Southend And The Banana Of Doom
You can tell it's Christmas, even at work. No Jeremy Vine. Thus we are given the pleasing illusion that the world has stopped turning. Clearly things are continuing to happen, but the fact that nobody has to ring in and give us their wrong-headed opinions about them obviously means that they are of no importance.
People's opinions always seem to be skewed, either by their total ignorance of a subject, or by their inadequate knowledge of it. All they are good for, finally, is the odd choice phrase. A woman talking about a toddler who had attacked another toddler at a playgroup a few weeks ago actually felt it necessary to point out that someone could have lost an eye, but went on to suggest that there was no point in involving the police because 'it won't bring the eyeball back.' The eyeball nobody had even lost in the first place! Nice slogan though, for something.
The other reason we know it's Christmas at work is all the Christmas dinners. We had two in the Centre. First there was the centre buffet, largely an array of brown things, where one member of staff, discussing the spread, nearly caused a major incident by innocently referring to 'those little tarts' just as a couple of women from another department walked in. The fall-out from this is still reverberating through the building.
This was followed by the 'SitDownLunch', as the posters had it, making it all sound rather brutal. Which it was, in a way, but then what do you expect for a fiver? - a phrase used so often in regard to this meal that it ought to have added to the poster as a tagline.
My dinner on Christmas Day was a traditional Danish buffet at my sister-in-law's Danish ex-partner's pub. People just nodded politely when I tried to explain this, as if I was being deliberately perverse. When I think about it, it does seem to tie in suspiciously well with the obscurity of my taste in films, once commemorated on Facebook as 'anything that's four hours long, black and white, and featuring a dead whale'. Although it was in colour, this meal probably was about four hours long, and even if there was no dead whale on offer, there was plenty of pickled herring and smoked eel. Danish kept breaking out around me and I kept looking, in vain, for subtitles.
On New Year's Eve I unexpectedly found myself in Southend, with Dave, and Claire, and Helen. Helen is Dave's old friend and Claire is his new one - and more than just a friend, is what I'm hearing. She doesn't have a TV, but seems to get by. It was not until she came to Brentwood for the first time on Friday that she first became acquainted with the concept of 'vajazzling'. So this has been a baptism of fire.
And Southend-on-Sea too! The home of disappointment, as it doesn't say on the signs - for a start, it isn't even on the sea, it's on a muddy estuary. It does have the world's longest pier though. We found ourselves on it. You can 'adopt a plank' if that takes your fancy. There was a board or boards commemorating these transactions with brief messages such as: 'Grandpa, caring, generous, fun-loving (2 planks)'. Another plank had been assigned to 'the Westcliff Rainbow Unit'. What do they do?, I wonder. Is it like The Sweeney? The phone rings: 'There's been a rainbow!' And off they go, tyres screeching, to hunt it down.
We travelled to the end of the pier on the train. It was slow, grim and unrelenting, with grey clouds lowering on either side - like being in a film by Bela Tarr*. On getting there, however, we were greeted by three seals - well not actually greeted, Southend's tourist industry isn't that sophisticated yet - but there they were, in the water, splashing about. There were also lots of funny little birds apparently called 'ternstones' (or so an old man told Dave). A 'cultural centre' is being built on the pier at some point, but the RSPB have insisted that they build it quietly, so as not to disturb these birds. Maybe they'll have to glue it together.
New Year's Eve I was round Justin and Bobs', with Nicky. It was basically just Allan Carr and a cheeseboard. And wine, obviously. On the aforementioned light entertainer's show, we got to see 'Mary the Mystic Monkey' unhesitatingly select the banana that said that the world would end as promised on 21st December 2012, the day after my birthday. So at least this will be one year when my birthday won't be overshadowed by Christmas.
*Tarr directed Werckmeister Harmonies, the original dead whale epic.
People's opinions always seem to be skewed, either by their total ignorance of a subject, or by their inadequate knowledge of it. All they are good for, finally, is the odd choice phrase. A woman talking about a toddler who had attacked another toddler at a playgroup a few weeks ago actually felt it necessary to point out that someone could have lost an eye, but went on to suggest that there was no point in involving the police because 'it won't bring the eyeball back.' The eyeball nobody had even lost in the first place! Nice slogan though, for something.
The other reason we know it's Christmas at work is all the Christmas dinners. We had two in the Centre. First there was the centre buffet, largely an array of brown things, where one member of staff, discussing the spread, nearly caused a major incident by innocently referring to 'those little tarts' just as a couple of women from another department walked in. The fall-out from this is still reverberating through the building.
This was followed by the 'SitDownLunch', as the posters had it, making it all sound rather brutal. Which it was, in a way, but then what do you expect for a fiver? - a phrase used so often in regard to this meal that it ought to have added to the poster as a tagline.
My dinner on Christmas Day was a traditional Danish buffet at my sister-in-law's Danish ex-partner's pub. People just nodded politely when I tried to explain this, as if I was being deliberately perverse. When I think about it, it does seem to tie in suspiciously well with the obscurity of my taste in films, once commemorated on Facebook as 'anything that's four hours long, black and white, and featuring a dead whale'. Although it was in colour, this meal probably was about four hours long, and even if there was no dead whale on offer, there was plenty of pickled herring and smoked eel. Danish kept breaking out around me and I kept looking, in vain, for subtitles.
On New Year's Eve I unexpectedly found myself in Southend, with Dave, and Claire, and Helen. Helen is Dave's old friend and Claire is his new one - and more than just a friend, is what I'm hearing. She doesn't have a TV, but seems to get by. It was not until she came to Brentwood for the first time on Friday that she first became acquainted with the concept of 'vajazzling'. So this has been a baptism of fire.
And Southend-on-Sea too! The home of disappointment, as it doesn't say on the signs - for a start, it isn't even on the sea, it's on a muddy estuary. It does have the world's longest pier though. We found ourselves on it. You can 'adopt a plank' if that takes your fancy. There was a board or boards commemorating these transactions with brief messages such as: 'Grandpa, caring, generous, fun-loving (2 planks)'. Another plank had been assigned to 'the Westcliff Rainbow Unit'. What do they do?, I wonder. Is it like The Sweeney? The phone rings: 'There's been a rainbow!' And off they go, tyres screeching, to hunt it down.
We travelled to the end of the pier on the train. It was slow, grim and unrelenting, with grey clouds lowering on either side - like being in a film by Bela Tarr*. On getting there, however, we were greeted by three seals - well not actually greeted, Southend's tourist industry isn't that sophisticated yet - but there they were, in the water, splashing about. There were also lots of funny little birds apparently called 'ternstones' (or so an old man told Dave). A 'cultural centre' is being built on the pier at some point, but the RSPB have insisted that they build it quietly, so as not to disturb these birds. Maybe they'll have to glue it together.
New Year's Eve I was round Justin and Bobs', with Nicky. It was basically just Allan Carr and a cheeseboard. And wine, obviously. On the aforementioned light entertainer's show, we got to see 'Mary the Mystic Monkey' unhesitatingly select the banana that said that the world would end as promised on 21st December 2012, the day after my birthday. So at least this will be one year when my birthday won't be overshadowed by Christmas.
*Tarr directed Werckmeister Harmonies, the original dead whale epic.
posted by martin at 12:00 PM
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