OK, it's up.
http://freespace.virgin.net/steph.fox/floyd/
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Another time, another planet
Having given up on my old life now, I've finally achieved some kind of equilibrium. It just means I drink in different bars and get to talk to people who haven't suddenly decided to hate me while I was out of the country, but it's better, if not altogether happy.
Friday nights are still hell, and the policemen (it's true about them getting younger by the way) all say 'hello' when I walk by. It makes me feel about 90 - if they'd done that when I was a kid I'd have been panicking inside and running the ever-present list of recent crimes through my mind. Now I'm just pleased to see them, and I guess it shows. The car hasn't been attacked since the last incident reported here, but then again it hasn't spent Friday night here either...
I managed to break (or at least, I think I managed to break) Zend's CVS server just after the weekend began, which effectively means I'm in the twin position of having a lot to do and no way to do it. 'Just enjoy the day,' offered Rick, my direct boss. Hm kay. So what do people actually do with free Saturdays? It's not just Zend - I've never taken weekends in the standard sense, usually because the kind of job I've had hasn't been the kind where weekends are different to any other days. They're very much an office construct. Historically, weekends have generally consisted of Tuesday as far as I'm concerned, which became less interesting when the licensing laws changed to allow all-day opening. Until then it used to be considered pretty wonderful if you could get market day off work - the bars in chartered market towns were allowed to stay open until 4pm on market days - and in Hitchin, where I spent most of my adult life to date, market day fell (and still falls) on a Tuesday.
Happy days :-) learning to play pool with the bikers in the George and strolling home rat-arsed at 4.10pm ('drinking-up time' was extended from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, eventually). Having a weekend on a Tuesday was easily worth having to work a Saturday and Sunday, back then. I actually still prefer it that way now, too.
So it's a Saturday, a rare Saturday when I don't have anything to do (or at least, I don't have any way to do it), and it's even a warm-ish day. The laundry's in, the kitchen's fairly tidy, the meal I'm making later won't take much over 20 minutes, packing for next week's Amsterdam trip (PHP international conference) will take maybe 10 .... I ended up looking at the stuff in the outhouse I've been promising Mum I'll clear out forever.
And then some handwriting leaps out at me from amongst a sheaf of old papers, and it's not my handwriting, it's Floyd's.
Floyd was my very ex-partner, who died suddenly on Hallowe'en 1999, just two weeks after coming out with the 'Millennium Disease' theory - "have you noticed how everybody's falling apart because of the Millennium?" - and roughly 40 years before either of us expected him to do anything so dramatic. There was a spate of sudden deaths around that time (like, 6 of my family, my cat, our dog, and over 30 of my friends) which seemed to prove his theory correct, but it's not hugely comforting to think of that. I think he was talking about marriages at the time...
Anyway there's his stuff; a short story, one of many stories and poems he wrote. I remember this one clearly; he'd actually written it for radio, and played me a recording of it he'd made (he was an excellent performer). And it occurs to me it'd be kinda nice to put it online, because if you google on 'Chron Gen' or 'bb floyd' you don't get the kind of results you would expect to find if his band had been successful after the www reached the average household, and because he didn't live long enough to even see the Internet in action, but I'm sure he'd have published his bits and bobs on it if he had.
So there's my Saturday task.
Friday nights are still hell, and the policemen (it's true about them getting younger by the way) all say 'hello' when I walk by. It makes me feel about 90 - if they'd done that when I was a kid I'd have been panicking inside and running the ever-present list of recent crimes through my mind. Now I'm just pleased to see them, and I guess it shows. The car hasn't been attacked since the last incident reported here, but then again it hasn't spent Friday night here either...
I managed to break (or at least, I think I managed to break) Zend's CVS server just after the weekend began, which effectively means I'm in the twin position of having a lot to do and no way to do it. 'Just enjoy the day,' offered Rick, my direct boss. Hm kay. So what do people actually do with free Saturdays? It's not just Zend - I've never taken weekends in the standard sense, usually because the kind of job I've had hasn't been the kind where weekends are different to any other days. They're very much an office construct. Historically, weekends have generally consisted of Tuesday as far as I'm concerned, which became less interesting when the licensing laws changed to allow all-day opening. Until then it used to be considered pretty wonderful if you could get market day off work - the bars in chartered market towns were allowed to stay open until 4pm on market days - and in Hitchin, where I spent most of my adult life to date, market day fell (and still falls) on a Tuesday.
Happy days :-) learning to play pool with the bikers in the George and strolling home rat-arsed at 4.10pm ('drinking-up time' was extended from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, eventually). Having a weekend on a Tuesday was easily worth having to work a Saturday and Sunday, back then. I actually still prefer it that way now, too.
So it's a Saturday, a rare Saturday when I don't have anything to do (or at least, I don't have any way to do it), and it's even a warm-ish day. The laundry's in, the kitchen's fairly tidy, the meal I'm making later won't take much over 20 minutes, packing for next week's Amsterdam trip (PHP international conference) will take maybe 10 .... I ended up looking at the stuff in the outhouse I've been promising Mum I'll clear out forever.
And then some handwriting leaps out at me from amongst a sheaf of old papers, and it's not my handwriting, it's Floyd's.
Floyd was my very ex-partner, who died suddenly on Hallowe'en 1999, just two weeks after coming out with the 'Millennium Disease' theory - "have you noticed how everybody's falling apart because of the Millennium?" - and roughly 40 years before either of us expected him to do anything so dramatic. There was a spate of sudden deaths around that time (like, 6 of my family, my cat, our dog, and over 30 of my friends) which seemed to prove his theory correct, but it's not hugely comforting to think of that. I think he was talking about marriages at the time...
Anyway there's his stuff; a short story, one of many stories and poems he wrote. I remember this one clearly; he'd actually written it for radio, and played me a recording of it he'd made (he was an excellent performer). And it occurs to me it'd be kinda nice to put it online, because if you google on 'Chron Gen' or 'bb floyd' you don't get the kind of results you would expect to find if his band had been successful after the www reached the average household, and because he didn't live long enough to even see the Internet in action, but I'm sure he'd have published his bits and bobs on it if he had.
So there's my Saturday task.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Yeah yeah, it's not fair...
I keep hearing Jilted John, I don't know why...
My mother's car didn't just get egged this weekend, it got a brick through its window. She's gone to stay with my uncle because she doesn't dare leave the car out on the street here with no window, and we have nowhere to hide it, and it can't be fixed 'til Monday.
She talked about the violence on the street here last night - I was lucky, I went over to Nigel's place and missed all the 'excitement'. I'm very glad I did that, for myself, but not for Mum.
So tonight it's my turn, I'm in the flat alone, and for once there hasn't been any violence on the streets. I was treated to the violence of the bars instead, which isn't the same thing at all as it doesn't involve the physical stuff. For some reason as I got up to leave tonight I said to the one woman I most admire in Baldock that it was always a pleasure to see her. It is; she's pretty and she's funny, and she lifts the mood as soon as she walks through the door, for everyone present. Her response? "I wish I could say the same for you, Steph."
We've never even held a conversation.
The friend that accompanied her did hold a conversation with me, briefly, on the subject of child-rearing. She explained to me that Floyd and I had been cruel to the niece we raised. But then went on to describe the difficulties she's having with her 7-year-old son's manners, which to me says that she was never cruel enough. If you don't teach a child right from wrong before it reaches 7, how can that child ever know right from wrong? Obviously we weren't going to agree on that point, so I let it ride. Which led to her asking me, was I from 'that family in the High Street'? - the one where a baby was unwittingly murdered by its own mother some two years ago. Gee thanks.
The murderess in the case is from this town. Everyone here went to school with her. There's a huge amount of sympathy for her locally, and a general feeling that she was led astray by falling into bad company. Strangely, I've known the 'bad company' she was living with at that time for the last 20-odd years. When his father was dying - which took some years, as the old boy had a very slow cancer - I know that the 'bad company' was attentive and caring; he took food and beer to his father on a daily basis, he spent time with him, and he gave at least as much as he received, in the way of gossip, and company, and simple fun. But he wasn't 'from here'. And neither am I, thank God. Neither am I.
So why are we being attacked? Because I've come to the point now where I'm beginning to believe that everyone around is not being attacked, there's something personal in this; the rest of the cars in our street remain untouched.
There are a number of possibilities.
One is the recent conviction of an old (and elderly) friend of the family for paedophilia. Incidents 30 years old. No telling whether it carried into more recent years, and the guy's had a complete breakdown since his conviction, so they can't even send him to jail - just wreck his life. Of course we have to believe the conviction, and of course we're all duly appalled - but jesus, he's knocking 80. Why did it have to be now?
One is the fact that both my mother and I will attempt to stop things that we see are wrong. "Kick him again and I'll call the police," said my 65-year-old Mum to one teenager. "What the FUCK do you think you're playing at?" said me to another. They stop - but maybe they don't forget.
One is the fact that I just came back from Israel, and all England hates Israel, or so it seems.
And one is that I allegedly slept with the partner of the aforementioned unwitting murderess. (Except that I didn't, but hey, don't let the truth get in the way of the facts!)
- or it could be simply that we're not from here...
My mother's car didn't just get egged this weekend, it got a brick through its window. She's gone to stay with my uncle because she doesn't dare leave the car out on the street here with no window, and we have nowhere to hide it, and it can't be fixed 'til Monday.
She talked about the violence on the street here last night - I was lucky, I went over to Nigel's place and missed all the 'excitement'. I'm very glad I did that, for myself, but not for Mum.
So tonight it's my turn, I'm in the flat alone, and for once there hasn't been any violence on the streets. I was treated to the violence of the bars instead, which isn't the same thing at all as it doesn't involve the physical stuff. For some reason as I got up to leave tonight I said to the one woman I most admire in Baldock that it was always a pleasure to see her. It is; she's pretty and she's funny, and she lifts the mood as soon as she walks through the door, for everyone present. Her response? "I wish I could say the same for you, Steph."
We've never even held a conversation.
The friend that accompanied her did hold a conversation with me, briefly, on the subject of child-rearing. She explained to me that Floyd and I had been cruel to the niece we raised. But then went on to describe the difficulties she's having with her 7-year-old son's manners, which to me says that she was never cruel enough. If you don't teach a child right from wrong before it reaches 7, how can that child ever know right from wrong? Obviously we weren't going to agree on that point, so I let it ride. Which led to her asking me, was I from 'that family in the High Street'? - the one where a baby was unwittingly murdered by its own mother some two years ago. Gee thanks.
The murderess in the case is from this town. Everyone here went to school with her. There's a huge amount of sympathy for her locally, and a general feeling that she was led astray by falling into bad company. Strangely, I've known the 'bad company' she was living with at that time for the last 20-odd years. When his father was dying - which took some years, as the old boy had a very slow cancer - I know that the 'bad company' was attentive and caring; he took food and beer to his father on a daily basis, he spent time with him, and he gave at least as much as he received, in the way of gossip, and company, and simple fun. But he wasn't 'from here'. And neither am I, thank God. Neither am I.
So why are we being attacked? Because I've come to the point now where I'm beginning to believe that everyone around is not being attacked, there's something personal in this; the rest of the cars in our street remain untouched.
There are a number of possibilities.
One is the recent conviction of an old (and elderly) friend of the family for paedophilia. Incidents 30 years old. No telling whether it carried into more recent years, and the guy's had a complete breakdown since his conviction, so they can't even send him to jail - just wreck his life. Of course we have to believe the conviction, and of course we're all duly appalled - but jesus, he's knocking 80. Why did it have to be now?
One is the fact that both my mother and I will attempt to stop things that we see are wrong. "Kick him again and I'll call the police," said my 65-year-old Mum to one teenager. "What the FUCK do you think you're playing at?" said me to another. They stop - but maybe they don't forget.
One is the fact that I just came back from Israel, and all England hates Israel, or so it seems.
And one is that I allegedly slept with the partner of the aforementioned unwitting murderess. (Except that I didn't, but hey, don't let the truth get in the way of the facts!)
- or it could be simply that we're not from here...
Thursday, April 07, 2005
It's For Real
Sounds like an advertising slogan, no?
I'm just talking about the England I came home to, yeah yeah whinging again - I promise (tho' I often break my promises) that this'll be the last time I mention it.
My mother's car had eggs thrown over it twice last week - not by birds, but by teenagers. Don't these kids know it's not even properly Spring yet?
There was someone in our cellar a couple of nights back. There's nothing down there to steal, but it's still scary stuff, given that my antiquated (sorry Mum, going for the pink pound) mother generally lives alone; the gate aka 'drawbridge' is kept permanently locked these days, and the garden is surrounded by high walls. So where did this guy - I assume it was a guy, or guys - come from, and how?
Our wash-house - which is protected in the same way - has been broken into so often now that my mother's given up trying to keep food in the freezer there. Because it gets stolen, and she doesn't like the thought of those kids getting food poisoning.
The kids hang out on the streets any time it isn't actually raining. And no, we don't live in London or Manchester or some godforsaken suburban sprawl, we live in what used to be a pleasant, if dull, little town on the edge of nowhere.
Dave the Bar nods when I mention the hassle Mum's been going through. 'Yeah, it's gone seriously downhill around here lately.' Great. Cool. Fantastic. Fix it?
So maybe it's not just me being paranoid after all. Maybe England _is_ just turning into a land of disrespect and thuggery. Or at least, this small part of it.
My brother mailed me tonight to say he's had enough of the Big City (his joke name for our small town) and is taking his herd of children back into the sticks just as soon as he can sell his house.
Dave also has children. He's been trying to sell up for over eighteen months, so I'm not holding my breath...
People here are gobsmacked (there is no better word) when I say I find it aggressive here after Israel. After all, everything you see in the press and on the TV says that Israel's one of the scarier places to be in the world. But then, there's no big story and no good pictures to be had out of a lone middle-aged woman walking home through city streets unaccosted at 4am. Even if there are thousands like her, night after night, it just doesn't make great news! Which just goes to show precisely how limited the idea of what constitutes 'great news' is.
Oh and my tooth fell apart today too. And I don't have a dentist in the UK since mine was arrested for selling cocaine back in the caring sharing 90s.
(Not that these items are related - but they kind of are, in a way.)
That's enough of the grumblies; I started to fit in better now (I swore at someone or something, and I can cross a road without thinking about where I am too hard, and I make it to the bar before it closes nearly every night now) so I guess I'll be back to my normal self in another week or so.
God help us all.
I'm just talking about the England I came home to, yeah yeah whinging again - I promise (tho' I often break my promises) that this'll be the last time I mention it.
My mother's car had eggs thrown over it twice last week - not by birds, but by teenagers. Don't these kids know it's not even properly Spring yet?
There was someone in our cellar a couple of nights back. There's nothing down there to steal, but it's still scary stuff, given that my antiquated (sorry Mum, going for the pink pound) mother generally lives alone; the gate aka 'drawbridge' is kept permanently locked these days, and the garden is surrounded by high walls. So where did this guy - I assume it was a guy, or guys - come from, and how?
Our wash-house - which is protected in the same way - has been broken into so often now that my mother's given up trying to keep food in the freezer there. Because it gets stolen, and she doesn't like the thought of those kids getting food poisoning.
The kids hang out on the streets any time it isn't actually raining. And no, we don't live in London or Manchester or some godforsaken suburban sprawl, we live in what used to be a pleasant, if dull, little town on the edge of nowhere.
Dave the Bar nods when I mention the hassle Mum's been going through. 'Yeah, it's gone seriously downhill around here lately.' Great. Cool. Fantastic. Fix it?
So maybe it's not just me being paranoid after all. Maybe England _is_ just turning into a land of disrespect and thuggery. Or at least, this small part of it.
My brother mailed me tonight to say he's had enough of the Big City (his joke name for our small town) and is taking his herd of children back into the sticks just as soon as he can sell his house.
Dave also has children. He's been trying to sell up for over eighteen months, so I'm not holding my breath...
People here are gobsmacked (there is no better word) when I say I find it aggressive here after Israel. After all, everything you see in the press and on the TV says that Israel's one of the scarier places to be in the world. But then, there's no big story and no good pictures to be had out of a lone middle-aged woman walking home through city streets unaccosted at 4am. Even if there are thousands like her, night after night, it just doesn't make great news! Which just goes to show precisely how limited the idea of what constitutes 'great news' is.
Oh and my tooth fell apart today too. And I don't have a dentist in the UK since mine was arrested for selling cocaine back in the caring sharing 90s.
(Not that these items are related - but they kind of are, in a way.)
That's enough of the grumblies; I started to fit in better now (I swore at someone or something, and I can cross a road without thinking about where I am too hard, and I make it to the bar before it closes nearly every night now) so I guess I'll be back to my normal self in another week or so.
God help us all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)