Friday, 14 November 2008
Retrovictoriana
Just occasionally, the internet brings you something wonderful that you almost didn't click to.
Check out this beautiful steampunk silhouette animation, and just imagine something similar set in some retro-Victorian version of Longton.
Even better, there are a few tantalising echoes of Conrad (I think) in the heavy sense of nautical apprehension that runs through the plot.
Perfect. Thanks to alec-m for noticing!
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
The Greater Glory of the Invisible Hand
Hmmm. For what seems like the 1,143rd consecutive day, the every major news organ reannounces what they had already reannounced time and time again:
1) It might be an actual recession now;
2) It might get quite bad;
3) It might last more than a week.
And on point 3, you get to wondering what exactly they were all expecting, if not this?
But, hang on, what's this? Um... has anyone seen property fetishists Kirsty and Phil recently? No? Marvellous - I am willing to undergo any amount of negative equity, just to make this moment last!
But if I'm wrong about the last point, I'd rather not know, thanks!
1) It might be an actual recession now;
2) It might get quite bad;
3) It might last more than a week.
And on point 3, you get to wondering what exactly they were all expecting, if not this?
But, hang on, what's this? Um... has anyone seen property fetishists Kirsty and Phil recently? No? Marvellous - I am willing to undergo any amount of negative equity, just to make this moment last!
But if I'm wrong about the last point, I'd rather not know, thanks!
Bad Carma
The wandering urchin that spontaneously appended a silver go-slower stripe to the side of my car last week was rather perceptive, it turns out.
He/she seems to have figured out that I never take the speedy or more direct path to anything whatsoever; the aforementioned stripe seems a genial work of unstraightness and charming whimsy... some kind of psychogeographic metaphor, perhaps.
I don't mind too much. It's not worth much (though I am expecting it to go twice round the clock before nature reclaims it irredeemably, please). People are too fucking precious about their paintwork, and spend far too much time stroking their bountiful tubes o'Turtlewax.
Likewise, restless natives like to complain about the occasional vandalism and often non-specific 'trouble' round here, but based purely on personal experience we had more grief more regularly when we lived in leafy Warwickshire.
So there y'go, dear readers.
He/she seems to have figured out that I never take the speedy or more direct path to anything whatsoever; the aforementioned stripe seems a genial work of unstraightness and charming whimsy... some kind of psychogeographic metaphor, perhaps.
I don't mind too much. It's not worth much (though I am expecting it to go twice round the clock before nature reclaims it irredeemably, please). People are too fucking precious about their paintwork, and spend far too much time stroking their bountiful tubes o'Turtlewax.
Likewise, restless natives like to complain about the occasional vandalism and often non-specific 'trouble' round here, but based purely on personal experience we had more grief more regularly when we lived in leafy Warwickshire.
So there y'go, dear readers.
Monday, 10 November 2008
Being Stoke
Jesus, I've been living in the Potteries for nearly five years.
During that time, a lot has changed both for me personally and in these, my adopted towns (though I think I've managed to avoid ever stopping in Fenton except to visit the bike shop). This is the place where I arrived an outsider, where I settled and ultimately started a family.
To some extent I'm still a distinct outsider. I know of people who grew up five miles from Stoke and claim to feel like outsiders in a way that I'd never imagine feeling in, say, Coventry. And despite the fact that I too grew up watching those Potteries derbies on Central Match Live, Burslem is the one place that I've ever been called 'immigrant' to my face (and that's just plain odd).
It's too easy to overstate the parochialism cliche, and just as easy to underestimate it. There's a distinct a multifaceted identity here, and it's dripping with saccharine sentimentality. "In the old days, way back when... we were poor but we were happy, and you could leave your front door open," and the like.
This scent of roses may be equally pronounced elsewhere, but in the Potteries I challenge anybody to escape it. People so often sound fantastically proud in one breath, dejected and disinterested in the next. On the buses, in the street, and pretty much wherever you care to turn - "it's a shithole, mate..."
By the same token, we know and trust our neighbours and they know and trust each other. And much as they bemoan 'the way the country's going' - whatever way that is - there's a real sense of community that I've never experienced anywhere else, beaten down and diminished though people may feel. Things worth cherishing - "...it's *our* shithole, in't it."
And still, disillusion abounds and rebounds, whether it's about regeneration, immigration, low pay, the ills of Federation, whatever. Community pride ever vying with the sense of betrayal by complacent city fathers and fly-by-night council managers. Is it justified? I don't know - cheap shots at the council are ten-a-penny in these parts.
Know what? I'd hazard a guess that many outsiders settling here have very similar feeling - certainly more akin to the 'local identity' than you might expect. I don't think I ever expected to stay, and others I know tried living elsewhere. But here, eventually, we stayed. And we grew to like the place in a way that perhaps we never expected to.
This is a city that doesn't seem like it was ever really finished, such are the rubbled, empty expanses, even in the city centre. Some days it's depressing, a relentlessly downbeat place. But there's a really compelling undercurrent here - true Stokies and newcomers who sense possibility and potential, who coax out and sometimes broadcast the sense of "unconventional beauty" that prevades these parts.
History has not been kind to the Potteries; this isn't some Richmond or Knightsbridge - and yet people are creative; they acclimatise, develop ways of seeing and learn to create nothing less than A Beautiful City by looking closer.
None of this is overtly political. But our political climate is crying out for optimism, creativity, warmth and a renewed sense of perspective. This can come from artists, council managers, bloggers, whoever - just people, at the end of the day. In pubs, on websites, at the civic.
So it goes.
After all, this Being Stoke, it's our shithole too. And that's the great thing about living in this of all places, the city that's not quite finished yet.
During that time, a lot has changed both for me personally and in these, my adopted towns (though I think I've managed to avoid ever stopping in Fenton except to visit the bike shop). This is the place where I arrived an outsider, where I settled and ultimately started a family.
To some extent I'm still a distinct outsider. I know of people who grew up five miles from Stoke and claim to feel like outsiders in a way that I'd never imagine feeling in, say, Coventry. And despite the fact that I too grew up watching those Potteries derbies on Central Match Live, Burslem is the one place that I've ever been called 'immigrant' to my face (and that's just plain odd).
It's too easy to overstate the parochialism cliche, and just as easy to underestimate it. There's a distinct a multifaceted identity here, and it's dripping with saccharine sentimentality. "In the old days, way back when... we were poor but we were happy, and you could leave your front door open," and the like.
This scent of roses may be equally pronounced elsewhere, but in the Potteries I challenge anybody to escape it. People so often sound fantastically proud in one breath, dejected and disinterested in the next. On the buses, in the street, and pretty much wherever you care to turn - "it's a shithole, mate..."
By the same token, we know and trust our neighbours and they know and trust each other. And much as they bemoan 'the way the country's going' - whatever way that is - there's a real sense of community that I've never experienced anywhere else, beaten down and diminished though people may feel. Things worth cherishing - "...it's *our* shithole, in't it."
And still, disillusion abounds and rebounds, whether it's about regeneration, immigration, low pay, the ills of Federation, whatever. Community pride ever vying with the sense of betrayal by complacent city fathers and fly-by-night council managers. Is it justified? I don't know - cheap shots at the council are ten-a-penny in these parts.
Know what? I'd hazard a guess that many outsiders settling here have very similar feeling - certainly more akin to the 'local identity' than you might expect. I don't think I ever expected to stay, and others I know tried living elsewhere. But here, eventually, we stayed. And we grew to like the place in a way that perhaps we never expected to.
This is a city that doesn't seem like it was ever really finished, such are the rubbled, empty expanses, even in the city centre. Some days it's depressing, a relentlessly downbeat place. But there's a really compelling undercurrent here - true Stokies and newcomers who sense possibility and potential, who coax out and sometimes broadcast the sense of "unconventional beauty" that prevades these parts.
History has not been kind to the Potteries; this isn't some Richmond or Knightsbridge - and yet people are creative; they acclimatise, develop ways of seeing and learn to create nothing less than A Beautiful City by looking closer.
None of this is overtly political. But our political climate is crying out for optimism, creativity, warmth and a renewed sense of perspective. This can come from artists, council managers, bloggers, whoever - just people, at the end of the day. In pubs, on websites, at the civic.
So it goes.
After all, this Being Stoke, it's our shithole too. And that's the great thing about living in this of all places, the city that's not quite finished yet.
On the blog...
So, then.
I feel another blogalapse coming on; perhaps this one won't be so short lived as the last.
Maybe this is the only blog in the whole world named after a horse trough.
Doubtless someone will be along shortly to prove me wrong.
I feel another blogalapse coming on; perhaps this one won't be so short lived as the last.
Maybe this is the only blog in the whole world named after a horse trough.
Doubtless someone will be along shortly to prove me wrong.
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Parklife
Winsford United vs St Helens Town
The boy had hit the sack early and instantly; a last-minute dash up two junctions of the M6 to Winsford saw me arrive at the stadium five minutes late. As usual I'd noted that the stadium was somewhere near the main road and breezily assumed it would be easy to find. It was, kind of, but only once I'd sped five off miles in the wrong direction. Such was Winsford's hold on my imagination that Sam's Animal Jungle compilation was still jingle-jangling cheerily in the CD player. Doubling back, the floodlights were helpfully aglow, sitting high above a roundabout - Bethlehem, boys! - so I swung into the car park, guzzled the last of my jelly beans (don't let me buy petrol, ever), and relinquished my four quid. The guy on the turnstile seemed startled that I looked so eager.
Thank heaven for proper floodlights, anyhow. It's not the first time that they've saved me from my own incompetence. For this reason I firmly believe that the traditional stadium skyline is nothing less than a Public Good, whose characteristics should be enshrined in law as a mandatory requirement.
I stroke the chin and reflect a little, but not for long, on the links between Winsford's salt industry and my adopted city. Then I stop faffing and head for the terrace. I don't know much about the Cheshire salt industry, but I'm told that the John Rylands Library used to store rare books in the town's salt mines - I wonder if there's a copy of Give My Regards to Queen Street down there, crammed in amongst the first editions of the German Ideology? It's a scheister to find. It does seem like much of the local interest is underground; and as usual I can never quite understand the alleged wonders of the County Palatine, pleasant though it is.
The Barton Stadium, renamed after the war, used to be called The Great Western Playing Field. I like that. The best way I can describe it is as endearingly crap, but I don't mean that pejoratively. The floodlight electrics are protected by mangled chicken wire. The main stand is missing a huge chunk of roof and the pitch is surrounded by various blackened relics - a mud soaked fire hose, still anchored to its hydrant, several old tyres, and a couple of rusty mowing devices long since reclaimed by nature. There's even one of those adjustable hospital beds on wheels that line the corridors in A&E. The refreshments counter is a full-on transport caff, and the tea is a baked-bean shade of lukewarm permatan - superb; I had another.
Surrounding the entire pitch is a dog track, with concrete lighting in front of the stands lining each straight. To allow for the curvature of the track, there's a semi-circular grassy void behind each goal, manned by yellow-vested youngsters who brighten their gloomy station by spending most of the game throwing themselves into knobbly-kneed pile-ons. The 'keepers keep having to ask for their ball back, please.
For whatever reason I can't remember the Winsford goal at all - I was probably hassling the nice lady for a brew in the caff - but St. Helens' two strikes were excellent, the first a cushion-and-volley from twenty yards low into the bottom corner, the second the product of an excellent build-up, finished assertively from close range.
The visitors looked better and better as the match wore on, and while their "poncey" (or sensible, if you are) stretching routine provoked mirth amongst the home supporters ("are you actually going to play second half, lads?") they were clearly the fitter side. It showed.
At half time, the Winsford manager threatened rather dryly to have me arrested after I encroached on the players' gangway between the dugouts and the dressing room. I thought they'd all run out by then but there you go; people don't make it in football for being prone to politeness and timidity, even or perhaps especially at this level. That's one reason among many why I was spending an evening skulking around an old dog track.
Anyway, there are no pictures (yet) - I managed to offload £400 worth of camera / wedding present on some concrete while retrieving a ball, immediately prior to getting threatened with the Cheshire Constabulary. Hard surfaces aren't good for cameras, y'know, and I have had some explaining to do in the morning.
At the final toots of the whistle, the club officials forgot to open the gates, thus preventing an early or even timely home time for everyone. It was fun to see the fairweathers denied their exit - they seemed kind of embarrassed to ask someone, while mutting about health and safety - but if you've ever had that ffs, what am I doing here? moment at a match, then this was the reaffirmation.
"Crapball would be ok if it just lasted for 10 minutes," reflected Mrs. TUTD sympathetically as she spooned some more porridge into a little mouth at breakfast. She was ok about the camera.
"BALL!" cried the fourteen-month old enthusiastically, ignoring his tasty slop for a second, thrusting his arms skywards and grinning toothily.
I'm not sure whether to be heartened or mortified by that.
The boy had hit the sack early and instantly; a last-minute dash up two junctions of the M6 to Winsford saw me arrive at the stadium five minutes late. As usual I'd noted that the stadium was somewhere near the main road and breezily assumed it would be easy to find. It was, kind of, but only once I'd sped five off miles in the wrong direction. Such was Winsford's hold on my imagination that Sam's Animal Jungle compilation was still jingle-jangling cheerily in the CD player. Doubling back, the floodlights were helpfully aglow, sitting high above a roundabout - Bethlehem, boys! - so I swung into the car park, guzzled the last of my jelly beans (don't let me buy petrol, ever), and relinquished my four quid. The guy on the turnstile seemed startled that I looked so eager.
Thank heaven for proper floodlights, anyhow. It's not the first time that they've saved me from my own incompetence. For this reason I firmly believe that the traditional stadium skyline is nothing less than a Public Good, whose characteristics should be enshrined in law as a mandatory requirement.
I stroke the chin and reflect a little, but not for long, on the links between Winsford's salt industry and my adopted city. Then I stop faffing and head for the terrace. I don't know much about the Cheshire salt industry, but I'm told that the John Rylands Library used to store rare books in the town's salt mines - I wonder if there's a copy of Give My Regards to Queen Street down there, crammed in amongst the first editions of the German Ideology? It's a scheister to find. It does seem like much of the local interest is underground; and as usual I can never quite understand the alleged wonders of the County Palatine, pleasant though it is.
The Barton Stadium, renamed after the war, used to be called The Great Western Playing Field. I like that. The best way I can describe it is as endearingly crap, but I don't mean that pejoratively. The floodlight electrics are protected by mangled chicken wire. The main stand is missing a huge chunk of roof and the pitch is surrounded by various blackened relics - a mud soaked fire hose, still anchored to its hydrant, several old tyres, and a couple of rusty mowing devices long since reclaimed by nature. There's even one of those adjustable hospital beds on wheels that line the corridors in A&E. The refreshments counter is a full-on transport caff, and the tea is a baked-bean shade of lukewarm permatan - superb; I had another.
Surrounding the entire pitch is a dog track, with concrete lighting in front of the stands lining each straight. To allow for the curvature of the track, there's a semi-circular grassy void behind each goal, manned by yellow-vested youngsters who brighten their gloomy station by spending most of the game throwing themselves into knobbly-kneed pile-ons. The 'keepers keep having to ask for their ball back, please.
For whatever reason I can't remember the Winsford goal at all - I was probably hassling the nice lady for a brew in the caff - but St. Helens' two strikes were excellent, the first a cushion-and-volley from twenty yards low into the bottom corner, the second the product of an excellent build-up, finished assertively from close range.
The visitors looked better and better as the match wore on, and while their "poncey" (or sensible, if you are) stretching routine provoked mirth amongst the home supporters ("are you actually going to play second half, lads?") they were clearly the fitter side. It showed.
At half time, the Winsford manager threatened rather dryly to have me arrested after I encroached on the players' gangway between the dugouts and the dressing room. I thought they'd all run out by then but there you go; people don't make it in football for being prone to politeness and timidity, even or perhaps especially at this level. That's one reason among many why I was spending an evening skulking around an old dog track.
Anyway, there are no pictures (yet) - I managed to offload £400 worth of camera / wedding present on some concrete while retrieving a ball, immediately prior to getting threatened with the Cheshire Constabulary. Hard surfaces aren't good for cameras, y'know, and I have had some explaining to do in the morning.
At the final toots of the whistle, the club officials forgot to open the gates, thus preventing an early or even timely home time for everyone. It was fun to see the fairweathers denied their exit - they seemed kind of embarrassed to ask someone, while mutting about health and safety - but if you've ever had that ffs, what am I doing here? moment at a match, then this was the reaffirmation.
"Crapball would be ok if it just lasted for 10 minutes," reflected Mrs. TUTD sympathetically as she spooned some more porridge into a little mouth at breakfast. She was ok about the camera.
"BALL!" cried the fourteen-month old enthusiastically, ignoring his tasty slop for a second, thrusting his arms skywards and grinning toothily.
I'm not sure whether to be heartened or mortified by that.
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