http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/en-EUMokoFeed10http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/http://data5.blog.de/design/preview/b5/201c06cdfd9f53a80f3c733279e3ce_160x200.jpghttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/31/life_coaching_one~1282128/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-10-31:/2006/10/31/life_coaching_one~1282128/Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:16:27 +0100 <p>In one of those strange twists of fate that crop up when you least expect it (or when I least I expect it), I’ve won a life coaching course in a raffle. The news came perfectly timed: on the same day I officially made it known to my current boss that I was thinking of going freelance. My boss, being lovely but a little less than always forward thinking, looked a little terrified. “Who,” I saw her wonder, “would take care of the routine day to day shores that you currently handle: answering press calls, talking to students, keeping tabs on our place in the media?” It was an unasked question which I could have only answered with a shrug and something along the lines of “I don’t really care, that’s why I’m going freelance.”</p> <p>I was reeling from my brave, if faltering, steps towards working independence, when I received the message on my mobile phone from “Bob” – a practitioner in “Positive Change Coaching”. I’d entered the raffle at a launch event I’d helped arrange a few weeks back and did so to show a bit of support to the project with no particular desire to win a “Life Coaching Pack”. I didn’t really know what it would mean if I did win anyway. I imagined that people like Madonna might have Life Coaches. Hers, perhaps, dispensing pearls of wisdom on new yoga techniques and how to get your name in the papers by a sickening media stunt dressed up as a random act of philanthropy, for example. </p> <p>My Life Coach seemed to be a sort of “change facilitator” – life coaches and their ilk use words like “facilitate” you see – who is there to “support me to make the changes I want to make in my life or to support me through changes which are being forced upon me.” Or something like that. If this Life Coach was worth his salt, I thought, I’d be able to outline my plans for the future and with the wave of his magic Life Coach wand I’d be a freelancer with a promising book career ahead of me in no time. Gone would be my propensity for petty distractions, my money worries and my fear of upsetting people, indeed, all the things which get in the way of me actually doing something to make my future plans a reality. </p> <p>Then Bob suggested we meet in Starbucks (no swanky office in a converted warehouse in the city centre?) and he sent me a questionnaire that looked suspiciously like it had been copied from a self help book… and so I began to have my doubts. </p> <p>Bob, it turns out, is an amiable enough bloke in his fifties, who was laid off from the Mental Health Service some time ago and decided to take on this path as part of his early retirement plan. He was sitting, looking rather nervous, just inside the door of the coffee shop waiting for me this morning, with a little sign stood up on the table in front of him with his name and the words “Life Coach” on. I wonder if anyone else had come up to him while he was there, thinking perhaps he was running a drop in service, laid on by the good people of Starbucks, for them to access while they waited for their latte? </p> <p>We settled with our cappuccinos in some cosy seats downstairs and Bob started to outline his qualifications, family history, love of football and favourite bands. He was so keen on talking about himself that I began to wonder if this whole thing had been, in fact, a measly excuse for a date with me. Bob didn’t stop talking for nigh on twenty minutes, a trick, I assumed, to lure me into his confidence, so that I would feel happy to talk about myself. Little did Bob know, I never have any trouble in that department and by the time he’d finished I was chomping at the bit to tell him about my mother’s post-natal depression, my painful teenage years and the range of fantastically beautiful hang ups I now carry around with me as a result of all that. None of this news seemed to impress Bob very much however. Indeed, where as I had been forcible moved from the country town of Malvern to stinky old Berkshire as a fourteen year old (there by ensuring my teenage years were as grim as possible), Bob was able to trump me by revealing that he’d been moved to Australia when he was 13 and had suffered years of persecution as the class “pomme” as a result. He even started to tell me about his anger management issues, but luckily stopped himself after sometime and said (to himself as much as me) “But we’re here for you today not me”, something I was not far off reminding him myself. </p> <p>The result of my raffle prize then? A free notebook, diary and plastic wallet, 6 more sessions with Bob and a subject for my blog for the next month and a half. By the time we’d got through Bob’s life (and part way through mine) the hour was almost up. Bob threw some grains of advice my way about my plans to go freelance, such as “network with potential clients”, “get some marketing material for yourself”, “do a mind map” and “read a self help book” before telling me that he was going to email me an action plan which I was to fill out. It was to cover the next four weeks and lay out my strategy to change my life before Christmas. “Aren’t you supposed to do that?” I though as he shook my hand and vanished into the crowds in St Anne’s Square. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/31/life_coaching_one~1282128/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>madonnalife-coachingworkfreelancehttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/31/life_coaching_one~1282128/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/14/contentment_verses_complacency~1220480/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-10-14:/2006/10/14/contentment_verses_complacency~1220480/Sat, 14 Oct 2006 13:58:34 +0200 <p>I’m a big one for change. When I sense change approaching, the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and the souls of my feet tingle. Why this is, I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s some inherited genetic disposition towards it, I’ve always suspected something of the travelling type in mum’s side of the family and it would nice to thing it was the call of the open road and the next new horizon that kept me moving. But in truth, it’s likely to be something more personally psychological than that: fear of settling down, fear of establishing roots in case they are ripped carelessly from the ground. When I was 14, we moved from the town I had been born in (beautiful spa town of Malvern, stunning landscape, friends I had grown up with from primary school and went south to a housing estate near Newbury in Berkshire (house up house and no where to roam, flat horizon, rougher kids who didn’t know me and who I didn’t want to know). Since that move nothing was ever quite the same again, it’s been as if the momentum cause by the initial jolt out of Malvern has kept me flying through life ever since – from Newbury to the South Coast, up to Bolton, across to Switzerland, back to Manchester, up to Todmorden and then…</p> <p>I’ve been in this flat for 2 and a half years and in the same job for more than 3 years now: the most settled I have ever been in all my life. And now I’m about to change it all again.</p> <p>I’ve been making plans at work to jack in the 9 to 5 routine and go freelance: more flexibility in my life, more opportunity to explore ways of working that suit me, a lot less security. And it’s entered my head that, once I’ve done this, it will be time to leave the sanctity of my writer’s garret and return to the big city to live, for fear that otherwise I may become a hermit, living and working at home with nothing to look at but the ever changing colours of the moor land heather from my window and no one to talk to but Jo, the owner of the café next door, whose locally famously line “oh I’ve been sweating cobs in that kitchen” is never a good starting point for a conversation. </p> <p>This all started a few months ago, when there was a real chance that I would be made redundant in my current job. This news, delivered to me by a colleague who is one of those people who knows everything that’s going on behind the scenes, didn’t scare me one bit. It sent a rush of energy through me, I was ecstatic and wanted it to happen immediately. If the momentum for change had slowed in the last few years, this news gave it a good boot and I was off again, thinking about a new future, a different way of things being. </p> <p>But sometimes I stop and I wonder. Yeah sometimes work’s hectic, sometimes maddening, but generally it’s an “ok job”. And I love this flat and this sanctuary from the chaotic outside world I’ve built here, even if the windows do ice up inside during the winter and the locals are barmy. And I ask myself, am I just changing things for the sake of it, or I am moving on in life, bravely accepting that change must come in order for their to be growth? When, in short, should I be happy with what I’ve got, and when is it time to mix things up a bit (or a lot)? Answers on a postcard please.</p> <p>I suppose it’s intuitive. Or it’s about reasons rather than acts. Some people spend their lives “tweaking” – jumping from lover to lover in order to find “the one”, scaling the career ladder, playing the property market game, improving their TV, their looks, their car. It’s as if they are seeking some kind of Niavara of Western consumerist life – the perfect partner, job, house, car, TV, wardrobe. Bliss. And of course, they never reach this place, and go on tweaking forever until they’re all tweaked out and either die of a heart attack, have a breakdown or just give up and settle for whatever they ended up with and take up Buddhism in order to “find contentment” in their lives. For me, it’s never been about having it better, but rather, having it new, different, another challenge, another opportunity – even if that means starting from square one again – where ever that is. </p> <p>I’m not saying this is the prescription for a happy life – as I said – this urge to tear it up and start again is probably born out of my neurosis rather than my intellect and good sense – but I guess it works for me. Or has done in the past. </p> <p>And what’s the alternative? To stay here, to continue in my “ok job”, to find the odd scrap of time to write, to dream of other lives, to look at photos of the past, my youth, when I was free, to go on holiday once or twice a year, to get that new TV, have a mortgage, sort out my pension, save for retirement, learn to sit still. It’s tempting, it really is. </p> <p>But instead I make plans for next year, write a proposal for work, start casting my eye over the accommodation ads in the Manchester Evening News. And I feel that fear and that excitement (they way those two intertwine) and the hairs tingle on the back of my neck and yes, there’s change afoot. Something’s about to happen.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/14/contentment_verses_complacency~1220480/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>worktodmordenchangecontentmenthttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/14/contentment_verses_complacency~1220480/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/07/cape_town_and_back_again~1197386/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-10-07:/2006/10/07/cape_town_and_back_again~1197386/Sat, 07 Oct 2006 17:15:16 +0200 <p>I kind of knew it was coming. Scrawled in a journal somewhere back at the end of July or early August are these words "The next few weeks are going to be mental, in one way I can't wait for them to be over, which is sad really." And they were mental, and I am sort of glad they are over but also kind of sad. I've been all the way to South Africa and back and my feet are just now touching the ground.</p> <p>I went to Cape Town for the 4th Homeless World Cup - 48 countries from around the world come together to play a week's a worth of "street soccer" in an attempt to raise awareness about homelessness and help move the players who take part on to better lives - or something like that.</p> <p>I worked for the England team - a pleasant bunch of lads plucked from hostels and supported housing schemes from across the country. With that, and all the the other things that have been going down at work these last few weeks, I've found the days slip away into weeks and suddenly here I am, the skies darkening before 5pm, layered in thick cloud. </p> <p>I had mixed feelings before going to Cape Town. South Africa has never been top of my list of places to visit - and I really didn't know what to expect there. I kept bumping into people who had connections to it, a woman on the train who used to live there, someone who went on holiday there last year. Some people went "You'll love it, it's amazing." Others went "It's mad, there are dead people lying in the street. Don't go out after dark." Actually, thanks to its colonial past, it was very British I thought. You go half way around the world and find a sea front not dis-similar to Margate bar the palm trees and streets packed with bars which could be in Manchester or Newcastle. The more I travel, the more things look the same. A cable car up to table mountain like the gondolas up to the alps in Switzerland. A bland cafe on top of the mountain serving chips and beer.</p> <p>But the people... I can honestly say I've never met people like Capetonians before. Are they perhaps the friendliest people on earth? Laid back, helpful, genuine. If the city left me a bit unmoved, I fell in love with people. Especially the people I met who worked with the street kids over there (of which there are a lot!) People who were motivated to change what they saw as a gross injustice running barefoot in the streets around them. Cape Town is one of those places where the world's rich and poor slam up against one another. People lie barefoot, face down in the street (alive or dead - who can say - I passed two like this and didn't stop to check), but there they are in front of million pound apartment buildings. </p> <p>Anyway, this is all a bit of random blog, mainly to return to the keyboard and just say something really. The weeks have fallen away, it's autumn, I've been to South Africa, seen Desmond Tutu dance on the soccer pitch waving his hands in the air and learnt the word "Lekker" which is South African street for "cool". Life ey? </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/07/cape_town_and_back_again~1197386/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>south-africahomelesscape-townsoccerhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/10/07/cape_town_and_back_again~1197386/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/28/nan_positive_thinking_and_festivals_agai~1077110/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-08-28:/2006/08/28/nan_positive_thinking_and_festivals_agai~1077110/Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:33:38 +0200 <p>Don’t you hate that? I was busy tapping away onto my blog, pressed some key – I’m not sure what - and the fucker went back to the previous screen and lost everything. Twat fuck hoar bum wee.</p> <p>Now... what was I saying?</p> <p>Oh yeah this is one of those random blogs… blah blah blah… didn’t write about big brother because as soon as Pete did a forward roll down those steps I lost interest – another 40 hours plus of my life down the pan… blah blah… anyway, I was at my nan’s last weekend and have been busy at work, hence a lapse last week…</p> <p>Right… My nan (or grandmother for those of you south of Dudley) lives in what used to be a mining village just outside Chesterfield, but what is now a sprawling housing estate clustered at the side of the M1. She lives in a bungalow with her deaf son who’s as mad as a custard cream and she’s 88 – still on her feet – just. My uncle is so bonkers and beset by illnesses himself, it’s often difficult to tell who is supposed to be taking care or who.</p> <p>My nan, like so many other nans across this country, has had one of those lives that will soon be consigned to the pages of a social history book. People will read about women like her and marvel at how they ever managed – she married a man with one leg – actually she married her first cousin who had one leg – and a drink problem – and they rose out all the family horror and criticism to bring into the world four almost perfectly normal apparently gene-clean children. I’m not quite sure why she did this (marry her one legged drunk cousin), but she had just recently been caught in the blitz at Coventry, where her father had been killed and she had ended up in a full body cast for 6 months, so that might have had something to so with it.</p> <p>Despite the quality of her life (drunk out of her house when her children were still young, she’d had to send my uncles and aunt to a children’s home to be cared for – my mother was 16 at this time and left home pretty much for good then anyway) my nan laughs a lot and manages to maintain a determinedly positive face in spite of it all. Even after 88 years of battling she’s still going strong, though it was difficult seeing her last weekend, frailer than when she I knew as a child, obviously, tormented by pains in her legs and back, susceptible of infections on her chest. </p> <p>Being my mother’s mother, we obviously have different last names, nan and me, but I’m definitely one of her breed. I’d like to think it’s from her that I’ve inherited my ability to turn every negative into some kind of positive, even if it’s just a random splurge of words on here to moan about the ills in the world. At a meeting at work the other day we were talking about our teenage years and some were saying how they’d been across Europe inter-railing. I said, “I’d like to do that one day.” And someone piped up, “You’re too old now.” “Of course I’m not too old,” I replied. “You can go inter-railing anytime, it just costs more when you’re older.” “That’s such a you thing to say,” someone else said. “Very you indeed.” And I suppose it is, refusing to be defeated by mere trifling matters as age and expense. I’d like to think that in most things I see possibility rather than problems. This weekend anyway.<br> And what a weekend… I started this on Saturday morning, and now it’s Monday evening. It’s been raining on and off all weekend, and SD and I have been lurking round the flat for most of it, only venturing out to the shops independently and, last night, popping downstairs for a few beers with friends. Bank holiday weekends are funny things, and the August one seems especially odd. All sorts of things are going on, or have been: “Manchester Pride”, as it’s now called, Leeds Music Festival, Todmorden Lion’s Summer fete… </p> <p>But what with the madness at work, and the insanity of the coming month (off to South Africa in 4 weeks time!) it seemed the right thing to do to shun parties and festivities and stay here in the flat, drinking and chatting and lounging on the sofa watching old episodes of Absolutely Fabulous. And now I trip back and forth between my visit to my nan last weekend, and the events of Friday when I announced to the big boss that I wanted to go freelance next year and she said what a great idea it was, and the coming autumn months following a summer that blazed so hot and bright for a few weeks and then got washed quickly away in that flood water, that Sunday when we’d just been for a picnic up near Hebden. </p> <p>There’s not been enough headspace these last weeks to string these thoughts and events together. I am being carried forward, out of the summer, into darker evenings and cooler nights. Into the hill again, onwards on the path up and up into as yet unseen places.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/28/nan_positive_thinking_and_festivals_agai~1077110/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>positive-thinkingnansouth-africatodmordenhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/28/nan_positive_thinking_and_festivals_agai~1077110/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/12/distractions~1034665/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-08-12:/2006/08/12/distractions~1034665/Sat, 12 Aug 2006 19:55:45 +0200 <p>I met someone last weekend who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn’t have a TV but who was - surprisingly, despite all that - interesting. He avoided distractions as much as possible, he said. Distractions like Big Brother and hangovers. It kind of added an extra dimension to my ramblings about Bad Things the other week, since what I suppose I was talking about there, when I said "things that are bad for us" was actually, "things that stop us from doing what we could be doing instead" - like writing that best selling novel, finding a sustainable solution to the Middle East Problem, or plotting the downfall of the current US Administration (which might, indeed, be one of things that would help solve the Middle East Problem).</p> <p>Two big distractions that should come with public health warnings: Big Brother and Gaydar - which are weirdly connected in some way, both consisting mainly of freaks who are far more interesting (though, rarely that interesting) on the screen than in real life. Big Brother I’ll come to next week, so let’s turn our attention, with lowered eyes, to the bizarre world of Gaydar.</p> <p>For the uninitiated, Gaydar is a “gay dating” website – well – an on-line cruising site from homos across the world. It’s one big dark warehouse of a place, where the off spotlight flashes across a penis here, a geek there, all lurking around in the depths of cyberspace, scrabbling around in infinity, hoping for a bit or bite – or two bites. Some say they are looking for friends, some say they want only friendship, the truth is of course, 99 per-cent of those who stray into Gaydar’s dark room are really mainly after one thing – it has the tag line “what you want, when you want it” and that doesn’t mean a conveniently timed trip to Asda.</p> <p>The best thing, the most entertaining thing, about Gaydar, are the different tribes of people you gat floating around in there, all pinging off one another in search of tonight’s fix or fantasy. Let’s look…</p> <p>Ah yes… First off, we’ve got your Hardcore Gaydar-er. See the stark, rather vomit inducing photo of their cock and arse crack? Not much said about them, a few words about what they like maybe, “fit blokes, not fats or femmes.” Bless ‘em. At least they’re honest, which is more than can be said for most of the others on there. Don’t be confused by those with a profile similar, initially, in appearance to these ones. The cock and arse photos are there, but scroll down and see what they write about themselves: “Not looking for one night stands.” Right. Yeah. Little hint, if you’re after something deeper than a quick shag, you might want to put a photo of something other than your genitals on show for all the world to see, like your face, or your auntie Ida.</p> <p>In fact, don’t put your Auntie Ida on, as this will place you in an entirely other weird group of people who lurk on Gaydar. Those who seem to think it’s a opportunity to show how popular and “well-familied” they are. Why would you ever dream of putting a photo of “me and my sister at Butlins last year having a right laugh”? Does your sister know there’s a photo of her lurking in cyberspace, next to a photo of you half naked trying desperately to stare dreamily into a camera, and above a list of things you like doing in the bedroom which include fisting and brown (if you don’t know – trust me – you don’t want to).</p> <p>Who else have we got out there tonight? Oh yeah. Bless ‘em. “Looking for Mr Right.” Ah. Dear Mancboi… Read my lips. He doesn’t exist.</p> <p>Mr Right Guy is a close relative of the DVD and a bottle of wine guy, owner of the classic profile which has a few photos of him in soft lightening and that immortal line, “I like wild nights out, but also enjoy staying in and cuddling up with a DVD and a bottle of wine.” Why? Couldn’t you find anything else to cuddle? Oh, I see not.</p> <p>Then... oh then… (and this is a great one to get SD onto if you want a laugh)… there’s the “I’m actually too good to be on here amongst you sex loving scum.” “Gaydar is awful!” they proclaim. “Everyone is just after sex.” Yes. That’s right, That’s why you’re here too, twatt face, so stop pretending you only came in here because the server on Out is down (the thinking (read dull and hypocritical) man’s gay website.) </p> <p>There are the TVs of course. Sallyanne, who has decided that looking like a hoar in an Amsterdam retirement home is the best way of attracting men. And there are the disco bunnies, who really should be doing their homework. And the no hopers whoa re just… well… hopeless. I mean, why put a photo of yourself on there if it only scares people? And the one’s with scary eyes who are obviously physco’s in waiting. And those who like to list every single facet about themselves and the people they are interested, and then list all the things they don’t like as well in case you can actually be arsed to read what they’ve written. And of course here are the odd, charming, hilarious and cynical fucks like.. well me…. on there. Cough cough.</p> <p>But yet, annoyingly, it’s fucking addictive. You can spend hours on there, clicking through profiles, marvelling hat in back bedrooms and badly decorated lounges across the world, middle aged men are still referring to themselves as “lads” or worse – “boi”. Since when… Oh I can’t even be bothered.</p> <p>Now… who’s this… Ummm… “Deepsuck” who describes himself as “Just a normal guy”. Oh dear. Now where's that book on Astrophysics I've been meaning to read...</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/12/distractions~1034665/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>gaydarbig-brothersexhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/12/distractions~1034665/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/06/two_years_in_tod~1018265/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-08-06:/2006/08/06/two_years_in_tod~1018265/Sun, 06 Aug 2006 17:11:20 +0200 <p>A mellow Todmorden Sunday Afternoon goes something like this: Kate Bush on the CD Player, SD sketching at the table, sunlight dipping in and out of clouds, falling through the window, on the window sill, where, every so often, SD goes to smoking a cigarette and stare grey eyed at Bridestone Moore over the top of the Town Hall, and to look into the street below at passers by, stopping to browse at the wool shop window. </p> <p>How did I get here?</p> <p>I'd been living in Salford in a Tower Block just off Chapel Street, just 5 or 10 minutes from Manchester City Centre, in this one bedroom flat on the 7th floor of a crumbling block with a concrete balcony and bare floors. I'd lived there  since coming back to the North West, but never really settled there, the box shaped rooms needed too much doing to them to make them homely, the corridors outside my front door smelt of rotting rubbish and were patrolled by all kinds of wailing drug and alcohol addled creatures, from scally lads in tight fitting caps to this mad drawn woman who had drug induced mental health problems and used to drift around outside my door wailing banshee like at all hours of the night. And the lift... in some ridiculous parody of council flat hell... really did act as a urinal.<br> <br>But I had a view. Sunsets over Lyme Park over in Disley, the air streaked with jet trials rising up from Manchester Airport, flickering orange lights in the darkness, Salford Suburbs stretching away to the motorway. On a sunny Sunday evening, seeing the the hills way over in the distance, out of reach to someone without a car. Always just a bit too far to go. It did my head in. </p> <p>That and the fact that a walk to the paper shop was an expedition into terror. The day a chunk of concrete sailed past my head, missing me by an inch, thrown by a spotty teenager with a permanent grimace for a face, was the day I decided it was time to leave.</p> <p>And so I set about moving, out of the city and into the hills. I wasn't sure where. I went out walking, through Disley, could I live near Lyme park? And then, once out to Todmorden. I was supposed to be going to the Pike but got lost and never made it and inside wound up and down the hills around the canal and the railway. I remember popping into the Co-Op to get a can of pop for the train journey home and thinking, I like it here. There was something a bit off-kilter about the place... not quite Hebden Bridge, not quite anywhere really. </p> <p>And a few months later, just back from Switzerland, having been confronted by a five year old just a street away wielding an iron bar and growling like a feral beast,  I was determined to move. The city was no good for me. Apart from the risk to my physical health, I was unhappy with the same few routes I had to walk on a Sunday afternoon, down to the canal basin and around, like every other place I had ever lived, the streets had become too familiar and held no magic for me anymore. I wanted to be back out in the hills. And so one day, I was idly surfing the net and typed into Google: Flats to Rent Todmorden. And there it was, first one on the list - this place.</p> <p>I knew, as soon as I walked in. The large window with a view of the hills and the woods. The cafe next door. Station just up the road. The eccentric layout of the place, a huge breakfast bar between the kitchen and the living room which gives the whole front part of the flat the feel of a youth hostel. </p> <p>Did I think, when I came here, that I would be so taken? I've lived by the sea, in a town with a view of the Swiss Alps, in the city... but here... here's a place where a local Plastic Duck Race makes the front pages of the local newspaper, where the best entertainment on a Saturday night is watching the Young People of Tod throw themselves against the ironing shutters in front of the shops in the street below...</p> <p>But two years later - two years, a night in hospital, two and a half boyfriends (that September thing doesn't really count) and various adventures in foreign places later -  and I'm still not bored. I still look forward to Tod Sunday Afternoons, the breeze through the open windows, birds flitting about the roof, the sun sinking behind the ridge. Have I found home? Is this it? </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/06/two_years_in_tod~1018265/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>todmordensalfordhomesundayhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/08/06/two_years_in_tod~1018265/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/29/sunday_tea_and_halifax~998429/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-07-29:/2006/07/29/sunday_tea_and_halifax~998429/Sat, 29 Jul 2006 17:31:09 +0200 <p><strong>...or what I did last weekend.</strong></p> <p>Sunday Tea. SD can take credit for this idea. Katie was coming over and we were talking about what we (he) could cook for her (he's ace - he comes to my house and cooks... if only he did the ironing and didn't make such a mess in the bathroom, he'd be the perfect boyfriend) when he suggested a Sunday Tea. You know, like you had... on a Sunday... at "Tea Time", which in our house was around 5 to half past generally. </p> <p>Tea Time in Moat Way - the street I was born on (well, the street that had the house I was born in on) - was very much part of the Sunday Routine which started, for me, with going off to Sunday School with Andrew Salisbury (who lived round the corner and who was partially sighted and my best friend for a time). I only went because he did and we got a Opal Fruit for going. I quite liked the songs too. And sometimes you got a free book. Anyway, Sunday School... and then back for Sunday Dinner. A roast of course. Usually chicken. Sometimes beef. Maybe lamb. Vegetables cooked to buggery and a bottle of pop from the offie on the corner - we were allowed one a week. TV in the afternoon. A reluctant bit of homework (or rather  a bit of homework done reluctantly, though I like the idea of reluctant homework - equations that won't co-operate). Heart to Heart, Charlies Angels, Nightrider. The top 40 on Radio One. Sunday Tea. Bath night. That's Life. Bed - with a sigh - school tomorrow. </p> <p>And Sunday Tea... Limp lettuce, boiled potatoes (left over from dinner), sliced ham, corned beef (was there ever a more sickening invention in the history of food? I know - let's take all the shit from the abattoir floor and squeeze it together and sell it to poor people in a square can with a weird key thing that always snaps when you try to use it), pickled beetroot in a jar ("made your dinner look like a road accident," said SD), a block of Cheddar, tinned tuna, salad tomatoes... and in our house (but apparently no one else's anywhere ever) cold beans out of the can.<br> <br>I'm not sure if this was just a Malvern thing or a family habit or what. But we did. We had cold beans out of can. Everyone I've ever spoken to about this, says that that was weird. And then of course there was "afters": in our house, maybe a trifle, that collapsed as soon as it was spooned out into the bowl into a semi-liquid clown-coloured sludge.  </p> <p><br>SD's spread for Katie was only inspired by this of course - not for us cold beans and tuna fish, it was home made quiche and an Italian mixed salad. But the idea was the same. And, since we had a guest, we had a choice of sweet too. What a host!</p> <p>Shame I repaid him for this by dragging him to Halifax on Tuesday, with the intention of going to a gallery I'd heard about called Dean Clough. We had had a plan to go to Liverpool , but it seemed so far away that Tuesday morning, a whole 2 hour train journey away, that I made the case for going to Halifax instead.<br> <br>Dean Clough was supposed to be an impressive old mill that had been transformed into 3 floors of art exhibit space. It turned out to be an office block, in a mill, that had some pictures (admittedly, quite nice pictures some of them, on the walls). I've never been in such a weird place.<br> <br>The ground floor of the gallery is OK - there's one of those shops that makes a half hearted attempt at selling art related things run by a woman in specs who has a face like she couldn't care less if nothing was brought in there all day. There was a proper gallery area - Curators Choice - which had some interesting pieces on display. But where was the rest? There were no signs, no maps... I went back to reception and asked the receptionist, who was too busy reading OK magazine and chatting to her colleague about her weekend to really give much of a toss about any visitors, for a plan and was told there wasn't one. Then I was directed up stairs and down corridors to the other so-called exhibit areas. </p> <p>I dragged a weary SD round - he was having one of his "bad days" and could only find amusement for himself by making sure that I had a bad day too - down wood-chipped office corridors where women in clippy heals marched back and forth with clip boards and fat blokes in suits sweated at computers, glancing up as we passed. It was truly bizarre. There were some fantastic paintings there, but, because they had been so casually placed on these unkempt walls, they took on a mere commercial feel - just decorative pictures for the passing office workers to ignore at leisure. </p> <p>If this place is getting grant funding - which I bet it is - it  should be shut down immediately. The way that the people in the offices regarded us as we pottered round, scowling faces, slight surprise, it was obvious that all but the first gallery were not actually meant to be seen by the public at all, but were there purely for the hell of it and so that the building and the idiots that own it  can claim more money from the Arts Council. </p> <p>So - don't go to Dean Clough gallery in Halifax. Ever. It's rubbish. </p> <p>Though not quite as rubbish as the gallery at the Piece Hall in Halifax, where we went to next, which consisted of 250 pictures of Halifax, painted and photographed over a period of around 100 years, many of the same street. By this time SD was in a dark place... "oh look, another picture of Halifax... I haven't seen enough of those... oh good... another one..."</p> <p>We should have gone to Liverpool.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/29/sunday_tea_and_halifax~998429/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>halifaxsundat-teacold-beansdean-clough-galleryhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/29/sunday_tea_and_halifax~998429/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/22/bad_things~980416/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-07-22:/2006/07/22/bad_things~980416/Sat, 22 Jul 2006 18:56:57 +0200 <p><em>Why do we do things which we know are bad for us?</em></p> <p>Why smoke, drink, eat sugar-filled food, lie in the sun, watch Big Brother, waste time (i.e. watch Big Brother), spend money we don't have, blah blah blah...?</p> <p>This, the thought I had Thursday night smoking a bit of stuff, - supplied to me by a mate at work who obviously thought I wasn't chilled out enough (and who can blame me with the current redundancy / IT issues / general nonsense and now threat of an office move out of the city centre to fucking Hulme thank you very much!) I turned over the tobacco, flicked a thought back to Canada where the earnest Canadians smoked pure grass joints that knocked you out with one toke because "like, tobacco is just so bad for you..." yeah and I supposed weed is just like a fucking trip to Lourdes.</p> <p>Anyway, emblazoned on the back of the tobacco pouch: Smoking may cause a slow and painful death. I wonder if anyone has ever ever ever been about to have a fag when they've seen that warning and thought "oh well bugger me I didn't know that, better stop then."</p> <p>The thing is, if I didn't have the occasional smoke, there would still be a million other things that I do and don't do that could cause a slow and painful death, so picking on just one thing doesn't seem fair really.</p> <p>But why do we do it? I mused sitting in the window. More of us than not I mean. People who are vice free, live the healthiest lifestyles, do everything they should and nothing they're not supposed to must surely be in the minority (and have very few friends). It's particular to the human animal, I would imagine, this doing stuff that's bad for us. I mean you don't see Dolphins hanging around the marina with fags in their mouths talking about how they got wasted the night before (though admittedly, the cigs would get a bit damp). </p> <p>But humans seem to regard pleasure as a goal above all else, pain, poverty, ambition... Offer the average person an all expenses night on the town every week with the sex, drink and drugs of thier choice or a lifetime of hard work, rewarding career and healthy body and mind and I'm sure most people would opt for the former - they would in Todmorden anyway.</p> <p>Perhaps, I mused on Thursday night, we do these things in order to throw into relief the sensible, intelligent, difficult, annoying, healthy things we do - as part reward, part re-balancing. I could't imagine living the kind of lifestyle that, if you followed every piece of advice about how to live a healthy life that was out there, you could have. Watch what I eat, go running, never smoke, drink one glass of red wine a day (just one), stay motivated, stop caring who's out of the BB House next Friday (please let it be that twatt Richard - I mean for fuck's sake - "I'm an older gay man and as such he should be coming to me for advice.") But then I couldn't imagine living a purely self-indulgent hedonistic lifestyle either. Well...</p> <p>Discuss.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/22/bad_things~980416/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>thursdaybad-thingssmokingbig-brotherhealthhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/22/bad_things~980416/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/16/summer_not_in_the_city~964093/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-07-16:/2006/07/16/summer_not_in_the_city~964093/Sun, 16 Jul 2006 19:50:10 +0200 <p>Summer has settled over the Calder valley again. Intense sunlight blasts over the top of the woods and into the window of garret, where I sit to type. SD is asleep on the sofa with the Guardian Guide open across his chest. We walked to Hebden and back today, me, sweating out a hangover from last night. Now foot sore and heat weary we are back in the flat at 7pm, and another Sunday is drifting slowly to sunset and a new week waits, as yet unseen, burning within the fireball.<br> A strange week behind. Things have taken a strange turn at work as redundancies are once again on the cards. A handful of people from our floor are marked to leave, though in the typical style with which are so called touchy feeling organisation does thing, nothing is official or properly discussed. Instead, rumours abound, about who’s next, how bad it really is, whether we are really going under altogether. So far, I have again managed to pass below the radar. I even found out that I’ve been granted permission to go to South Africa this September to support the Homeless World Cup – and their paying my department 200 odd quid a day for privilege of me being there. That, and my bosses wedding at the end of the year, mean that I’m safe for the time begin I suppose, but times like these are good for reminding you of the instability of things, and for giving you the kick up the arse needed to get on with other plans.<br> So, I have been looking at building the empire this week – writing, of course, but also finding various morsels to give me hope of a life beyond: the hope of some freelance work here, a new programme for the PC to help me design there, a few books that have come my way, a few more ideas that might, just, given space enough, bare fruit. It’s all a matter of waiting and seeing, seeing and waiting – letting things bake in the summer heat. Like everyone, there are moments that I wish I could snap my fingers and be moving on to the next thing – and typically, as I talk about routine last week, now my thoughts bend towards a disruption to the routine again – I get excited by change, perhaps too readily.<br> But Todmorden. Walking home along the canal I saw the deep shadows of lush trees marked against the grassy hills near Dobroyd castle. Everything is so green here, lush and alive. Water rattles down the channel outside, the summer traffic heads home on the Rochdale road, lads, pissed up, stagger drunkenly on to the next pub, their skin red and shining. I went for a walk on Tuesday, or was it Wednesday, up onto the hills to the North near the Bridestones. There too, sweeping evening light, deep shadows, lush woodland. Home. In the chaos of everything else, with all this doubt and mystery during the week, then I come here, back here, and sit in the window and listen to the water running down the channel and see the sun hitting the woods on the hills, and I now that whatever happens, things will work out as they should.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/16/summer_not_in_the_city~964093/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>todmordensummerhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/16/summer_not_in_the_city~964093/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/09/returning~945728/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-07-09:/2006/07/09/returning~945728/Sun, 09 Jul 2006 13:01:29 +0200 <p>I’m never sure of the value of, and always quite uneasy about, routine. Another Saturday morning in the window, typing away on this battered laptop, which is little more than a portable electronic typewriter now, and not very portable at that, since the battery’s ka-put. I’ve “spruce up” the flat, washed up, showered, dressed, tidied away the work bag and drawn up a list of stuff I need to go and get from town when I’ve finished this. When I get home, I’ll do a bit of work on “the book”, sort out some emails and get in touch with some friends until, around 2.15ish, I’ll expect a text from SD saying that the train has just left Smithy Bridge, or maybe Littleborough, and I’ll check the time and leave the flat and head up to the station to he meet him. We’ll sit in the window then, for most the afternoon, he’ll smoke and we’ll talk about what we’ll eat for dinner. I’ll make a special do about the last episode of Doctor Who, we’ll eat, drink red wine and watch the glad-rags of Todmorden totter up Water Street as another night descends. Candles will be lit. Music played. </p> <p>I shrink back in some ways, chew my lower lip and think – is this it? No wild adventures in Canada to look forward to? No drunken bawdiness in a Manchester nightclub? I picked up some leaflets from the bus station yesterday, amused to see that GMPTE have published a visitors guide to Rochdale (and just beside the covered shopping market you can see two crack heads beat the shit out of an old woman), then, having opened it, I got excited by the fact that it has an art gallery and a museum I knew nothing about. I did have to stop to wonder if I shouldn’t get out more. </p> <p>But, it’s in the quieter moments of life that my creativity starts to jump and bubble and fizz. Just finished the first volume of Woolf’s diaries – rich in quotes and things to muse over – one of which: “when things are happening, one never writes”. And so conversely I find in these pauses, during these long summer days, when friends are away at weekends, it starts to happen… little “moments of being” twinkle away in unexpected corners of the week and, despite the struggle to drag myself to the keys, words do start to come out in a way that doesn’t feel as forced as when they are written when I’m weary from a hangover in the morning and thinking of what I’m going to wear that night. </p> <p>I suppose part of the fear is to do with being complacent – taking it all for granted. Especially where SD is concerned. There would be nothing worse than to have weekend after weekend of sitting here, as afternoon turned to evening, scrabbling around for things to say to one another, just because we felt somehow duty bound to repeat the same action week in and week out. Like those couples you sometimes see in restaurants, who sit there looking at anything but one another, the silence between them almost sickening to experience, even from another table – not the angry silence after an argument; the dead, empty silence of two people who have exhausted everything they have to say to one another and have nothing more to offer, but who persist in sitting there, together, in this silence, in this terror, because to not do so seems even more terrible to them. </p> <p>They, that couple in the restaurant, have forgotten, or maybe never knew, that it’s not enough to just be together. They need to learn to live together, not in a domestic way, but to really live. To do the things they do, or did, with friends, or do alone, that make these hours, days, weeks pass. I met up with SD on Thursday after work and he helped me out with “the book” – throwing scraps of social history my way, to add flesh to the bones of my characters, and asking me questions about them which forced them still further in to focus. To talk about these things while we were eating felt odd at first, like I was letting him in on a secret part of my life, or that we had strayed somehow from the path of what a “proper relationship” should be about. Now I laugh at myself for only just realising that you can’t spend lots of time with someone and expect the initial “getting to know you” period to last forever. At some point you have to get back on with living the life you were living before worlds collided. That’s the real test. I suppose that’s why so many of my past relationships have withered after a few months, so many relationships my friends have had too.</p> <p>I spend a lot of time wishing for space. Then when I get it, I feel uncomfortable in it. Now, having got up early, I’ve got hours to myself and am looking forward to getting out, haunting some dusty second hand bookshops and browsing CDs in the library. Again, it’s the writing of this that has helped clear the fog, just a few paragraphs down and the original theme of my blog dissolves away in the morning sun – for now I’m completely happy with the routine of the day ahead and wouldn’t have it any other way.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/09/returning~945728/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>creativityroutinerelationshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/09/returning~945728/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/01/live_from_a_todmorden_window~925341/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-07-01:/2006/07/01/live_from_a_todmorden_window~925341/Sat, 01 Jul 2006 16:02:33 +0200 <p>It’s one of those beautiful mid summer nights that are impossible to put away. The sun must have set about an hour ago and just over the church tower the sky is still a light blue colour – azure, I think is the word for it. The moon has just set over the tress, a crescent sliver of silver, delicate but fantastically bright. The strongest stars stand out in the semi-darkness. It’s 11pm. </p> <p>Scene: me in my window in the darkness. Listening to Interpol and doing the two things that I love most in the world (apart from things connected to SD of course): watching the world from this garret and writing. I probably should have the music off, let this summer night silence soak in – but I need to be pushed on or I’d just sit here – listening to the water run down the channel across the street, the taxis buzzing round the roundabout carting people back from Hebden and the rowdy drunken hordes of Todmorden stumble from bar to bar, sorting out their marital problems en route, pissing in doorways, shouting and shagging.</p> <p>A car rumbles over the cobbles past the flat, black sporty number, crammed with people. Off to a club. The electric guitar tones of Interpol intone some mood to do with cityscapes and neon lit bars. A cooling air is pushing against the still air of the flat; my right side, facing the open window is pleasantly cool, my left dipped in the immovable warm mugginess in the darkness of my living room, darker than outside, like some deep cave, some devil’s lair. I’ve been drinking some shit wine. Pink Le Piad Dor for fuck’s sake! I don’t know who brought it round but they should be shot (Sorry, if you’re reading this and it was you - must try harder.) I can feel my stomach lining rotting but was too lasy earlier to go out and get something else celebrate the start of the weekend with.</p> <p>I lean out of the window. Who have we got? A long floatie dress, which under the orange lights of the street looks baby pink. It’s a 70s masterpiece, negligee come evening gown. Covered at the shoulder a black throw, blessed with flowing blonde hair. Do you, per chance, dance round standing stones in your spare time? But then, check out her husband, his beer belly squeezed into a grubby t-shirt with an England flag stretched, distorted, across it. They’re passed by a common flock of lads in shirts – not common as in “council” or Neto common, I mean they’re a regular sight here at the weekend. Pink shirts are all the rage at the moment, pink shirts and smart jeans. Then four young lads come staggering down the street, legless on shit tinned beer and eating pizza. They can’t be more than 16. They walk down the street like own the whole road, defying three t-shirted lads to knock through them, which they do of course. Still, they hold the street, like the ghouls in a horror video, lurching drunkenly along with twisted faces under gelled spiky hair. Other people come and go. A gaggle of girls with handbags all over thrown over their right shoulders, walking in rhythm, practicing for their day parading down the aisle of a BA airliner dishing out salted peanuts. </p> <p>Weirdly, up near the Royal Bank of Scotland cash point, a long legged blonde girl in thigh high white boots is kicking a football around and attempting to do tricks with it. Only in Tod on a Saturday night. She walks past with a respectable (read – cute) young dark haired man who seems at odds next to her in his ill-fitting T shirt. They hold hands as they pass down the street. He looks as giddy as a sand boy (why are sand boy’s giddy?). He can’t believe his luck. She – who just wants to be seen for something more than boobs and boots – can’t believe hers. </p> <p>A shaggy blond perm on a tall lanky man. A girl with a gold lamé handbag. People meander by and I quickly bash at these keys, not giving a fuck about the spelling, knowing I’ll correct it later, and when I look up they’ve gone and new beings are heading towards or away from me, blissfully unaware I’m up here, in dark, leaning out of the window. Smelling ion the air something like wood burning, something like flowers. And water. Lots of mobile phones pass by. Lads texting. Girls talking. It always seems to be that way around. The blue light in the sky is shifting as I type. It’s moved over the hills to the north now, on and around to the east, where it will brighten again in just four hours time, rip apart this brief darkens and coat the weekend in heat and sunlight. </p> <p>And then SD phones – exclusive news – he’s met one of the new Big Brother housemates in a “former life”. The news is too hysterical to repeat. The weekend has begun: bring out the tottering girls and lairy football mad lads. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go…</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/01/live_from_a_todmorden_window~925341/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>todmordensummerbig-brotherladsfootballhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/07/01/live_from_a_todmorden_window~925341/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/06/24/new_bolton~908067/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-06-24:/2006/06/24/new_bolton~908067/Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:14:37 +0200 <p>There are musings that linger on the pages of my notebook for weeks on end with “blog” scrawled next to them – ideas and rants I think (when writing them) need a “public” airing. I’ve forgotten most of them now, and will probably only re-discover them in years to come when I trawl through old journals looking for a spark. Other ideas, meanwhile, have passed their sell by date and are now completely uninteresting: the excitement has quickly sapped out of Big Brother, for example. I was actually in danger of giving a toss for a moment when the evil force that was Grace lurked in the house. Still, some things still need to be said.</p> <p>Well one, anyway. I had to pop over to Bolton a few weeks ago. Well I say “I had to”. I didn’t have to. But I had an excuse to get me out the office for an afternoon, so I made the most of it. There’s an exhibit starting at Bolton museum next week all about homelessness, with a part of it focussing on The Big Issue in the North and the Homeless World Cup. I had to take over the trophy which the England team won last year, so it can be proudly displayed alongside the vendor bib, copies of the magazine, photographs and general homeless “stuff” that’s there. I could have posted the trophy, of course, but it’s so precious I didn’t want to take the chance and had to deliver it be hand. Honest. </p> <p>I used to live in Bolton. I lived there four years or so, while I studied at Bolton Institute – not a mental asylum (although at times we did wonder) but an ex-poly now university. At the time I quite liked it. It was close enough to Manchester to be interesting, far enough away to have some character of its own. The moors are close and “The Institute” was a good place to study, it survived without the big university’s pompous attitudes and politics, and was a good mix of college drop-outs, wanna-be hippies and middle-aged ladies studying for the hell of it. Actually, that’s precisely what I liked so much about that place and the time – I was there for the hell of it, with no disenable goal or intention of doing anything in particular afterwards. I think this is the only way you can study Literature and Creative Writing and get away with it.</p> <p>I haven’t been back to Bolton in years. Though on the train there, I suspected nothing much would have changed. And in a way, it hadn’t: the same grim faced mothers shoved prams off the dilapidated platform with fags hanging over their babies faces, the battered kebab shops greeted me from across the road outside the station, all in need of a lick of paint, and the high street was the same jumble of charity shops and £1 stores I remembered. But get this – there was a “gateway” to Bolton - one of those “millennium” bridges crossing over the railway tracks – like they have in Salford and Newcastle and every other fucking “regenerated” town these days. Utterly pointless, especially as there was nothing wrong with the industrial age stone bridge it had replaced. And even worse, as I turned the corner into the one nice road which Bolton town centre has, the crescent where the theatre and the museum sit, I noticed the streets signs supporting the legend “welcome to Bolton’s cultural quarter”.</p> <p>Why have modern council planners decided that if you call something a “quarter” it atomically makes it more interesting? One museum with a small art gallery and a theatre now constitutes “a quarter”? Is the Pizza Cabin on the corner outside the theatre included in this area I wonder? Or the hideous 1960’s grey concrete car park? Or the pasty shop where you can buy a local gastronomic delight – a pasty barm? Pasty Barms are part of Bolton’s Cultural heritage, I suppose, since they do seem to be oddly unique to the town. I mean, full marks for the investment into Bolton, it needs it. But why so unimaginatively spent? There seems to be this idea that by copying things that have already been done elsewhere a billion times you automatically “regenerate” an area. “ Oh, I know, we’ll have one of those nice millennium bridges as a “gateway” and rename couple of streets as “a quarter”, that way the people of this piss-poor town will really feel valued.” Never mind the grim face chain smoking old women who lurk outside Kwik Save and the bored teenagers kicking shit out of each other at the bus stop. God forbid that any money should be spent on something that’ll actually do something for the local community. </p> <p>Having discussed this week’s blog with SD, who’s now curled up on the sofa looking so cosy I’m just going to have to disturb him in a minute for the sake of it, I have to add his thoughts to this which are on a similar slant: New Islington. (“New” anything in fact). If it’s not a “quarter” then it’s “new”. We live in the birthplace of the industrial world, but do we celebrate it? No. We rename it “new”, as they’re doing to Ancoats or rather “New Islington” as it shall hence forth be named. As if by adopting the same name as a posh North London suburb will wipe the last few decades of neglect. </p> <p>It’s this constant mimicking of other places and other ideas that lacks so much creativity in our town and city centres, a repetition of the same mistakes made by planners in the 50s and 60s who are responsible for such monstrous creations are the piss titled Arndale. Both Bolton and Ancoats have a heritage that could be celebrated, but they’d rather have quarters and bridges and call it “new” and try and forget about all the poor bastards in the impoverished estates, who shoot up night after night just to relieve the mind numbing boredom, while they listen to the ever growing babble of twatts with layered hair waffle on past their windows on their way back from the deli.</p> <p>Hey ho. That as they say, is progress. Rant over. Time to go and disturb the peaceful looking S.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/06/24/new_bolton~908067/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>regenerationbridgesancoatsboltonhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/06/24/new_bolton~908067/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/06/17/getting_back_to_it~888185/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-06-17:/2006/06/17/getting_back_to_it~888185/Sat, 17 Jun 2006 10:43:15 +0200 <p>Lately, I have been dis-jointed from life.</p> <p>I've been randomly scribbling in my notebooks for the last month, plotting this, that and the other - but it's all been around the edges. I have been walking through the city and seeing things but not really seeing them. Noticing the sunlight but not really feeling it. Just the odd little thing has burst on through - an annoying women in a coffee shop yesterday talking too loudly on her mobile phone, the reflection of the sky in glass on a tower top in Manchester. But then - nothing.</p> <p>I'm not sure why this is. Post-holiday trauma? The general business of life taking over? I woke up this morning and tried writing in my notebook and couldn't do it. I was itching to get up. I needed to do something. Move forward in some way. I started pulling out cupboards looking for things to sell on ebay. I was convinced that if I could just get things moving it would be OK. I would come back again.</p> <p>And then I came here. To write. To write! Only even now, here I am and suddenly everything evaporates and leaves me with just a blank screen and a sense that I am repeating the same mantra over and over again: I must get going. I must get going. </p> <p>Going where? I returned from Canada with my list of "ten things" - ten things I wanted to do between now and this time next year. Write more, pay off debts, learn something new... all that kind of stuff. And then you come back and the days slip away in a haze of office work and social meetings. And while part of me carries on, on autopilot as it were, part of me just sinks - the feeling part of me, the doing part of me. Sinks down into some kind of black pit and sulks. I am have been swimming in the lake, I have climbed the hills, I have been out to sea in a tiny boat. Now what? You want me to come back here and get down to it? Sit at my desk and actually write? Are you mad? </p> <p>Always it's about that. About this. Coming back and getting to the word. Stop scribbling about writing. Stop making lists of things to do. But actually do it.</p> <p>As I type all the other worries go away. So I have a massive credit card bill. Who gives a fuck? I ca eat, can't I? Yeah there are things that need doing. Plans that need putting into action. But all this time, trying to put those plans into action and finding barriers, now it suddenly hits me - here - right now - why I haven't been able to get it done. Because I've been cutting myself off from the one thing that keeps me sane. Not this blog. But writing.</p> <p>I mean, writing with the sense that someone is reading it (even if no one is). There is such a different. Scribbling away in a note book which no one may ever read and doing this which is out there. Which can be read. </p> <p>It always amazes me. How I keep forgetting this. Every time the darkness creeps up on me, the haze envelops me and I sit about wondering why. It takes me a good few weeks to realise it. "You need to write dumb ass". Oh yeah. It actually works. </p> <p>And so then to this project. This next thing. All the excuses I've tried to build up. When will I get time? How will I do it? Now they fall away and I can sense it. It's coming. At last. A breeze lifts the curtain and the bright sunlight on this Saturday morning fades a little and then brightens again. <a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=625698"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/698/625698_3af88534ac_s.jpg" align="" alt="Onwards..." vspace="5" hspace="5"></a> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/06/17/getting_back_to_it~888185/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>summerblockswritingscribblingcanadaholidayhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/06/17/getting_back_to_it~888185/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/05/20/in_some_strange_country_called_canadalan~813708/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-05-20:/2006/05/20/in_some_strange_country_called_canadalan~813708/Sat, 20 May 2006 04:55:42 +0200 <p>After the long, work and writing filled days before coming out here, it all, suddenly, fell upon me. Hard to believe, after months of no-planning at all, we are here in deepest Canada, home of the mountie and the maple leaf.</p> <p>After a week out here, our adventures through mountain, lake and ocean have come to a brief hiatus. The wedding which my travelling companion, Sian, was busy enjoying the day I arrived into the sunny Vancouver, was also guested by one J McCloud. Now infamously called the Evil J McCloud, for it was him we suspect who brought the stomach bug which has since taken down around 15 known people, including Sian and of course (in keeping with this year's illness theme - me). Hence it is that we find ourselves here, marooned for a moment in the mountain suburbs of Squarmish.</p> <p>Now, I'm really not a fan of suburbs in any country. The first night I arrived here I stayed at a friend of a friend's house in downtown Vancouver, and if I hadn't been so tired after 9 hours on a plane and 4 hours in Van airport trying to convince the authorities that I wasn't attempting to sneak into their country for anything other than a brief visit (great welcome, thanks for that!),I would have happily stayed at the apartment window all night watching the city flow beneath me. I have seen it briefly but Vancouver stuck me as a pretty good place to be. The day after and for most of the next week, I was out by Cushoen Lake on Salt Spring Island, possibly one of the most tranquil places I have yet had the pleasure of discovering. Our time there was all swimming in the lake, sea kayaking, walking, drinking and generally having a lovely time of it in the rising temperatures. So much more difficult it has been then, to be here after all that. </p> <p>Not that I'm not grateful to the titanic matronly force who is MBP (as she shall be known here), for giving us all a place to be ill in for the two days we have been here for. And not that the view from the deck isn't spectacular, as cloud veiled mountains hunker around us, icy tips scratching the surface of the sky. But no matter where you are in the world, suburbs are still suburbs, and I can't help but have that same feeling here that I had as a teenager in Thatcham, Berkshire: a feeling of seeing beyond my borders but being trapped behind them, of "safe" isolation from "out there" - as referenced by the Matronly force who is MBP last night when she expressed horror at the appearance of a "pan-handler" (beggar) in the local town. </p> <p>When we were coming back across the water from Vancouver Island to the mainland, Sian and I had found ourselves the sunniest and least windy part of the dark and made a camp there to watch the islands slip away, the layers of mountains fading into gray upon grey, while in front, more mountain loomed. The sun was setting. On that voyage, about an hour off Vancouver Island, we saw dolphins. Dolphins! Jumping up out of the water in playful joy. It was an incredible sight. I think most people left the safety of the inside passenger cabin to see them, but for the rest of it they stayed where they were, immersed in the smell of re-baked pastries and instant coffee, rather than be outside, smelling the ocean, having the wind rip through their hair and the sea on their skin. </p> <p>The Matronly MBP is here, trying to fit a sheet onto the mattress on the floor. A familiar cry goes up the stairs... "Tony!" She has decided she needs to check her email. The woman is a force to be reckoned with. Sian is asleep. They are having a photo show upstairs (for the nth time) of wedding photos. I wonder if the Evil J McCloud is on them looking pale? I shall boo and hiss if so. I shall go up and face the Matronly MBP once more. Try to make a cup of hot water alone without being pounced on having to chose between three different cups, two types of water and a preferred boiling method - while also hoping that poor "Tony!" won;t have to be summoned... "Christian wants a cup of HOT WATER! Tony! Tony!"... and then being left with the inescapable notion that somehow I made the impolite choice along the way.</p> <p>Hopefully the illness which has struck us, this suburban bug, will have died out tomorrow and we will hit the road again for more mountains and lakes. If not, I may need rescuing. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/05/20/in_some_strange_country_called_canadalan~813708/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>bugscanadasuburbshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/05/20/in_some_strange_country_called_canadalan~813708/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/05/03/whatever_happened_to_april~774128/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-05-03:/2006/05/03/whatever_happened_to_april~774128/Wed, 03 May 2006 22:18:42 +0200 <p>I seem to have lost a month. One second I was stumbling into the second quarter of the year and now suddenly it's the second third. I may have been abducted by aliens.</p> <p>Or perhaps it was the numerous worky events I had to deal with (award ceremonies for the good people of The North, our annual company review day, the continuing search for this year's Homeless World Cup England Team). And then there was Easter - went to London, saw my brother and the Tate Modern - then went to Newbury (the hell that is) to visit mum and dad and do Easter things. And I turned 33. Which is a curious age, the double numeral seems significant somehow, though probably isn't. And I wrote a play and then there's all that stuff to do with SD...</p> <p>Funny how things become commonplace in life so quickly. Little habits and routines that bubble out of nowhere and hover around, sometimes for years, sometime just weeks. Writing on the train in the morning. Can't imagine life without that now. Making my coffee pot ready before I go to bed, so I don't have to mess with it in the morning. Speaking to SD in the evening. He hasn't called tonight and I wonder absently why, perhaps because his new laptop is up and running and he's back on the net. Not that I'm bothered. It's not like we have to speak every night or anything. It's just that I've become use to hearing from him most nights. Though it's nice not to sometimes. Reminds me that I miss him.</p> <p>I've felt all detached recently, caught up in it all, no time to come back down to earth and let my feet touch the ground. No time to reflect on what's gone on. I grabbed a bit of time to myself on Monday and sorted through a few piles of paperwork that have been sitting around on my desk for weeks, then went up onto the hills and walked for over an hour, watching the light thicken towards evening.</p> <p>Tonight, having emailed a number of very patient friends who've not heard from me for months, and washed up and checked my phone (just once) to see if I've missed any calls, I drag myself back here, though I've got nothing to say. It seems good to just say something anyway, like the random scrawls in my journal in the morning. If Winterson woke me up only a month or so ago, now I am dragged under - not asleep, but hyper awake, unable to lock on to anything for long. I spend much of the evening longing for bed, not because I'm tired but because I can stop there and just rest.</p> <p>Still. Off to Vancouver in just over a week - another adventure. And life is slowly calming down again. It's all good. </p> <p>Maybe there's something wrong with my phone... I'll just check one more time... </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/05/03/whatever_happened_to_april~774128/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>vancouveraprilhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/05/03/whatever_happened_to_april~774128/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/04/13/death_and_stuff~726010/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-04-13:/2006/04/13/death_and_stuff~726010/Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:07:44 +0200 <p><em>Death. Okay. It's not the most cheerful start to a blog, I'll grant you...</em></p> <p>When I was young I used to lie in the bottom bunk-bed, staring at the wire mesh above my head, and I would try to image it. Nothing. </p> <p>It felt like falling. Falling through darkness and deep down through icy cold dark blackness, on and on, racing out of bed, out of the little backroom of our council house in Malvern, out of the town clinging to the side of granite hills, out of the country awash on all sides in dark water. Out of the planet. And then... nothing. For the briefest of seconds. Nothing at all. Not feeling at all.</p> <p>And when I came back I felt this horrible sadness because I thought about all the people I knew and loved who would go on after me and all things I liked that I would (not) miss, and all things I wouldn't get to be a part of because I wasn't there. Like missing new episodes of Doctor Who on tele. That was an awful idea (until the Colin Baker years - then it was a source of relief).</p> <p>I think I take so much of my everyday life for granted. I suppose many people do, except perhaps those who have a life threatening illness and are confronted with inescapable fact of their own mortality. </p> <p>Right now it's a bit like being at a party. Sometimes, time whizzes by and it's all exciting and fun, sometimes things are quiet, just a peaceful conversation on the hallway stairs or a quiet moment in the back garden smoking a joint while the party rages on in the living room. Sometimes it's boring. Or painful. Or scary. </p> <p>This party of life rages on and we never really entertain many thoughts of it coming to an end. Except perhaps in a calamitous way, when the whole thing will come crashing down around us in a nuclear blast or an asteroid hit. That doesn't seem quiet as bad. It all coming to end. Rather than the fact that ever so slowly, people just vanish from the party and are replaced by new faces. They slip away these people, often quietly and unnoticed by most, expect a few friends who might sit in the kitchen for a moment mourning their departure.</p> <p>We will all leave the party in the end, quietly or with flourish. And the thing is, the party will go on after us and many of us will be forgotten barr the fortunate few who'll leave a book behind that people love to read or a painting people love to look at or a group of people whose lives they've changed for the better who will treasure their name for generations of party goers to come.</p> <p>Yes. That's death to me. Leaving the party. Pissed off because everyone else will be having fun and I won't be there to see it. I won't even be around to miss it. I suppose it's only fair. I suppose at some point it will be someone else's turn to have a go at the Lambrini.</p> <p>On a train home through a dark night, the fat moon is almost full. I'm sitting between an older woman and, alongside but across the aisle, a young boy, no more than two, giggling away to himself. I know it's a cliche, but I can't help smiling. Then to spoil it, his mother, who looks like she's dragged herself down one Primark aisle too many, hauls him roughly across the table because he's obviously just being too happy and is disturbing her thoughts about what TV she's going to watch tonight and how she's going to convince her mother to babysit him all weekend so she can go get pissed with her mates rather than look after him. Welcome to the party kid I think, as he begins to wail. Hope it gets better for you.</p> <p>I'm not scared of death. I think. I hope. I'll be pissed off when it's my turn to leave, I guess. Or maybe there'll just come a day when I'm partied out and I'll be ready to leave. And like I often do at parties, I'll just slip away quietly so as not to get nagged into staying a bit longer by drunken friends. That would be nice. Yes, that's the way I want to leave. Just not - please if you're taking requests - carried out on a stretcher trailing vomit behind me and screaming in agony. Not that. For me or anyone. May we all leave the party in peace and when we're ready.</p> <p>Hope it's not for a while yet. The moon is beautiful tonight and S has just sent me a message. He's going to phone when I get home. Can't wait to talk to him. It's only been a day since we left each other on our Monday Morning Corner, but I'm missing him already. It's nice to miss him. That in itself, and the idea of seeing him again, is worth sticking around a bit longer for. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/04/13/death_and_stuff~726010/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>lambrinibunk-bedsprimarkdeathpartiesdoctor-whohttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/04/13/death_and_stuff~726010/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/31/early_signals_are_promising~690413/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-03-31:/2006/03/31/early_signals_are_promising~690413/Fri, 31 Mar 2006 22:20:10 +0200 <p>"So what are you going to write in your blog this week then?"</p> <p>"I'm not quite sure yet."</p> <p>"Well - I thought it'd be obvious."</p> <p>"Really? What?"</p> <p>"Well... you know."</p> <p>"No. What?"</p> <p>"Well me, obviously."</p> <p>"Oh. Well I hadn't really planned on..."</p> <p>"I mean, I'm thinking about your readers. They'll be wanting to know what happens next."</p> <p>"My readers? All one of them?"</p> <p>"Well yes. I'm just thinking about them, that's all."</p> <p>"I was actually thinking of writing about trains."</p> <p>"Trains? <em>Trains!?</em> No one wants to read about trains."</p> <p>"I've been meaning to write about trains for ages."</p> <p>"What about trains?"</p> <p>"Well, my journey to work every day and all the people on the train."</p> <p>"Oh yeah. All those people you talk to you mean? All those people you've got to know."</p> <p>"I don't have to <em>talk</em> to them. I see them almost everyday. There's that fat woman who gets on at Littleborough who I always think looks like she smells even though she probably doesn't. And she always sits next to the smallest, tinniest person on the train..."</p> <p>"...that'll be you then."</p> <p>"...Like she's trying to make a point. And there are those two craggy faced women who get on at Smithy Bridge, who both have skin like charity shop handbags and are always discussing matters of a medical nature."</p> <p>"I think you'll find people'll be logging off if you start wittering on about that. They'll be logging off in droves."</p> <p>"I think droves is too strong a word."</p> <p>"Well whatever. They'll stop reading you and then you'll have even less people reading your blog."</p> <p>"But I was going to write about my dodgy ticket that only gets me from Littleborough to Manchester and how I have to shrink into my seat whenever the ticket conductor comes past to avoid paying the £2.80 extra."</p> <p>"Criminal."</p> <p>"And how it really annoys me when people stand up five minutes before the train even arrives. Like these blokes who always do that when we're coming home. As soon as we've left Walsden - they're up, like they're frighted the train is going to whizz past Tod without stopping and they might have to bail out on the way through."</p> <p>"Well it's something to do, isn't it? Standing up early."</p> <p>"I really pisses me off. And people who talk on their mobile phones for the entire journey, giving up the second accounts of their location."</p> <p>"Oh yeah. I hate that too. When people phone up and say 'I'm almost at the station. I'll be home at the usual time.' I mean, what's that about?"</p> <p>"Exactly. That's what I was going to write about."</p> <p>"Well I think it's a rocky road."</p> <p>"What will they want to read about then? No - don't tell me..."</p> <p>"Well, me obviously."</p> <p>"Hmmm."</p> <p>"Oh and while you're at it, you can correct a few facts from that last thing you wrote about me."</p> <p>"Like what?"</p> <p>"Like - duh! I was 'jittery'."</p> <p>"Well you were."</p> <p>"I was not jittery."</p> <p>"Yes you were, you could hardly keep still you were so nervous."</p> <p>"Oh and you were like just mr cool, weren't you? Breezing up to the bar thinking 'oh I wonder if that's him.'"</p> <p>"I didn't say that I wasn't jittery. I was jittery too."</p> <p>"You were very jittery."</p> <p>"I know."</p> <p>"More jittery than me."</p> <p>"I'm not sure about that... Is there anything else you'd like to correct from last time?"</p> <p>"Hmmm. Well, I don't think I come across very well in it. You make me sound sort of..."</p> <p>"...What?"</p> <p>"Egotistical."</p> <p>"You are egotistical."</p> <p>"Not really."</p> <p>"You've just told me I should write my blog about you."</p> <p>"Yeah well - as I said - people will want to know. I mean - <em>trains!</em>"</p> <p>"Ok. I might write about you then. Just to shut you up."</p> <p>"But I'll have to read it first. I'll have editing rights."</p> <p>"You reckon?"</p> <p>"I could sue you, you know. For liable. Jittery indeed. Jittery!"</p> <p>"You were definitely visible nervous."</p> <p>"Well you could have used a different word."</p> <p>"Like what."</p> <p>"Like... gorgeous. He was looking gorgeous, you could have said."</p> <p>"Hmmm. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?"</p> <p><strong><em>Some of this conversation may have been altered to protect the innocent... or just changed because it sounded better and I wanted to make a point.</em></strong> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/31/early_signals_are_promising~690413/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>trainsnervousjitteryblogshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/31/early_signals_are_promising~690413/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/24/waking_up_again~672425/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-03-24:/2006/03/24/waking_up_again~672425/Fri, 24 Mar 2006 21:43:28 +0100 <p><em>Thoughts following a reading by Jeanette Winterson at Manchester University on Wednesday night...</em></p> <p>I walk home through the streets which fill the space between Market Street, Deansgate and Albert Square, past the largely ignored stone palaces that gather here to escape the elegant glass and metal babes sprouting up around them. I'm thinking: Can I ever commit myself to "being a writer"? I imagine it's a scary, dangerous thing to commit too, to open myself up to the void and let it fill me. To let go, to write from where it hurts rather than the repeat the inane ramblings which often fill the pages of my "morning book" (written on the way into work every day). If I were to write, I mean really write, I might get swamped, I might loose control...</p> <p>...But then I realise that this is not the choice I am really asking myself to make. Beyond this choice is a far greater question: to wake up or stay sleeping through life?</p> <p>Life is this: the constant battle to stay awake in face of nullifying mediocrity, against so much that is trying to lull us to sleep. I am trapped in a cycle of drifting off and then slapping myself awake again. And either state fills me with both relief and fear, and when I am in one, I am often wishing I am in the other.</p> <p>But to ask, "to be a writer?" is ludicrous. I write. I have always written. It's as natural to me as breathing. As important sometimes too. No. The choice is whether to live or not. To real feel life or not.</p> <p>What do I use to slap myself awake? What keeps me present and now? I'm sitting on the train home and the conductor's voice grates loudly through the tannoy above my head, screaming out of the fluorescent lights. Now I am awake, this is agony. If only I could pop my headphones on, play some music and close my eyes and forget this moment, let it slip away. But I have to stay with the page.</p> <p>I make a quick list:</p> <p>Things That Keep Me Awake (in a good way)</p> <p>Walking<br> Art<br> Creative people<br> A good, challenging, movie<br> Good books<br> Meditation<br> Travel<br> Running<br> Hanging out in cafes and bars and watching people<br> Writing itself<br> Sunsets<br> The moon<br> The smell of freshly brewed coffee<br> My friends</p> <p>These are counteracts to the whole list of things which put me to sleep (including shit TV and dull people.)</p> <p>And so... do I "choose life" or the sweet amnesiac existence? I remember a poem I wrote years ago about Virgina Woolf, called, funnily enough "Woolf" (find it at <a href="http://www.abctales.com/user/47105).">http://www.abctales.com/user/47105).</a> And I thought about all the stories that have been written about "waking up" in one sense or another, from Sleeping Beauty to Trainspotting. Awakening. Do the journeys of the characters in these stories reflect the writer's own experiences of trying to "wake up"? </p> <p>I need to awaken, I thought. But that seemed a stupid idea then and there, as the train rattled slowly through the dark mid-week night, and I was dozy on a belly full of scoffed chips and all I wanted to be was at home in bed with some music on and drifting off to sleep. </p> <p>"This harsh fluorescent light in this growling train. The fat ticket collector bumbling up to catch new arrivals. Everything too bright. Too loud. Rather than wake me up, all his icy box does is make me want to sleep: bang on some music and close my eyes." </p> <p>It is a fight to stay alive.</p> <p>And that's just the beginning. I make it, still scribbling in my notebook, to Rochdale and I sense the end of these thoughts before me. I have stuck with it, with the harsh light and the annoying voice of the conductor booming out an announcement at every stop. I am awake. But after the fight, having finally reached a moment of precious lucidity, what the fuck do I do then...? </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/24/waking_up_again~672425/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>writingawakewoolftrainswriterjeanette-wintersonhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/24/waking_up_again~672425/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/19/that_leap~658988/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-03-19:/2006/03/19/that_leap~658988/Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:59:21 +0100 <p>"Are you going to write about me?" He asks.</p> <p>I'm not sure if he's joking (he jokes a lot) or if, secretly perhaps, he's serious. He does have a bit of an ego about him. I know he'll like it if I do write about him. </p> <p>I hadn't counted on someone reading my blog, then wanting to be in it. And there's this funny thing about blogs, the way they slice across the public/private divide. On the one hand I want to write about the thing that has been most important during the last couple of weeks. On another hand, it feels too fresh to write about this now. It's much easier to write about things that are past. To write about this bit - this beginning bit - fuzzy and strange and exciting and terrifying... It shifts about too much, and forever changing as it is, it feels wrong to try to lock it down in words.</p> <p>Life took a swerve a couple of weeks ago. An unexpected turn onto a path I hadn't really seen coming. Even now, three weeks on, I'm cautious, not wanting to commit anything to paper in case it jinxes what's going on, breaks the spell, pins things down too readily. But I want to take a leap of faith... give it go. </p> <p>We arrange to meet in the Cornerhouse for a beer after work. It's a Thursday. I'm not particularly nervous about doing this. These dates, if they can be called that, feel a bit tired now - I'm expecting to be disappointed, to find him "OK", for him to talk a lot about himself. I'm already making up an exit strategy, deciding how long I'll give it before I head off with a half muttered excuse about having to get up early. </p> <p>I go directly to the bar and I see this bloke sitting by the wall, smoking. Hope it's him, I think casually. It doesn't really look like the same man in the photos I've seen on-line, but there's something about him. </p> <p>The other day, I was talking to a friend about what attracts me to certain men, what common element there's been between my past boyfriends. They're all really different from one another: no particular age does it, or look, or "type". Expect that they are all a bit - outside - none of them are 9 to 5'ers. None of them particular comfortable on the gay scene. A bit outside of all the normal everyday stuff that goes on. I guess that's why my past has been populated by some pretty mad types - the ex-marine who chased me round the house with a knife, the lad who slept with a gun under his pillow because he thought the mafia were after him, the depressive editor of a well know gay porn magazine. Not that they've all been that mad. </p> <p>This bloke in the cornerhouse is wearing an army coat over a denim jacket, a pair of jeans and a Ramones T-shirt. He doesn't look gay. He smiles when I've got a beer. He looks nervous. A bit jittery.</p> <p>Now he's lying on my sofa, dozing under a blanket. It feels ok, writing now that he's asleep. When I've finished, he'll get all cocky and want to know what I've written. "Can I read it?" he'll ask, as if I can stop him. If there's one thing I know about him already. it's that he's impossible to gauge. He might say something like, "What did you write that for?" or he might say nothing, or say "Why didn't you mention the size of my cock?" </p> <p>We were sitting in the window as last night turned to this morning and the sky began to lift up and brighten. I was pushing towards something - towards trying to express my feelings - my excitement and my fear. I cried. Not loads. Just a couple of tears. Of course, I'd dank over a bottle of red wine so it's not surprising.</p> <p>What made me cry? Taking a leap. Exposing raw tissue. Letting him see something of me. Letting him know something of what I wanted. That battle between what you think you see, what you want to see, and what you fear you're just marking up. </p> <p>He's not a bad person. He's not going to deliberately fool me, trick me, hurt me. But you ever know. It's a risk all the same. Like everything good that happens. It's a risk. More of a risk than anything I've done for ages.</p> <p>For I'm going to let myself feel it this time. And I'm going to go with it. And I'm going to - try to - put it in words. Though these words slide off and off and off, like rain. This is the beginning of something. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/19/that_leap~658988/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>boyfriendsblogsbeginningshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/19/that_leap~658988/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/05/contradictions~615499/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-03-05:/2006/03/05/contradictions~615499/Sun, 05 Mar 2006 20:11:50 +0100 <p>Apparently the publishers of Lonely Planet and Rough Guides are going to put warnings in all their future publications about the damage frequent flying does to the environment.</p> <p>I read this yesterday and it's stayed with me: an example of the difficult split we face, day after day, between all the things we say we want, which don't necessarily sit comfortably together. A cleaner, better cared for world and the desire to fly to mainland Europe for under 50 quid.</p> <p>I was talking to a friend about work. Asked him how he was enjoying it. We talked about wanting to jack our day jobs and write for a living. Then both agreed if we did that, we'd probably end up staring at our computer screens without a word getting written. He quoted someone, can't recall who, whose final analysis of the "human condition" was to say that we are constantly torn between the desire for security and the desire for freedom. </p> <p>The heady joys of the first few weeks of a new desire and the bed-time dreams of something longer lasting, more "meaningful". The week day urge to stick two fingers up at the office and the appreciation of a monthly wage packet which gives means to travel, eat, have a roof over your head. The burning desire to see the world as cheaply as possible and the fact that this desire is burning the world you wish to see.</p> <p>We are pulled in two directions, reaching for the stars but desperate to keep our feet on the ground.</p> <p>I love travelling and plan to pin a map to my wall and chart all the places I've visited before I die. But then again, I'd say I was an environmentally aware person. So what do I do? Sit around, waiting for the Government to make the decisions that I'm too selfish to make? If they put a massive tax on airport fuel, I could no longer get £5 flights to Amsterdam. </p> <p>But that's the coward's way out. And yes, although the Government should be leading the way on this, and not pushing for so many new runways to be built across our country and encouraging even more people to take to the skies, I know, really, what matters is what I choose to do. What every one chooses to do.</p> <p>Most of us would say we have a grasp of the concept of responsibility. But how much responsibility do we really take for the things we choose to do, or choose not to do?<br> It seems these days, in this throw away, blame and claim culture, we're taught less and less that the state of our own lives, and the lives of those around us, is our responsibility. We used to blame "God" or the "Devil" for the world's misfortunes, now we blame the Government, the media or our parents. When are we going to start blaming ourselves?</p> <p>It's about taking responsibility. Easy(ish) when you decide to go to work every day of the week and earn a wage, or turn your back on a stable relationship to taste something more passionate and giddy, that may not last very long, but feels great at the time. Not so easy when the consequences involve fucking the world up for future generations.</p> <p>Snow still clings to the shadowed side of the valley here, where the winter sun never reaches. On the sunny side of the hills, the snow has melted. As I walked home tonight, the Pike looked fantastic, lit up by the sinking sun, just a few flecks of white left on the brilliant golden prominence. I was walking through the darkened, snow laden woods on the other side of the park. The woods, too, were beautiful: still and silent, the black webbing of twigs still coated with ice. I wasn't sure where I'd rather be. Up on the hill, basking in the light of that last bit of sunlight, or down where I was, in the cold snowy gloom, looking up and seeing such a wonderful sight as the Pike, right now, at sunset.</p> <p>I suppose the thing is, it doesn't matter where you stand. It's seeing what's around you at the time that counts. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/05/contradictions~615499/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>cheap-flightsresponsibilityenvironmental-damagesnowhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/03/05/contradictions~615499/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/25/living_on_the_edge~593346/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-02-25:/2006/02/25/living_on_the_edge~593346/Sat, 25 Feb 2006 23:14:14 +0100 <p>I was in a bar in Stiges (yeah - still hung on that particular adventure) and I got chatting to this artist fella called Fiacre O'Rafferty. He described himself, in a croaky Canadian voice, his eyes watery from too much beer, as "the last of a dying breed - a bohemian artist."</p> <p>We spent much of the evening talking about art and creativity. Fiacre lives in a one room studio on a cliff top above the sea. He has hard times and good times, "Sometimes I'm so poor I can't eat that day, but then I go outside and look across the sea and I don't care," he said. Then added his life's philosophy, "If I can't have it, I don't want it."</p> <p>Fiacre has taken the plunge. He is living his life. His art. Sure you can scoff... 60s drop out, hippy, dreamer... whatever... drugged up to the eyeballs and off his face or not, he was doing what he wanted to do and was doing it everyday. Creating.</p> <p>I asked him how it was that he came to have the courage to take that leap... how he could let his art consume him, how he had managed to give up the kind of life most of us cling too, no matter how unhappy we are? And he started to cry. </p> <p>His sister had died. And from that moment on he had decided to follow his own path and do exactly as he needed to do, he told me. </p> <p>I told him that I wrote. That I was a writer. I told him that sometimes I wanted to take the plunge - not give everything up and go live in a room on a clifftop above the sea (though the urge does come and go) - but to let my writing take hold, to become immersed in it as he does with his art. But that its fear that holds me back. I'm frightened of letting go, and frightened to lose myself in the word.</p> <p>Later on, I met this sexy skin head bloke in a darkened bar and ended up having sex in a backroom. Never done that before. It was - different. </p> <p>I left Spain buzzing with life, feeling like some kind of flame had been ignited in me. But as the days of this last week have passed by, I've begun to wonder if that flame was an illusion. Or just a spark. Of if it still burns inside, just not as brightly.</p> <p>It's Saturday night. I've given up the chance to go for an all-nighter in Manchester and am here in my Tod garret instead, looking at blokes on the internet, remembering last week, drinking day-old red wine. And I'm not sure what I should be doing. What does it mean to live? </p> <p>Is it to abandon all sense of what "should be done" and just go with your instincts? Rush off to Manchester and go to some all night bar... Look for some bloke and some fun... Get drunk... Spend too much money.. Write bleary eyed on the first train home about life and passion...</p> <p>Or is to push on, through all the middling shit, through one adventure to the next, to try and find something substantial in all these lights? Even if that feels like not living sometimes, but rather, waiting for life to begin again with the start of another adventure?</p> <p>Or is it neither of these... My flat is warmer than it has been for months. This is the first weekend I've had in ages. I've got candles burning and some of my favourite tunes playing... Aimee Mann "It's not going to stop, till you wise up..." And I'm OK. I'm really quite OK.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/25/living_on_the_edge~593346/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>fiacre-o-raffertylife-ey-philosophystigesaimee-mannlivinghttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/25/living_on_the_edge~593346/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/19/home_time~575513/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-02-19:/2006/02/19/home_time~575513/Sun, 19 Feb 2006 21:05:10 +0100 <p>Returned from Spain last night, exhausted and full of "Shirley-Valentinesque" dreams of turning around and heading back out there. 11 that morning, I'd been sitting near the beach, the sun on my face, watching locals stroll up and down the sea front while gorgeous men played football on the sand with their shirts off - and then I was back, walking through the streets of Leeds on a Saturday night heading for the train station while pissed up lads in shirts shouted at girls with fat thighs and short skirts... It's hard to love this country sometimes.</p> <p>Holidays are funny things. A disruption from the everyday, a glimpse at some other way of living. The best holidays, anyway. The kind where you do more that see the sights, but get caught up in things. Little adventures - good and bad.</p> <p>I've never adventured alone in Spain before and loved almost every minute of it. And even the bits I didn't love, I appreciated. I found it easy to travel alone in, especially at this time of year. You can go to a bar and end up in conversation with any number of people - fellow travellers, Spanish born and bred or expats from other countries. </p> <p>And I suppose that's what I loved the most - the ease of being social out there. Not getting pissed (though I did) or getting laid ('nuff said), but of just interacting with other people. Which can be a tough thing in Britain sometimes. </p> <p>I was in Stiges for my last two nights, and was doing the evening rounds: been out for some grub, then down to the sea and to watch the moon rise big and fat over the harbour, and then I'd gone into the maze of streets bar-hoping looking for a bit of conversation before bed time. That week, I'd danced, drank and talked with people from across the world - met a bohemian artist from Canada who'd lectured me on the meaning of a creative life and a cute french bloke who worked in PR and acted as my guide to my first gay sauna (and what an experience that was). And of all the bars that I'd been in on my holiday, the most unfriendly one, the one where I felt most like an outsider, was the one known by everyone else as the "British one". Where British gay men gathered together in their little groups and talked about how "she did that" and "she did this" and squinted at strangers should they dare enter.</p> <p>It was just typical and depressing, that the one bar I felt ill at ease in, was the one populated by my own countrymen. Who'd regarded me with suspicion the moment I walked in and then proceeded to act as I wasn't there. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a big round of applause for going in, but it was just this sense, which I think you get a lot in British places, from the country pub to the inner-city bar, that strangers aren't really welcome, and new people, for from offering the opportunity to talk to someone knew, are a threat. Funny also, that this was known by all as the "British gay bar" but there wasn't, as far as I could tell, a "French gay bar" or a "German one". Lots of the expats from other countries had come to Spain, in fact, because they wanted to escape the identities pressed up on them form within their own countries. The British, meanhwile, from what I heard, spent most of the time moaning about what was wrong with Spain and how it should be more like. well, Britain. </p> <p>As I say, it's hard to love this country sometimes. But I'm back in the sanctuary of Tod for a while. And the hills looked lovely tonight as the sun set and the clouds turned red. And a particulaly friendly sheep came and said hello to me while I was out walking. And I met some friends in the bar downstairs and we had a few pints. But oh... just the thought of it... the sea swooshing up on shore as I type, the clean streets, palm trees swaying in the breeze - and most of all, the people, laughing away the night, supping good wine and putting the world to rights... It's a life.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/19/home_time~575513/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>britianstigesholidaysbritishexpatsspainhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/19/home_time~575513/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/09/what_is_it_with_wednesdays~547553/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-02-08:/2006/02/09/what_is_it_with_wednesdays~547553/Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:29:36 +0100 <p>Maybe it has something to do with school and PE.</p> <p>PE was always on a Wednesday afternoon – on a cold, grey, wet Wednesday afternoon. Always. I’d stand by the goalmouth talking to my friend Ritchie while the other lads ran about the pitch apparently enjoying themselves. Ritchie and I couldn’t understand it. The only thing that we hated more than being on that pitch, was the thought of going into the changing room afterwards - the most humiliating place in a young man’s life, in my opinion. Especially a young gay men. All that burgeoning testosterone shoved up against those of us less developed. I’d zip in, hardly daring to breath in the stink of mud and sweat, I’d whip a fraying towel around my skinny white body, take off my shorts, nip quickly though the tunnel of spraying water which was scalding and freezing in turns, and then zip back out again, all while avoiding the eye of the ever present teacher, who watched us while warming his hands down the front of his tracksuit bottoms. </p> <p>Maybe it was PE’s fault. But I’ve always had a problem with Wednesdays. Cut free from the banks of the weekend, lost in the day to day of the working week. I always end of questioning my life on a Wednesday morning, as I go through the morning routine for the third day running – coffee on – shower – coffee off – breakfast in bed listening to Terry – crawl back out from the duvet – get dressed – run around looking for my stuff – heave my way to the train station to scowl at other commuters.</p> <p>And the day itself is always a motivational nightmare, yesterday’s scribbled down plans crumble, replaced by endless flicking through the internet, looking at items on ebay that I’ll never ever need or indeed want to buy while checking my email every five minutes or so in the hope someone has sent my something – anything – so utterly urgent that I can’t possibly avoid doing it in the hope that it will spur me on to actually doing something.</p> <p>And Wednesday evenings! I can come home with all the best will in the world to improve the day with a creative and productive evening, but I usually end up wasting hours on some dating website, chat-room or/and flicking through porn. What is it with porn on the net? I know it’s rubbish, so how come, every Wednesday, I end up looking at it with the kind of disinterested attitude of a spotty teenager as the minutes dwindle away?</p> <p>I always end Wednesdays being annoyed –going to bed under a black cloud – angry at myself for having wasted an evening doing nothing much at all, suddenly feeling the end of another week fast approaching and my dreams and ambitions no further realised. Tonight was the night I was supposed to write that chapter, sort out those photos, send that important email. And what have I done? Looked at “Jocks in Socks” (yes – we’re back to PE again) and chatted to some bloke from Didsbury.</p> <p>Motivation’s a funny thing isn’t it? It comes in waves for me. No. It’s cyclical - Wednesdays being the lowest point. Some days I can feel things bursting to get out, I can’t write quick enough, everything is a joy to do, from the washing up to writing the next chapter of the “ground breaking novel” I’m forever working on. Other days, it’s all I can do to get out of bed and clean my teeth.</p> <p>A friend of mine has depression. He’s had it as long as I’ve known him – nearly 15 years now. It comes and goes. Recently, and for the last few years, it’s definitely come. He hardly goes out in the daylight these days, sits in bed, smokes far too much and watches daytime TV. “Shit,” I said to him recently, “I’d be depressed if I watched Tricia everyday.” A never-ending week of Wednesdays. Horrible.</p> <p>Of course, for those of us who don’t have depression, the solution seems obvious – the cycle my friend is trapped in could instantly be broken if he just off his arse and did something. He was never so alive as the time he dug up and re-laid the back garden at his house in Portsmouth, I was living with him at the time and it was like a different person existed that summer. But of course, the answer isn’t that easy – you can’t just beat depression by inventing a new hobby every time a dark cloud descends (which is why the Government’s proposals to get people off “sick” and into work are a little troublesome – they smack of that we know best attitude Labour have these days – when, in fact, they probably don’t know best at all.) </p> <p>Of course, my solution to any moments of fatigue and glumness is to escape into a new adventure. Hence a trip to Barcelona on Saturday for a week. I have a feeling next Wednesday won’t be so difficult.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/09/what_is_it_with_wednesdays~547553/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>depressionbarcelonatriciapepornlabourwednesdaymotivationhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/09/what_is_it_with_wednesdays~547553/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/02/waking_up~529353/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-02-02:/2006/02/02/waking_up~529353/Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:24:08 +0100 <p>I left my friend Claire’s house this morning and walked onto Alexandra Park Road to get the bus. It was another freezing morning, the same blank canvas sky which has lingered over this region for days now. I had the distinct sense that I was waking up – noticing the barren trees – a jogger in the park – thoughts of the coming year and beyond. Feeling hopeful. Waking up in the middle of winter.</p> <p>Got home tonight and, as I wasn’t around yesterday, the flat is more unbearably cold than ever before – fuck the expanse, I thought, and put every heater on full blast. But it’s still chilly in here, as if the cold has frozen the air in place. Hey ho. Barcelona in one week – and someone told me recently that every day is around 3 minutes longer with the light now. I’ll soon be looking back at these chilly Todmorden days, sitting on the large shelf at the window, or even better, on the roof, bathed in sunlight and feeling that touch of sun on my skin – no better feeling.</p> <p>Rambling. Was discussing, among other things, family with Claire last night. She asked me how I thought other members of my family saw me. How we all have certain family brackets that we fall in to. Such as – “the sensible one” (my eldest sister, mostly) or “the black sheep” (my brother). It was easy to bracket off my brother and two sisters. Ann loves her domestic life and her “shiny things” – drives a ridiculously priced car and won’t let mum and dad bring their dog into the house for fear of marks on her walls – and to think this was once a girl never out of tracksuits, whose idea of tidying her room was too bring down the half drunk cups of tea that had been festering under her bed for months on end. Ann is the “sensible lesbian police officer one”, with her Daily Mail sense of Right and Wrong (and her lesbianism and her police-ness)</p> <p>My other sister is and always has been “the girl”. She grew up in a house with three boys essentially – Ann being such a tom boy at the time. We used to tease her about the braids in her hair and her fashion magazines. Bless her. She was destined to wed – which she has done twice now. And have children. Which she has done once. She’s the only blonde in our family apart from mum, who is a kind of blonde/mousy brown. And she was born when dad was stationed in Germany. Go figure.</p> <p>And then there’s my brother – “black sheep” – as I said. Even at 36 he maintains about him the air of petulant teenager – mocking those around him who “like – just don’t get me” – revelling in his ‘strangeness’. He’s not as strange as all that. He just lives in London and designs little black dresses which sell for ridiculous prices, and probably snorts all his wages up his nose. And he married a Icelandic girl, who then had his child. Only he still lived in London and partied with his friends, and she stayed in Iceland and was a mum. He told her he didn’t want her living in England. They’ve broken up.</p> <p>And there’s me. Younger by 4 years than him and the “accident” or – as mum once let slip - the “unwanted” one. (She had been planning to go back to work, having done her bit for re-populating the country, and then whoops – I came along.) Not long after my dad had his balls snipped and my mum went (sort of) temporarily bonkers. </p> <p>So what am I? The nomadic one? The one that never settled down? I think that’s what they thought when I was in my twenties. A fact they kind of admired and resented me for. The one that did things his way, because he was allowed to by parents who’d seen it all and realised that, no matter what they told me to do, I’d do what I wanted anyway. The loner? The spoilt one? Probably all of those. More. Now I don’t know what they think of me. We are so scattered about his country and see one another so rarely these days. Ann still treats me like I’m about ten when I see her. But that’s older sisters for you. I love them dearly, but I guess we hardly know one another at all now. Not the way I know my best friends. </p> <p>And then Claire and I talked about men – surprise surprise. And I gave her my gradually evolving theory that the reason I, and so many of my friends, are still single is the fact that, essentially, we don’t need anyone . Sure. I’d like a lover, it would be a nice thing, I would even go so far as to say, at sometimes, I want a boyfriend. But when it comes down it, I don’t actually sit around thinking – oh I need someone in my life now. And so even though I keep myself open for something, even though I flirt outrageously and go on no end of dates (which range in quality to OK to down right ridiculous), it never leads anywhere. Because the person who I would – ultimately – like to “end up with” (whatever that means) is someone who doesn’t need me either. Someone who isn’t really looking. And since the dating websites I trawl though are full of people wanting “a shoulder to cry on” (can you believe someone thought this was an endearing thing to put on their profile?) or “Someone to care for me” (get a nurse) – I’m unlikely to find said person on there – though I live in hope – maybe there’s someone like me, mooching about – not really bothered. But really I know that it’s only going to be by some happy accident that I’ll meet the person I want to meet - bumping into him in an art gallery is one of my favourite fantasies – possibly one in Barcelona… </p> <p>Or in Waterstone’s. Which I discovered last night, while spending a bit of time there between finishing work and going to Claire’s, is incredibility cruisey after 6 o’clock. It’s heaving with single men. I even got smiled at. I’m rubbish when cruised and go all squishy and red and flustered. But still – it’s worth knowing. Handy for a wet rainy evening when I stuck in town waiting for a train home. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/02/waking_up~529353/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>brothersisterbarcelonawaterstone-sfamilyhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/02/02/waking_up~529353/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/24/when_is_a_date_a_date~502873/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-01-24:/2006/01/24/when_is_a_date_a_date~502873/Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:47:35 +0100 <p>You know something’s up when the Chief Executive of the organisation you work for starts arranging dates for you. Yes, the 2006 dating season has begun. According to my Chinese horoscope for the Year of the Dog (I’m an Ox don’t you know) the coming year will be a good one for “lurrrve”. I may even meet my “life partner” apparently. Though knowing my luck, I’ll be arrested for a murder I didn’t commit, and my “life partner” will turn out to be some hairy maniac in Broadmoor. </p> <p>This year’s dating derby started with meeting said boss-arranged date at a certain well known Jazz bar in Manchester. Let’s call him Irish (the date, not the bar). Irish - because he was and he never let you forget it. He practically introduced himself by saying, “Hi, I’m X, and I’m IRISH don’t you know, and don’t try and oppress me you colonialist bastard!”</p> <p><em>Irish</em> lectures at a University in Manchester and spoke in that kind of linguistic babble you usually only find in convoluted academic papers about “the otherness of being”. Just trying to follow his line of thought gave me a headache. This guy didn’t just think something, he “posited a viewpoint from an Irish perspective” even when he was reading from the menu and deciding what to eat. </p> <p>Funny what two bottles of wine can do. I actually enjoyed the challenge. I even found the babble stimulating to a point, though it was apparent there was a limit to it (imagine waking up on a Sunday morning and being berated for being a colonialist oppressor – and all because you nicked the duvet).</p> <p>He was actually a nice guy. Then again, as I’ve often even told, I think everyone’s nice. I probably would have found something redeeming in Charles Manson. Maybe that’s just my excuse for spending the night with him (Irish, not Charlie).</p> <p>Next day, it was like he’d exhausted himself with all the philosophical rhetoric, and had very little to say for himself as he cooked us both breakfast. The killer: I ask him what he does when he’s not working and he says, “Nothing really, I have a very boring life outside work.” And I realise all those twisty-turny sentences that went up blind alleys and back again, were just a cover for someone who had nothing, substantial, to say at all. </p> <p>We parted pleasantly and we sent the obligatory “thanks and speak to you soon” texts. I even pondered giving it a second go – but somehow the sex scuppered all that. I was determined not to sleep with him on the first date – knowing that sex instantly robs the relationship of any mystery and reduces everything to skin and bone – literally. It wasn’t even like the sex was bad… it just gets in the way of that initial finding your way around someone and leaves you feeling like there’s nothing left to know. Sad really.</p> <p>In comparison, I meet up with someone on Sunday for a walk in the hills. I was chatting to him on the net and he seemed like a nice enough bloke. Very open about his intention NOT to get into anything like a relationship. It was definitely just going to be a walk – and a few pints. And that’s exactly what it was. A lovely afternoon of walking and talking, mainly about sheep (a subject he is an expert in, apparently). He came in for a coffee but didn’t stay long. We hugged awkwardly at the front door before he went out into the cold. No idea if it’s going to lead anywhere, but I can’t wait to see him again.</p> <p>I’m not actually sure if our encounter counts as a date or not. I mean, how do you define a date? Has there got to be some concrete expression of interest before a date can commence? Have you got to sign up to some kind of clause which says that, ultimately, if the date goes well, you at least get a snog at the end of it? It doesn’t really matter - at least there’s something left to learn about him, even if it just his knowledge about other farm animals. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/24/when_is_a_date_a_date~502873/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>charles-mansonyear-of-the-dogfirst-datesdatingirishbroadmoorsheeplovehttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/24/when_is_a_date_a_date~502873/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/17/the_trouble_with_ennis~481404/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-01-17:/2006/01/17/the_trouble_with_ennis~481404/Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:54:15 +0100 <p>My flat is particularly freezing tonight. Just got home from Manchester and had to bundle clothes ON so I can live inside my own flat. I'm bored of this winter thing now.</p> <p>Watched Breakfast on Pluto. Which has had some pretty bad reviews here but which I, and my viewing buddies, loved. If ever there was a film that celebrated difference, this was it. And it's one of those films which seems to give you a shot of creative adrenaline up the arse - and hence here I am, jotting here while I let my late dinner go down, because I told Sian and Katie I would go home and write something.</p> <p>Breakfast on Pluto has a kind of wistful disregard for life's troubles: Kitty, the main character, struggles to hold on to his magical world, while things get blown up around him. He's such a tragic character, but redeemed by the fact that he has no sense of his own tragedy. And in the end he becomes a hero because of it. Fab film. Ignore the critics and go watch.</p> <p>Oh but what's this I hear? Two movies in one week with "homo-sexuals" in? Who can ignore it. My mate Kaz sent me a text message after I'd raved about Brokeback Mountain. "That was shit! He died! I hate that!" - Then she sent another one "But a heterosexual couple walked out at the bum fucking scene, so that was fun."</p> <p>"Of course he died," I said to her later. "He had to die." The whole point about Jack and Ennis' relationship was that it was impossible from the start, and that's what made it so perfect. Like every classic-case tragic couple, their love was made even more dynamic and sacred by the very fact of its impossibility. Another friend, Rob, said that at the end of the film he could hear all these queers sobbing in the cinema, not mourning the on-screen loss, but weeping out of despair that they would never find love like that. I think that's why I probably cried so much too.</p> <p>Ennis is what most gay men dream about. Masculine, yet sensitive. An outdoors type in touch with his spiritual side, who's good at hunting. But, as we have come to know, he is also unobtainable - just a fantasy. We cannot have Ennis and hold him. His very nature makes him impossible to have - as all the characters in the film find out, male and female.</p> <p>Imagine the film ending any other way. Ennis and Jack move onto the farm together and live happily ever after. The magic is gone. They are reduced to comedy caricatures, two gay cowboys living a happy whip-crack-away life behind gingham curtains. </p> <p>Or if Jack had lived but they hadn't ended up together, the film would have run on forever, with them both circling one another until they whithered and died of old age. </p> <p>And that's precisely the impossible knot that sends many a gay man (and even straight women? Indeed everyone?) away in floods of tears at the end. Our desire for romance out in the mountains is thwarted by the mundane drib-drab world of the everyday. And without mountains to cross, how deep can our loves ever be - now, with the internet and all, romance is apparently easy to come by?</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/17/the_trouble_with_ennis~481404/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>romancebrokeback-mountainbreakfast-on-plutohttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/17/the_trouble_with_ennis~481404/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/12/big_brother_is_watching~465282/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-01-12:/2006/01/12/big_brother_is_watching~465282/Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:35:28 +0100 <p>I really like Channel Four news, but they seem way off the mark with their Ruth Kelly and that "sex offender" allowed to work in a school scandal. Has the editor and Jon Snow been overdosing on the Daily Mail or something? </p> <p>In last night’s programme, they revealed the details of the “sex offender” Paul Reeve at the centre of the story. According to their own report, he was put on the sex offender register for once having looked at child porn on the net, which he claimed to have done accidentally. Again, according to their own report, he certainly convinced someone of his mistake and his intention not to do it again, and that was why he was given the letter from the DfES saying that his case had been examined and that, in light of the evidence, he had been given permission to work in a school. He told the school that he was on the sex offender’s register when he applied for, and was given, the job. </p> <p>Paul Reeve was given a caution when he was caught during a massive police operation into child pornography. He was not charged and did not go to court. He probably agreed to the caution in order to avoid a damaging court appearance. But of course, in the hysteria that currently surrounds anything to do with children, we can’t possibly give him the benefit of the doubt.</p> <p>I'm not saying this bloke should or shouldn't be allowed to work as a PE teacher in schools. It's not up to me. It's up the school, yeah? Or not apparently. It's up to Channel Four and their fellow media crusaders who obviously know more than everyone else when it comes to child safety. We can sleep peacefully in our beds, knowing that out children are safe, though God help any of us who ever, however unwittingly, trespass onto the wrong side of the law.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/12/big_brother_is_watching~465282/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>paul-reeveruth-kellychannel-four-newshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/12/big_brother_is_watching~465282/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/12/recovering~465026/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-01-12:/2006/01/12/recovering~465026/Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:05:45 +0100 <p>Well, I survived. Just.</p> <p>Hideous time in the hospital. If there’s one place on Earth you shouldn’t go to get better, it’s an NHS hospital. I mean, I appreciate that it’s free and the staff are lovely and everything – but a hospital ward is such a grim place. </p> <p>There was this bloke in the bed next to me who spent the entire time I was there in complete agony, screaming with pain every time the nurses came to shift him. There was the bloke in bed opposite who took great delight in telling everyone about his bowel movements, or lack of them (but then – hey – who am I to talk, I’m forever thrusting my bowels into every conversation). Then there was this middle-aged bloke who took great delight in telling me that since he’d hit forty he’d started steadily falling apart, what with his diabetes, gall bladder and many other such ailments - all of which, he assured me, I had to look forward to when I reached his age. </p> <p>It was along night. I hardly slept a wink and it felt really odd to be in a hospital ward for no other reason than to ensure I was seen the next day, while everyone else seemed to be at death’s door. There was also the joy of taking Fleet on a hospital ward, so I whittled away a few hours on the hospital loo. </p> <p>There was indeed a TV next to the bed. So besides my regular visits to the loo, I had the first night of celebrity Big Brother to “entertain” me. Now, BB isn’t something I’d normally watch. (Doesn’t everyone say that?) But anything for a laugh, I thought. It turned out to only darken my mood, especially when Faria Alam said that “Being in the media eye for two weeks flat was just the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.” Try telling that to the bloke who’s dying in the bed next to me you daft bitch, I thought.</p> <p>There’s this horrible sense of suspended time in hospital. The world seems so far away, locked outside the double glazing. It’s like being in a doctor’s waiting room for eternity – where every request for an update as to how things are going and when things might happen are met with the standard nurse’s reply of “in a minute”. A “hospital minute” - as one nurse informed me – could last anything up to a day.</p> <p>At some point in the middle of the night, they came and shifted the poor bastard in the bed next to me. He had some kind of colostomy bag thing going on, but there was a problem with it and they had to change the sheets. I swear, as they stripped the bed while trying to stop him from flailing out in pain and punching them, a tiny pellet of poo flew up into the air and landed on the floor between his bed and mine.</p> <p>It stayed there, that pellet of poo, all night and most of the next morning. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about its presence. I kept wanting to tell a nurse, but thought maybe I was mistaken and it was something else and I’d look a fool – and I certainly wasn’t going to get out of bed and take a closer look. So it just stayed there, unnoticed by everyone except me, as I watched the busy nurses rush back and forth, their squeaky shoes narrowly missing it from time to time.</p> <p>By 10am the next day, having not had anything to eat since Wednesday night, and nothing to drink since midnight, and having been haunted by that poo, I was ready to kill someone. I felt like I’d answered the same questions about thirty times: Any hearing aids? Jewellery? False limbs? Finally I was given a hospital gown to wear and then wheeled away in a chair by a cute orderly. I didn’t need to be in a wheelchair, but he seemed to enjoy racing me down the corridors as he told me how he used to go out with one of the nurses on my ward, and how he’d recently broke up with another girl, and how he found it difficult to stay interested in one girl for long. It’s hard to flirt when you’re in nothing but a flimsy blue gown and slumped in a wheelchair. But I tried. </p> <p>Next thing I know he’s helping stick an eight-inch needle into my hand. Typical.</p> <p>The next 24 hours after my dive under the black waters of the anaesthetic are pretty grim. I spent the day on the ward waiting to be discharged so I could go shit blood into my own toilet rather than theirs. Desperate to get away, but not absolutely sure I should be sent home. “I am passing a lot of blood,” I kept saying. “Oh that’s normal,” they replied. Really? </p> <p>5am Saturday morning, at home, I pass out on the toilet and wake up head banging the bath. Yeah, that’s normal, I thought. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/12/recovering~465026/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>celebrity-big-brotherfaria-alamhospitalhttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/12/recovering~465026/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/05/nil_by_mouth~442988/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2006-01-05:/2006/01/05/nil_by_mouth~442988/Thu, 05 Jan 2006 15:53:50 +0100 <p>Just had a call from “Mark at the hospital” informing me, very politely I might add, that they have a bed for me tonight. “Lucky me!” I said, not enthusiastically. </p> <p>Now don’t go reaching for that black veil just yet. I’m not dying or anything. I have this delightful condition called Crohn’s, which I’ve always thought would be a good name for a band, but which is, at the moment anyway, an inflammation of the bowel (to be blunt). I don’t actually have it as bad as many people do, but I have to have routine checks done now and again – which basically involves a consultant sticking a metal pole up my arse and having a look round with a fibre optic camera. Nice.</p> <p>Only this time, when my consultant – the fabulously titled Dr Quest (who’s a horsy sort of woman in a tweed jacket, and who drives a sports car – I know because she nearly ran me over in it when I was last at the hospital) – tried to “have a look” she found that… well… not to be too graphic, but things were a little tight down there. Hence she referred me on to some other person, who I guess must be a specialist in tight arses or something.</p> <p>It’s only a day job, not even that, but for some complex and complicated reason which I still fail to understand, I am required to have “a bed” in the hospital – even though I won’t actually be using it for most of the time, since the procedure is scheduled for 8am tomorrow morning. I was just going to go in for it in the morning, but apparently there was a danger that there might not be a bed for me (even though I don’t need a bed) and that the procedure would have to be cancelled. So now I have to go in tonight, thereby bagging a bed. If, therefore, there’s a hideous accident in Rochdale tonight, and you read that someone couldn’t get a bed in the local hospital and ended up spending the night on a trolley – it’ll be me to blame, or rather the NHS’s bizarre working practices. </p> <p>The thought of spending a night in hospital doesn’t exactly fill me with joy. Not only am I banned from eating anything today, I have to take this lovely stuff called Fleet – a kind of jet wash for your lower regions which works from the inside out. (You get the idea.) The taste of it and the after effects are so vile that I shudder whenever I think of it. I’m shuddering right now. I’ve already had my first dose this morning at 7am and promptly spent two hours reading about Barcelona on the loo, the second dose is scheduled for 7pm tonight, just after I arrive at the hospital. Meaning I get to spend at least two hours more in a hospital toilet (which won’t have the same ambience or diverse reading matter as my own loo). At least I won’t have to try hospital food. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten hospital food, so I’m probably just reinforcing an outdated stereotype there. I’d eat anything right now. Only I can’t.</p> <p>The leaflet you get with Fleet makes for comical reading. “At 1pm today,” it instructs, “you should have three glasses of clear liquid for lunch.” Three glasses of clear liquid does not constitute lunch, I think you'll find. It constitutes three glasses of water. Or a best, a cup of mint tea and two glasses of lemonade. Apparently, clear liquid also includes clear soup. I’m yet to find out exactly what a clear soup is. But I'm guessing it’s hot water with an Oxo cube in.</p> <p>I really don’t like hospitals. I don't mind visiting them from time to time, and the staff at Rochdale are friendly enough - all quite brassy and northern. My nan was in a lovely cottage hospital last year after she “had a fall” (as ladies in their 80s do). It was like a motel. They did aerobic lessons and everything. The same day I went to visit her, however, I also went to visit my aunty in one of Birmingham’s decaying Victorian hospitals. It was awful. So dirty and grim. Those big open wards which instantly strip you of all dignity. I did see a sign when I was last at Rochdale though, advertising the fact they had bedside TVs on the wards. So at least I can watch Eastenders while acquiring MRSA.</p> <p>Anyway. It’ll all be over and done with tomorrow. And it is a cunning way to rapidly detox after all the festive stuff and the copious amounts of booze I consumed over New Year (which was great by the way – hope yours was too). I’m also quite looking forward to the anaesthetic tomorrow. I love being put under– hey anything which means I can sleep a lot – I love. According to the literature that they give you before hand, I have a 1 in 1000 chance of having a bad reaction to the anaesthetic, and there’s just a “very very small risk of death” occurring as a result. So, keep the veil handy just in case.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/05/nil_by_mouth~442988/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>clear-souphospitalscrohn-s-diseasefleethttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2006/01/05/nil_by_mouth~442988/#commentshttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2005/12/29/frozen~425345/tag:on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk,2005-12-29:/2005/12/29/frozen~425345/Thu, 29 Dec 2005 21:33:30 +0100 <p>There was ice on the inside of my front room windows this morning. It had dropped so cold, so suddenly, last night, that the condensation had frozen in lacy patterns right across the glass. It was the kind of morning when it was criminal to go into Manchester, let alone into the office. But still – I went. The clear blue sky, breezeless air. From up on top I bet you could see for miles. </p> <p>What a strange week (again). My first Christmas Day on my own wasn’t so bad. I’m more of a New Year Person anyway. There are two types of people, aren’t there? Christmas People and New Year People. One of my sisters is very much a Christmas Person, she takes it very seriously, insists on a tree and all the trimmings. Now she has a child there’ll be no stopping her. Me? I was happy with a bottle of port and my copy of the Christmas Radio Times – the only thing I consider essential over the festive season, not because I watch a lot of TV, but because it still sticks in my mind as the highlight of family Christmases: the arrival of the Radio Times. What that says about our family Christmases of old, I’ll leave to you to figure out.</p> <p>Anyway, turned out I wasn’t alone Christmas Day – at least not for all of it. Halfway through the afternoon, just after A Star is Born had ended, I got a call on my mobile and there was Jd, outside shivering in the cold, clutching a bottle of wine in a cheery gift bag. He was “doing the rounds” apparently. Bless him. (He’s just broken up with his partner of 8 years and this was his first Christmas alone.) Jd’s a funny one. He was supposed to get married this year (to said partner of 8 years) only he decided he was gay so… What amazes me is that his fiancé never actually figured out it was non-starter in the first place, since he’s one of the gayest men I’ve met since moving out here. I mean he’s no Julian Clary, but he does wear a scarf, and his prize possession is a pair of tatty old theatre seats, which he has in his living room, a constant reminder of his love of the Wets End Musicals (he went to see Cats this year). He showed me a picture of them on his mobile phone. Hopeless.</p> <p>Anyway, we had sex. That kind of “oh well, now you’re here we may as well” kind of sex. He drank the rest of his port and left me to watch Doctor Who in peace. One more bizarre incident to add to the pile of bizarre incidents that have occurred this year. </p> <p>On Tuesday I was invited over to see TB, he of the toothbrush, after I’d suggested we got out for a beer. Instead, he insisted I popped round to partake of a dull family gathering at his mum’s house. Don’t get me wrong, his family are lovely. But I’ve successfully managed to avoid my own dull family Christmas this year and didn’t particularly want to take part in anyone else’s. I drank half of the bottle of wine I arrived with (they’re more your Carlsberg types) and then I left to slide home along the canal. TB was polite and all that. But he was so engrossed in playing I Spy with his nieces, a game he seemed to find quite challenging, we didn’t really get a chance to have any kind of conversation – let alone the kind of “let’s resolve this and move on” kind of conversation I’d had planned for us.</p> <p>Anyway, what’s the point of all this rambling? Maybe there is no point. I just thought I should keep to my promise and write something here every week, even if it is just idle chit-chat and gossip.</p> <p>I’ve been quite wordless this week. My journal pages have been half-arsed scrawls written on the train, vague descriptions of the icy landscape, of vapour trails from aeroplanes frozen in the clear blue sky. On Wednesday “The Train Man” was on my train into work (much delayed train, I might add). We shared the usual commuter moans and I couldn’t help flirt just a little bit. I even wrote my mobile number down on a business card when he wasn’t looking, but didn’t have the guts to give it to him when we left the train at Manchester to go our different ways. Hey ho, maybe next year.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2005/12/29/frozen~425345/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>camp-menvapour-trialschristmasicecarlsberghttp://on-a-clear-day-i-can-see-wales.blog.co.uk/2005/12/29/frozen~425345/#comments