Monday, September 01, 2003
You're a girl and I'm a boy. You're a girl and I'm a boy. I'll stand in front of you, Take the force of the blow.
So, Friday was fun, coinciding with the first heavy rains of the month I headed down to Etchingham, where my parents and my aunts and uncles are working at clearing my Nan's house. It's great fun watching them arguing over it, Mum and Dad seem to be quite practical and ruthless about anything that someone hasn't already staked a claim on or that Nan didn't specify what she wanted done with it, but my Uncles especially were arguing over the nails and pots of paint, "You can have it" "I don't need it, you take it" "Oh no no no no, you have it". Going through her audio tapes we found a tape that for some reason had the song for Captain Beaky on it. On the other was something that Nan had recorded some twenty-three odd years ago where she's talking to one of her grandchildren who, at the time, were all very very young. She was getting them to sing nursery rhymes on to the tape. We had a laugh as she got this hapless toddler, who we thought to be my sister, to say 'oscillating' (that's Nan, never mind that her grandchild cannot count to their age, she's trying to get them to repeat multi-syllabic words). Only for the tape to go on and we realised it was me! Seems to be that Nan came down to help look after me while Dad and, to a much larger extent Mum, were busy dealing with the slightly premature arrival of my sister into the world (she made up for it though, never turned up to anything else early). Strangely that tape then disappeared before I could make sure it had an unfortunate meeting with the bottom of my boots, I fear it will be brought out at future clan gatherings for my discomforture.
Saturday morning my sister drove me and the maternal parental unit into Maidstone. I think I've ranted to some degree before here about how I dislike my hometown, I can't explain exactly why, though I know it's not exactly justified, more that I'm projecting a lot of things onto the place, but it is rather a shithole without much to recommend it. Do everyone who leave their hometown look back on it with disgust? Certainly the massive roadworks caused by redeveloping an old Fremlins factory into new shopping centres makes things different. Anyway, it being my birthday yesterday we were going to buy me a mobile phone, my sister would help me choose one and then Mum would pay. Strangely, though I have something of an undeserved reputation in the family for being pretty au fait with technology (probably because I can use a remote control without causing the stereo to explode or something) mobiles are something that have completely passed me by and, after my sister and I agreed on a lovely little Nokia and the Virgin tarif I spent most of the rest of the weekend and today trying to get it to work properly.
It seems you should never turn the things off. This is why they go off in cinemas after requests for people to turn their phones off. No one ever does. If you turn your mobile phone off the little goblins that run the clockwork inside get all confused. This is why it's terribly important to keep it on AT ALL TIMES. Turning the volume of the ring tone to maximum is also extremely important, if it's set too quiet or to vibrate, then the phone call might actually skip over your phone and go into the next phone along by mistake. I've not quite got the knack of using it yet. For example, I caught the train back from Maidstone to London this afternoon and not once did I phone someone up and say "I'm on the train." There's obviously a trick to it.
So, Friday was fun, coinciding with the first heavy rains of the month I headed down to Etchingham, where my parents and my aunts and uncles are working at clearing my Nan's house. It's great fun watching them arguing over it, Mum and Dad seem to be quite practical and ruthless about anything that someone hasn't already staked a claim on or that Nan didn't specify what she wanted done with it, but my Uncles especially were arguing over the nails and pots of paint, "You can have it" "I don't need it, you take it" "Oh no no no no, you have it". Going through her audio tapes we found a tape that for some reason had the song for Captain Beaky on it. On the other was something that Nan had recorded some twenty-three odd years ago where she's talking to one of her grandchildren who, at the time, were all very very young. She was getting them to sing nursery rhymes on to the tape. We had a laugh as she got this hapless toddler, who we thought to be my sister, to say 'oscillating' (that's Nan, never mind that her grandchild cannot count to their age, she's trying to get them to repeat multi-syllabic words). Only for the tape to go on and we realised it was me! Seems to be that Nan came down to help look after me while Dad and, to a much larger extent Mum, were busy dealing with the slightly premature arrival of my sister into the world (she made up for it though, never turned up to anything else early). Strangely that tape then disappeared before I could make sure it had an unfortunate meeting with the bottom of my boots, I fear it will be brought out at future clan gatherings for my discomforture.
Saturday morning my sister drove me and the maternal parental unit into Maidstone. I think I've ranted to some degree before here about how I dislike my hometown, I can't explain exactly why, though I know it's not exactly justified, more that I'm projecting a lot of things onto the place, but it is rather a shithole without much to recommend it. Do everyone who leave their hometown look back on it with disgust? Certainly the massive roadworks caused by redeveloping an old Fremlins factory into new shopping centres makes things different. Anyway, it being my birthday yesterday we were going to buy me a mobile phone, my sister would help me choose one and then Mum would pay. Strangely, though I have something of an undeserved reputation in the family for being pretty au fait with technology (probably because I can use a remote control without causing the stereo to explode or something) mobiles are something that have completely passed me by and, after my sister and I agreed on a lovely little Nokia and the Virgin tarif I spent most of the rest of the weekend and today trying to get it to work properly.
It seems you should never turn the things off. This is why they go off in cinemas after requests for people to turn their phones off. No one ever does. If you turn your mobile phone off the little goblins that run the clockwork inside get all confused. This is why it's terribly important to keep it on AT ALL TIMES. Turning the volume of the ring tone to maximum is also extremely important, if it's set too quiet or to vibrate, then the phone call might actually skip over your phone and go into the next phone along by mistake. I've not quite got the knack of using it yet. For example, I caught the train back from Maidstone to London this afternoon and not once did I phone someone up and say "I'm on the train." There's obviously a trick to it.
