Towards York

We had another look at Crowle this morning before we left the area, but couldn’t get into the Library because it didn’t open till 2 pm, and couldn’t get into the church because there was no local vicar any more. Did get into the Regen shop (a kind of charity shop, though I’m not clear what group it was supporting). Picked up another couple of pair of cufflinks to add to the dozen or more I’ve bought since I came here. One of these was of Big Ben (though it took the shopkeeper and me a while to work it out).
Thought we’d take a look at Scunthorpe, which is close by. It’s been highly redeveloped in the Centre, with new shops and pedestrian malls everywhere. We thought that was all there was, but some of the older buildings remain. Plenty of op shops, of course, but not a lot else that was exciting.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned a chain of shops over here called Poundland. We first came across one of these in Kentish Town, (in London) and they have a remarkable variety of goods, many of them top quality. How they manage to get to sell them at a pound a piece is something they know and I don’t, but they’re obviously very successful. They’re nothing like the $2 shops in NZ, which mostly seem to sell el cheapo stuff.
Anyway, after an all-you-can-eat lunch for £4.95 each in a Chinese restaurant, we moved on towards York. We haven’t quite got to York yet, because by the time we got here it was getting late enough, and we wanted to get our tent up somewhere. The place we went to first said it was booked out, although there was little evidence of it at that point; they helpfully sent us next door (there were at least three camping grounds in a row) and the man there led us on his bicycle to our pitch which is next to the river that flows through the strangely-named village (another dormitory one, I‘d guess) of Acaster Malbis - sounds like some sort of odd wine, doesn‘t it? Seems as though the Acaster part relates to the word, Castra, which means a Roman camp. Those Romans must have been everywhere...!
Before we’d got the tent up completely we were visited by a duck and her family of eight ducklings - nearly full grown. They even made their way into the tent checking out whether we had any food hanging around. Bloomin’ cheek.
Celia has had a toothache for the last few days, and we’re definitely going to have to find a dentist tomorrow: she won’t be able to carry on treating it with Panadol.

Heading for Birmingham and the PodCamp

We drove to Birmingham today, after having spent most of the morning cleaning up the house we’ve been staying in for a month. Celia doesn’t do a cleaning-up job by halves, so the place is probably better off than it’s been in months! (Nah, my niece is a pretty thorough cleaner too…)
The trip to Birmingham was supposed to take two and a half hours, and would have done if we hadn’t got slowed down in a couple of place. All in all it was a pretty straightforward trip, even if our Sat Nav did seem to be taking us an awful long way south before she sent us west. But we had a couple of mishaps with reading what she said, and had one detour while on the M1, and then another couple when we got to Birmingham city itself. We didn’t either of us see much of the city because we were so focused on Malvina that we had little time to notice anything else.
Anyway, we’re ensconced in a hotel out in the suburb of Edgbaston, which seems to be on one edge of the city (there’s a Welcome to Birmingham sign just along the road). Edgbaston has seen better days, I think, and a major rebuilding program must be due to go on. More than a dozen grand old three-storey houses on the other side of the main road are due for demolition, and the hotel we’re in has seen better days by far. It’s a bit of a rabbit warren. After we’d parked the car round the side of the building, we went in the front and were then taken by the proprietor along two or three corridors and through the dining room (one table and four chairs, tv, fridge, two microwaves), through another corridor and found that our room was right beside where we’d parked the car.
Later on we went out and found a Chinese (sorry, Cantonese) restaurant, and ordered takeaways. While we were waiting we were asked to sit in an area lower than the main restaurant. It smelt dank and musty, and there was no carpet on the floor. Turned out that with all the rain this summer, the place has been flooded out, and they’ve had a real job drying it.
I’m in Birmingham to go to the Pod Camp - not sure what it’ll be like, and whether I’ll enjoy it at all (I’ve lost some of my initial enthusiasm for the idea), and I’ll probably be the oldest there. Time will tell. Celia is going to check Birmingham out on her own tomorrow, which will probably mean we’ll go home with a good deal more than we came with. As it was we loaded up the car when we left the place we’d been staying in for a month.

Blog-novelling

Had this idea of writing a novel on the Blog, adding not so much as a chapter a day, but a chunk a day, or thereabouts....although with Opera Alive going full-bore at the moment, writing anything is getting to be a major achievement. I've just wiped a whole screed of the writers' list emails because I just haven't had the time or energy to work my way through them. And of course I haven't heard back from InfoTech, so I can assume that Adrienne Perry wasn't excited about my latest query.

But if I was to write a 'novel' on here, even as a kind of draft version, it would sort of commit to presenting it in serial form, as though that was the final form, rather as they did in the 19th century, when Dickens and co wrote their novels as they went along - genius of course could achieve such a task.

Not on this subject at all, I've just come across a (rather badly designed in terms of colour) site called The Desertlight Journal, which focuses on the distress many men are caused through divorce, through non-access to children and so forth. Interestingly enough in their latest newsletter they mention the outrage that New Zealand lawyer Denise Ritchie caused from men's groups when she allegedly said that men should regard Father's day as a day of shame and should see it as a day to apologise for all the sex abuse of children that goes on. Her original comments aren't as provocative as subsequent responses made out. A supreme example of the ability of people to jump the gun by not reading what the person said. However, the responsees were right as well. In a sense it isn't fair that innocent men should be lumped together with those who are guilty in order to apologise for the actions of all men. This is a typical PC approach to problems: blame everyone and make everyone feel guilty. It applies across the board to the way law is now made, as well, with the innocent being forced to deal with the problems of the guilty because the law doesn't seem to be able to discriminate being right and wrong parties. It's what has happened with the Maori situation in NZ: everyone who is descended from those who were here in the 19th Century is somehow at fault for the sins of their forebears. In fact, it doesn't matter whether you had forebears here in those days; if your skin colour is not black (and of course, brown counts as black these days) then you are to blame. The Chinese even get lumped in with the whites in this approach.

I thought there might be a reference to the men's shame thing on Soapbox, but I can't see anything. Perhaps I should write up some of the thoughts above, and post them there.

Well, all this is a far cry from starting a novel...so maybe that will have to wait for another day!