Plazza, Hall and Court

Thursday 29.10.09

Hall, Plazza, and Court, once again it's been too long since I've blogged, my friends.

I love the taste and rhythm of 'Hall, Plaza and Court', it raises expectations which I will now diminish.

On Monday, Nina and I made the half-hour drive over to the Wulfrun Hall in Wolverhampton to see comedian, Jim Jeffries. I think it may be the last time I visit that venue. The level of security bothers me. That's not the level of risk. Just security. The manner and numbers of black clothed security staff at the main doors, by the box office, and next to the stage. It's not that I have anything to hide in my bag, just that I don't understand the need. It all feels so dour, so oppressive, that it sucks the fun out of the night out.

It wasn't all that much fun anyway. I got the tickets because the stuff I've seen of Jim Jeffries on Youtube, and on panel shows has left me wanting more. I came away thinking that although he has stage presence and timing, a lot of the writing was sloppy and the thinking unoriginal. To paraphrase Frank Skinner, I like funny jokes, clean or dirty. Jeffries has a lot of dirty jokes, plenty of then got a shocked bark out of me, but they weren't funny. I wasn't particularly offended (although jokes about Katie Price's disabled child went too far in my opinion), I just wasn't laughing. Jeffries said it was an odd gig because it was a Monday. By this he implied that his audience weren't appreciative because they weren't drunk. Hmm. He made a big show of being drunk, and drank a pint and a half on stage. I don't think he was though, it all seemed controlled. He was at his best telling a story about taking his disabled friend to a brothel. Warm and funny, it was the high point for me, spoiled by a run into the Katie Price's son material and some awfully predictable stuff about how long it takes to turn a woman on. Certainly, he wasn't the man for me.

Picture a roman plazza, bright sunlight, fine statues, glittering fountains. Now picture me driving home the wrong way up the M6, turning around and finding myself unintentionally on the toll road. I reach the plazza, it is a row of un-staffed toll booths, correct change or card required. I put my card in the slot, the gate opens and I move forward, not collecting my card (no PIN required, you see?). Just in time, I reverse and claim my card. Home from the plazza after midnight.

On Tuesday, I drove H up to her girlfriend's home. She lives in New Brighton on the Wirral. Traffic was heavy and horrendous, so I abandoned plans to go into Liverpool. I needed to stop off though, so I decided to call in at the huge American-style shopping village just outside of Chester. I went there around 8 years ago with the family and enjoyed it. It as a time when I had cash to spend on discount designer stuff and came away with a few posh carrier bags, in fact, H still wears one of the cardi's I bought that day. My energy was very low, and I spent far too long driving about looking for a parking space, ending up at one point in the service area, being stared at by the security guard. I had thought I would have a nice lunch in posh Pizza Express. I had forgotten it was half-term. In sensory overload, I slumped into the food court, a high, over-populated echoing space in which to enjoy the proffered grease. There were no dogs on the floor to crunch the bones.

Hall, Plazza and Court, there's no place like home.

here is a good Jim Jeffries clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j0QgFslqsQ

Saturday 16.5.09

Attachment is a strange thing, both lovely and terrible. I've always understood how my attachment to people works, and to pets, and occasionally to places. I've never really got the concept of attachment to things though. I remember once disagreeing with my Mother over this. She was being drearily sentimental about things that were taken by thieves from my Great Uncle's house. The things in question were a number of antique family items dating back to the 1920's and 30's. Most were left over from a time when my Great-great Grandmother sold china out of her living room window. The bits that were kept by the family were the unsalables, chipped, cracked, badly mended, or seconds. I often think with amusement of the looks on the faces of the thieves when they examined their booty in the daylight (the theft happened overnight and as the house had been unoccupied for some time, the electric had been turned off). "I had wanted to have these things about me", Mum said. I didn't get it at all. The thinks had never been hers, and had been handed down quite at random. They weren't very interesting and most had no value. She was shocked at the crassness of my approach, and made that clear to me. It was another chilly gust in our ever stormy relationship.

Today, the scrap-man came to take away my car. I find myself grieving the loss. It was an old thing M201DNV, 180,000 miles on the clock, dented, scratched and rusty in places. Incredibly reliable, surprisingly nippy, completely familiar. It was the first reasonably smart and reliable car we had. I got it just after I landed the job at PIA in 1998, not as a vain symbol of my newfound status, or even as a treat. The car I was driving, an ancient Pugeot 205 bought for £200 was failing to start on every other occasion. A £3000 loan from the bank got me the second hand Toyota, the brand chosen on the recommendation of the man from TPS Autos (I wanted something family sized and reliable that would take a wheelchair).

In its 120,000 miles with me, all sorts of minor adversities befell it. The first one happened about a week after I got it. I was driving an unfamiliar service user when he urinated freely in the front seat. About three litres of urine saturated the upholstery. The smell remained with the car until the end, faded, but reappearing at inconvenient moments (but when would have been convenient?). When I got it, it was blemish free. It took me a couple of years to scrape down the side of it, coming out of a drive that was obstructed by a lamp-post that seemed to have arrived with the morning paper following a sleepless night shift. I never repaired the damage, Nick painted over the scratches with some special paint from Halfords. Years later, rust began to emerge in the wounded place, but I had done even more damage by then, so it didn't seem to matter. Christmas 2001, I scraped the wheel arches quite badly in a multi-storey carpark. Worse discomfort was to come when a chip shattered the windscreen. The replacement was not a tight seal, but I wasn't to know that until the following autumn, when in damp weather, the car would steam up. Cursing, I got used to this, and drove with the window open.

In 2003 I said I would replace it in 2004. It had cost me money for the first time that year, the radiator needed to be replaced. In early 2004, my time with PIA was over, so I kept the Toyota. Every year thinking that if it got unreliable I would trade it in. It never did. Last year, for the first time ever, we got two cars. One for me in Cornwall, one for Nick in Coventry. Nick got the modern replacement that will with a lot of luck do us another 10 years. Now, we no longer need two cars. I tried to get someone to buy it so that it could continue to be used, but couldn't find anyone who wanted it. It was too smelly, too scratched, too squalid. Finally the MOT and Tax ran out. It had to go. I feel a bit of pride that after a month of being laid up, it started first time and made its own way up the ramp of the pick-up. The man gave Nick £100 for it.

After this weekend, I won't miss M201DNV. It took us on many adventures, the kids grew up in it, it helped me earn my living, but it was just an object. Things break, rot, get taken from you. you go off them. They cost you. That doesn't mean I'm not materialistic, I love a new toy. There's a lot of pleasure in money and the things money can buy, ask anyone who hasn't got any. I'm just not sentimental about things. Am I?

Tuesday 3.2.09

Woke up late but couldn't wait to get home. Weather had come in cold and wet. Everything grey and muddy, back to the all pervasive smell of rot. Had the sense of being finished with the place although I've got to come back in two weeks time to take Nan to the hospital for the final checkup. I think Nan may have been glad to see me go. I'm often short with her which is not fair, my only excuse is that its impossible to have a proper conversation what with her hearing. Often there's so much emotion its smothering and I long to get out. This is not a new thing.

Mum wanted me to see Fred & Steve's old workshop before it gets demolished. All of the tools and posters have been taken away by Dairyland. They will make it into an exhibition. I didn't feel much, just a little sadness when I saw they had taken Fred's swivel chair, but not his bench. The chair had been fixed to the floor so it was the perfect distance from the bench for him to work the leather. It was a treat as a child for me to swivel in that chair. Mum said there was a note hidden behind a poster "I love you uncle Fred. Delia. 1983" It was in Stephen's handwriting. Fred died in 1977 and I would have been a teenager by then anyway. What did it mean? Who could say?

I got further held up by lunch and agreeing to take Mum's husband to his place in Par. The weather worsened, and I took a wrong road so that I ended up driving via Plymouth. This is more than ever the long way. By that time, I was frightened by the driving conditions so that my fingers got sore on the steering wheel. The wind was up, water deep in the road so that it held the car back at times. I thought about stopping at a motel but pushed on. By the time I stopped off 30 miles off the M42 I had driven out of the storm.

8pm at motorway services was calm and removed from the world. There were only a handful of customers, the staff were leaning on furniture, gossiping with maintenance staff. I rested and read a paper, eating Wimpy hamburger, enjoying the thousand island dressing they still use. I felt more relaxed than I had all weekend.

Got home to a warm welcome and sudden onset of cystitis. I tell by the food left for me, and by the way his arms fell around me that Nick had missed me horribly. He said he had worried about me because I had sounded stressed all the time I had gone. We both fell asleep feeling better.