Coastalblog

Hello, a brief check in to direct those who may be interested in the general direction of a couple of ongoing bits and bobs by associates of coastalblog, should you be a of a creative bent you may find them handy http://www.nicolereneepantano.com/#!portfolio-2 http://holdfirepress.wordpress.com/ there we go, dissemination gives one a warm glow, does it not. more considered and lengthier posts to follow shortly, but i'm a bit shy of typing at the mo, the shift key on my keyboard's knackered, so kiss goodbye to parentheses, question or exclamation marks, obviously i CAN CAPITALISE but caps lock on and off every time one wishes to use the upper case is a massive pain the arse, unless one is WRITING A LETTER TO THE DAILY MAIL ABOUT EVIL GYPSY WOGS, obv. such is life.

I mean seriously, that is getting on for half a year. All reason dictates that clearly I have a bit too much going on to keep going with dear old wheezing Coastalblog, with its bouncy 1.0 look and utter disregard for any development in web-based technology of the last, ohh seven years. Probably should knock it on the head, to be honest. I barely have time for a facebook status update, let alone an honest to goodness considered blog post. I have to do actual things. Like make stuff. And talk to people. And look after small people. Hmm, unnecessarily snotty, I suspect, but I ask you, this evening I waited around for a table of four people. Whole place was deserted, when these four friends buggered off I could go home. They kept me an hour and a half, and in that time not one of them spoke to another, each was giving it some internet on one device or another, which begs the question why go out and ruin my evening in the first bloody place? And so, irony of ironies, I am talking about bein...

I've just finished reading Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor (a mere 17 years after starting it, giving up and bunging it on a shelf, 16 year old me clearly had less patience); it was, as Ackroyd nearly always is, dense, verging on the mystical and practically damp with the Thames' winter mist rising from the page. I mention it purely because as I was reading it, as so often seems to happen, one of the central themes started to chime with a notion which has been bouncing around my head these past few days. I shan't test your patience by outlining the plot in any great detail but suffice it to say that in Hawksmoor the future is in part an echo of the past, the details repeat, the characters exist down generations. Now, there's a more extensive (and probably more interesting) point to be made here about Hawksmoor being in an oblique sense a comment upon palimpsest, or on archetype, template, the workhorses of literature (which, given that Ackroyd is famous for rewriting his...

In these days of austerity and pulling through together, it is beholden upon us to audit ourselves at every moment, to see if there's any more WE could be doing for the cause. So, depite it being only Jan 2nd here are my achievements so far: I have snarled at a cash-machine on the off chance that it attempts to guilt trip me into gving to charity. I have learned how a thermocouple works, and am a little wiser about the workings of boilers. Ta for that, winter. I have played at the penny arcade on the end of a pier. In Southport, obv. I have become cognisant of the concept of "discount fudge" (see above). I have had beer whilst telling myself that all I'm doing is clearing out the leftovers from Christmas BEFORE a fresh start. I have watched Monsters. Inc with my son a total of two and a half times. I have spoken to disappointingly few members of my family, and must try harder. We are, after all, all in this together

In much the same way as it's cliched to be cynical about Chrstmas, it is something of a bore to be snarky about new years resolutions. That said, it is to my mind a trifle dull to be banging on about new year at all, so hoist by my own petard really. Heigh ho. Temporally speaking I suppose it makes sense to use Jan 1 to demarcate your past self from your present, and by extension future selves. It's an incredibly human trait, feeding as it does off our innate blind optimism (and, dare I say it, solipsism), to draw a line in the sand and say right, from here on out it's different. Physically speaking, too. A whole new calndar on the kitchen wall, as yet unsullied with doctor's appointments, errands to run, demands to be met. Fresh starts all round. I may sound like I'm being somewhat patronising about the whole embracing of the new year. Nothing could be further from the truth. 2010 will go down in my personal annals as being the worst year of my life, bar none, for ...

Poems to be found in the estimable Ekleksographia magazine here . To my mild shock I appear to be rubbing electronic shoulders with Harry Mathews, something of a god of mine. May need a lie down. May need one anyway. Dec, so untenably busy. Normal service resumes shortly. Merry and Happy etc etc, as you were.

December in full swing. Pans, knives etc. Will be more coherent in new year promise. Though whilst I am here I will point out this: the incumbent government made a big hoohah upon arrival of their bonfire of the quangos because they are "unelected and not answerable". Today Eric Pickles pushes through his localism bill, devolving power to local citizens. Who are also, I cannot help but note, unelected, and not answrable. Just saying. Also just saying that docking Pickles' Pie Allowance may go some way towards making a dent in the deficit. Okay, fair enough, mocking his corpulence is cheap and petty. I'll just have to stick to mocking his smalltown, pettifogging, mean, nickelfucking bill, the upshot of which is that a few people in a jolly nice conservation area will form a community group to clear the odd footpath in their vast acreage of free time and councils will use that as an excuse to sack a couple of maintenance staff. Meanwhile council tax rises at a flat rate...

I confess to being a little mystified by the US reaction to the current crop of wikileaks documents. Much froth and splutter about their unacceptability, dottle and bile about lives at risk and what have you. It makes me wonder if they've actually stopped to think about what's come to light. The big ones that the british media are running with, for example, do in fact rather help the US. Don't they look less warlike in the wake of the news that arab countries have been urging them to attack Iran? There we all were thinking that US aggression and imperialism in the middle east was one of the main drivers of global tension; now we discover that they've been positively restrained, all things considered, and as it turns out Saudi Arabia and Jordan actually agree with Israel about some aspects of foreign policy. Furthermore the news that the Chinese are fairly relaxed about North Korea also points to a level of global consensus that we were unaware of. I don't know about...

Two which have occupied me today: How much tax has Bono avoided paying in Ireland, what with his being domiciled abroad for income tax reasons? likewise the rest of bleeding U2. Just curious, is all. Seems a bit rich banging on about third world debt when your own country is bleeding to death due to the tax avoidance of rich arseholes, like, say, self-regarding rock-goblins. Why on Earth did Gove stop shy of bringing back the birch? The rest of his half-arsed, home counties pleasing , reactionary bollocks hearkened back merrily to the Victorian class-room. The three R's! Exams! None of this namby coursework nonsense! Get the Army in! Why d'you stop shy of advocating caning, Gove? Looks like you shat out from here. Anyhow, one other bit of news, yours truly will be reading at the Rose next Wednesday (Dec 1st), do pop along if you feel so inclined.

Now, contrary to what you may have gleaned from the reams of vituperation which have spooled forth upon these pages since coastalblog's inception I do not, as a general rule, quiver with contempt for my fellow man en bloc. Well, maybe a touch, but on the whole I try to see the best. but around about this time every year a phenomenon occurs which causes your correspondent to desire to gnaw his own hand off in frustration as he weeps for his fellow man. I first noticed it in '96, the year zero of the internet from the coastal prespective. Wide eyed at Uni, making fumbling (though in one notable case successful)attempts to flirt via email, agog and gushy with the sheer wonder of it all, but up it cropped on the uni's bulletin boards; and so it has continued through group emails, message-boards, myspace, facebook all the way up to twitter. Each year more crushingly depressing than the last. What? What? You cry. Dear reader, let me elucidate: It is the phenomenon of people takin...

Now. I have maintained that twitter is where I draw the line, and the reason I have consistently given is that I recoil at the ego rampant. It mystifies me that anyone would imagine their every waking moment should be documented for the edification of others, and, to be fair to me, it still does. Sure I blog a bit, but mostly for my own amusement, and at a frequency so intermittent that it's clear to all and sundry that hey, I am doing things, other things, things which don't involve a keyboard. But it's only part of the truth, and it's time to confess the whole. You see, I also have a bit of an addctive personality when it comes to information, and then I tend to get nothing done. I have learned this lesson bitterly as the net has evolved, and I know damn well that twitter would tip me over the edge if I let it. Proof positive occurred today, when I was forced to tweet for professional reasons, and before you knew t I was deep into some utterly utterly meaningless medi...

Less than coherent. Brief points to be going on with. 1) Good to see Prof Nutt pointing out yet again that booze is nastier than pills. Pillheads slap head, say duh (some miss, undermining their point). Worth, however, pointing out that booze tastes nicer. Possibly crucial in final analysis. 2) The trip. Awfully good. Notable for chefs country-wide cracking up when Coogan orders soup followed by chicken, possibly a joke you only truly get if you're in the industry. 3) Why on earth is Gingerharmangate (as no-one is calling it) an outrage when it was apparently perfectly fine to assault Brown for his social awkwardness? Poor show 4) Oh dear god Albarn's shilling for Murdoch, it's going to pain me never to listen to Blur again, but, ALBARN'S SHILLING FOR MURDOCH, are you short of money, Damon, are you? 5) Likewise Merchant sucking Barclay's cock. Embarrassing. 6) It's possible to observe the american midterms with some sense of transatlantic detachment, but difficu...

So you sit in a church, some people say some things, and you feel you are observing all proprieties, then you crumble, then you weep. That's grief, then, like a good anglo-saxon male, you box it up and get on. Then, weeks later, a passing thought brings you to your knees. I suspect this may take a while. I further suspect that I'm a fucking idiot for thinking it might not.

It comes as a mild surprise to note that today is the third anniversary of the death of the wonderul Alan Coren. That's a quick three years. I was thinking of him just the other day, as it happens, watching the cleggster and cabletron's astonishing voltes-faces on tuition fees (+everything else they once held very firm, unshakeable beliefs about) one of the first things that popped into my head was how riotously amusing he'd have found it. Outrageous, yes, revolting yes, but also deeply, deeply funny.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Talk about conflict? Believe me. You know who I don't want to be? I don't want to be an indie snark purist. You know the ones, the ones who drop a band like a hot potato the moment they get a sniff of success; the ones who when you cheerily mention how much you like a track off a band's third album, say, will sniff at you and state that the only good track they ever did was a cover of a Jesus Lizard track which was the b-side to an early single which is 7" Japanese import only, unless you count the 2-track demo for a label sampler which was A&R only, or maybe the flexisdisc given away at one gig and one gig only where the singer changes the words omg at which point you punch them right on the bridge of the glasses that they don't even need to wear, the twunts. And quite right too. And yet, and yet.. Look, I think we all have an indie snark-merchant knocking about, maybe we need to make peace with them. Mine popped out this evening whe...

Bah, possibly also humbug. Contrary to the childish posturing of the posts below I am not constantly at odds with existence for no reason other than to be a reactionary bastard. I mean, I am, a bit, but not overly proud of it, kind of teenage really. You'd think I'd have grown out of that sort of entry-level bile by now, but sadly not, it's a cross we'll just all have to bear. That said, I was perturbed by today's G2, which posed the question why do people loathe hipsters so? Full article here , for what it's worth. Now, I can have a wild stab as to why, and on first read I chortled merrily as I gently stroked my own prejudices to tumescence. But after a while I got to thinking (I was chopping veg for piccalilli, and that sort of exercise does tend to lend one a fugue-like state), surely to define oneself as anti-hipster is in essence as much of a pose as being a shoreditch twat itself? Now don't get me wrong, I have very little time for irritating, trilby-w...

Now I admit that I am prone to the odd generalisation, occasionally even a touch of hyperbole (no, no, don't argue, I admit it). But a stroll into town with the boy last weekend provided me with troubling, worrying evidence that some generalisations are, well, right. our route took us past the rugby club (ho ho, you cry, he's about to have a pop at rugby, favoured past-time of boorish chaps called Dan who believe they can tell a man's character from his handshake), now I have nothing against rugby (so yar boo sucks to you); I'm from Cornwall, it's practically a religion there, and in the same way as the sport transcends class in New Zealand, or cricket crosses every social divide in the yorkshire leagues, so it is with Cornwall and rugby (union, that is, I am in no sense trying to suggest that league is elitist, a little chippy perhaps, maybe even a touch parochial, yes, elitist, no). I grew up playing the sport, I've got a lot of time for it, it does a good job...

I inhabit an appalling duality, seriously. Some days it's nigh on impossible to get out of bed. You see, there are two of me. I know, I know, we're all multi-faceted, each of us is terribly complex etc etc. I am not, however, there are, simply put, two of me. As a general rule of thumb I'm relatively liberal, reasonably relaxed and inclined to see the best in people. However I am, also, a chef. And chefs, as you're doubtless aware, are for the most part temperamental, egomaniacal arseholes. Goes with the turf, I'm afraid, when your business and reputation ride on each and every plate you send out, and you send out hundreds, it tends to make you prone to stress. And so I and I struggle on, mutually mistrustful but attempting to rub along as best we can. And then something like Asda'a new "Chosen by you" range comes along. The concept being that they've stuck this label on items "Chosen by you" d'you see, and in no sense chosen by a pro...

The better memoried among you may recall me be describing the labour leadership contest as yadda yadda yadda David Miliband wins. I got that wrong. But in fairness, so did everybody else, and people pay money for their stuff. So who's the biggest idiot, eh? And yes, I'm aware that the leadership election occurred the best part of a week ago, but frankly, it takes me a while to get round to these things, and I'm a trifle tired of instant media. Who on earth has the energy? And, for that matter, who on earth cares? Read a book for fuck's sake.

For reviving me from the slough of meh I have been wandering aimlessly through of late, a smallish sign of life, but a significant one nonetheless. Why yes, dear reader, I was yelling at the telly! And the object of my ire? Well, an advert, obv. It was for some sort of yoghurt. The basic premise was two pretty-ish middle class sorts enjoying their yoghurts on a balcony, as that's what pretty-ish middle class sorts do, I am given to understand. Tra la la, they cried, fiddle de dee, when I'm done with this yoghurt I shall probably be off down some cobbled streets on me bike with a basket on the front, well nourished middle class hair streaming behind me, to meet my boyfriend, who is most probably called either Toby or Jamie; and then we'll toddle off to watch and fail to comprehend something by Fellini or Kurosawa, someone foreign anyway. Tra la la, how nice to be me. I may be extrapolating somewhat, but hey. Anyhow, one of these pretty-ish middle class sorts knocks a pot pla...