recently cottoned on. I am, by a combination of choice, genetics and necessity a night owl. I read through an old folder the other night and the handwriting uniformly bore the marks of being written by a shaky, possibly drunk man at stupid o'clock. I know from experience that this is when ideas are most likely to strike, that's always how it's been with me. It's no coincidence, then, that when I moved in with the lovely Mrs Coastaltown who, having a normal job and being a normal person and consequently fond of getting to bed at a reasonable hour the writing dried up. I had become accustomed to writing directly onto the computer, my mind had trained itself to work when faced with a glowing screen at a certain time of the morning (namely between two...

...making me happy at the moment (an occasional Coastalblog feature designedto prove that I'm not a bitter husk of a man the whole time) 1) The bandwagonesque George Galloway's idiotic indignation in the face of some even more facile question from Paxo (who is rapidly becoming a caricature of himself). Just watching the egregious opportunist have his evening ruined was my election highlight. 2) Wireless net! I can type this! Whilst sat at the kitchen table! 3) My ticket for Lords at the end of the month came through this morning. So when the first ball of the test summer is bowled, I'll be right there. 4) Tabbouleh. Chop a bunch of flat leaf parlsey, a bunch of coriander, spring onions and cherry tomatoes. Mix with some bulgur wheat and dress with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, allspice, and cinnamon. 5) Nah, all out of stuff. Back to being a bitter husk.

Ah, Bank holiday weekend. without a doubt the worst shifts of the year. It's not that they're particuklarly hard, though they are busier than usual, it's simply the depressing knowledge that nearly everybody EXCEPT YOU is off work enjoying the sunshine. Which is why I almost died laughing when the heavens opened yesterday and a deluge of biblical proportions caused Ormskirk to resemble little more than a lake (over which our rabidly territorial Model Boat Enthusiasts would undoubtedly wage another duck pogrom as they famously did over the pond in the park). Ho ho. But anyway, why the question marks? Well, it just wouldn't be bank holiday weekend without a bemusing exchange with a clueless member of the general public, attempting to book a table. HIM: Hi, I'd like a table for two at nine fifteen. ME: Sorry sir, but the kitchen's shutting at half eight tonight. HIM: Why? ME: Because we've been open all day. Last bookings are eight fifteen. HIM: Alright then, I...