Coastalblog

BUILD SOME FLATS: What to do? What to do? The cry has reverberated from boardroom to shop floor at the corporate juggernaut that IS West Lancashire District Council. What to do with what, you ask? Why, the creation of a large amount of town centre real estate. Since the bulldozing of the site the questions have flown around like large bats, large bats with cartoon questions marks attached to their heads. Something for the kids, perhaps? The Militant Action Group of the Ormskirk Model Boating Society doubtless favours a large boating lake with 24-hour Duck Sniper on-site. OUr own humble proposal for a sculputre park featuring Ormskirk's more Goombah works of public Art (The Sword in the Anvil, anyone? EIGHT FUCKING METRES TALL BRONZE GLOWING SEED-PODS anyone?) has fallen on deaf ears. The Question has been put to the public and the public have responded bafflingly by being largely in favour of a development of luxury flats. Rumours that this bizarre decision on the part of the publ...

To good a quote to let slide by..(half-inched from Cricinfo) "I must admit that when I put my arm around him the exact words I used were 'It's 1-1 you Aussie bastard'." As if ... Andrew Flintoff jokes about what he really said to Brett Lee at the end of the Edgbaston Test.

To the reader from Sunnyvale, Ca. You are our two thousandth visitor. Congratulations! Have a prize! (N.B. I was going to stick a picture of a trophy there or something, but once I saw that picture I just couldn't resist it).

If you had told me six months ago that I was going to spend a significant proportion of last Monday teaching the finer points of haiku writing to a bunch of undergrads I would have looked you sternly in the eye and demanded that you stop hogging the drugs,you selfish bastard. The first intimations that this was actually going to happen, and wasn't just something I'd thought might be entertaining in an idle moment came when I stood in the english corridor, looking at the information board as I'd failed to do so many times as an undergrad myself, and there it was. A list of names and at the top, Tutor: Matt Fallaize. Blimey, I thought, this looks like actually being the case then, doesn't it? Hmm. Best hit the books. Not only did I do it, I actually enjoyed it. Now, I don't want to go jumping in two-footed here but I could rather get used to this, it beats getting whined at by middle-aged women in far-too-revealing frocks for a living. I'm writing this now after a...

Because I haven't given it enough praise as yet. When the delightful Mrs Coastaltown bought a great big meat grinder for christmas I was, indeed, delighted, but divined an ulterior moptive on her part. Mrs C doesn't eat red meat, and a big culinary sticking point in our house has been my point blank refusal to use chicken or turkey mince in anything (on the thoroughly reasonable grounds that as far as I'm concerned it's not actually food). However, with this grinder I could get prime chicken breasts and make ethically okay mince with them, yes? Well, I suppose so, and in fact I have done so, for some frankly awesome chicken crocquettes I whacked up on New Year's day. But this still doesn't get to the heart of our disagreement, the fact that I won't make any tomatoey pasta sauces or chilli with the aforementioned white meats on account of it's JUST PLAIN WRONG. The solution? oh my dear sweet Lord. Chilli con Carne. Made with Duck. Using my sharpest, small...

So I shall shortly be starting work at my alma mater, attempting to inculcate some notion of poetry writing into a group of people who (using myself at that age as an example) will think that either a) I don't know what I'm doing, and that they could do much better themselves on account of being eighteen and therefore knowing everything or b) have zero desire to be there and will repond with mulish silence to everything I try and teach them. So shortly, in fact, that's it's NEXT FUCKING MONDAY. Nervous? You betcha. Logically I know it will all work out fine, I know my stuff, I've prepared as much as is humanly possible. But since when did logic have anything to do with nerves? I'm excited, obviously, it's the first time I've done this (guest spots before were in the guise of "visiting writer" i.e. not structured, I didn't have to do any marking and they didn't expect RESULTS), yet another career change (if you can call a short-term, on...

Off to Liverpool book shopping today. Not my least favourite way to pass the time. Alas Pere (meaning well) had bought Waterstone's vouchers, so I had lowish expectations. Imagine, then, my surprise and delight at discovering a copy of Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet Or don't, it's entirely up to you. Anyway, a turn up for the books. Picked up the sainted Elizabeth David's Provincial French Cooking also, so expect plenty of exceedingly French cookery (i.e. OFFAL and CARCASSES) round at Coastal Towers before too much longer huzzah. All of this is, however, distracting me from the work in hand, which is to get ready for being a teacher (of sorts) within a couple of weeks. The course itself looks relatively straightforward (just as well, really), and I'm beavering away on some systematic stuff for a part where I need to get my arse in to gear and provide some material. Poor kids won't know what hit them.